It was while reading the Little House series to her own children that, Louise Erdrich, winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction, became upset by the negative portrayal of the Indians in the second book, Little House on the Prairie. Ma Ingalls describe them as dirty, smelly savages. Erdrich, of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa, decided it was time to write the Native American version of westward expansion. The Birchbark House series is engaging while offering children a different perspective on how the United States was settled. Book 1: The Birchbark House, published in 1999, begins the story of seven-year-old Omakayas, a Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, as she lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. (Trumpet books offers a discussion guide)
Book 2: The Game of Silence finds Omakayas moving west with her family in 1849.
Book 3: The Porcupine Year. It is 1852 and fourteen-year-old Omokayas and her Ojibwe family travel in search of a new home after the United States government forces them to leave their beloved Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker.
Book 4: Chickadee. In 1866, Omakya’s son Chickadee is kidnapped by two ne’er-do-well brothers from his own tribe and must make a daring escape, forge unlikely friendships, and set out on an exciting and dangerous journey to get back home.
