Monday, March 9, 2026

Elatsoe

 


Rating: 4 add this to your classroom library of Native American stories by Native American authors.

My Thoughts:

November is Native American Heritage Month, so start early to find or add books to your classroom for next fall. In 2015, data from the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) indicated that there were about 20 books written or illustrated by American Indians. In 2018, Indigenous creators made up about 1.4% of all YA authors. In 2023, it rose to 2.4%. In 2024, CCBC counted 102 books by Indigenous authors/creators, aggregated between Canadian First Nation authors/illustrators and Native American authors/illustrators. When the numbers are so small, it is good to read both, but this author, Dr. Darcie Little Badger is a Native American, Lipan Apache writer with her PhD in oceanography.  Ellie's foray into the underworld ancestral sea was a fascinating way for Ellie to really get to know her ancestral gift and the ways that this knowledge might help her later on in the book. 

The fact that Dr. Little Badger is American is significant for middle and secondary teachers looking to diversify their 'literature closets' by replacing of supplementing copies of  Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. I have been in enough public and private school classrooms in Hawai'i to know that there are still class sets of Island in literature closets.  Books like this and other #ownvoices literature by Native authors might replace or supplement Island. Bringing in something like Elatsoe could balance out, or avoid reinforcing the stereotypes, tropes and historical inaccuracy found in O'Dell's work. If you want to read more about the analysis and critique of Island -- in case you need to answer to school boards, administrators, parents, other stakeholders --  get your fuel from the article "A critical look at O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Dr. Debbie Reese, a Nambé Pueblo scholar and founder of the blog site American Indians In Children's Literature. 

As far as the story, I found a video of the author that does a much better job in selling this book. The only other two things I want to say are that:
  1.  This is book one of a duology.
  2. I wish I had the power to be protected by my own ghost dog. 
My childhood dog was a goofy doberman/German shepherd mutt named Squirt who was clumsy and hilarious, but also loyal and kind. 



From the Publisher:

Elatsoe―Ellie for short―lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals―most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.

Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and its dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?

The breathtaking debut novel from Darcie Little Badger features an asexual, Apache teen protagonist―and combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements, in one of the most-talked-about books in years.


Publication Information:

Author                 Darcie Little Badger
Illustrator           Rovina Cai
Publisher            Levine Querido (August 25, 2020)
Print length        368 pages
Grade level         7-12

Ladders and Bridges:

Key First Nation (Canadian) YA Authors:

Key American Native YA Authors:


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