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michellewatson's review
3.0
Fancy review here: https://bookdevotions.com/book-reviews-april-2022
Another quick win in the kids' department. My boys are at the perfect age for Clyde Robert Bulla novels. These books are short, lean, and exciting. I'm mixing them into our homeschool read-aloud rotation, and even though we mostly just read them for fun, they give me the chance to squeeze in some light history, vocab, and basic reading comprehension skills.
This particular book wasn't quite on par with the other two Bulla books we've read, and I wanted my star rating to reflect that so I don't forget. I was especially intrigued by this one because it's about a Navajo boy living in, gosh, I'd say the '20s or '30s, way out in a middle-a-nowhere desert area. It sounded SO much like where my husband grew up on the border of AZ and NM in the Navajo Nation. I was hoping it would have some geographical references and name-dropping, but it didn't. However, it could've easily been set in that area where we still visit frequently.
Eagle Feather is an 11-year-old boy who lives with his parents and two younger siblings. His job is to tend the sheep and goats and, thereby, help provide a modest living for the family. His life is small, but he's content. Then, things begin to change for Eagle Feather, and he's confronted with some tough choices, and he must have courage...you get the idea.
Bulla's stories are so fluff-free (you could call them bare bones, really) that it's easy for little kids to focus. The main character is usually confronted with an impossible choice, something that requires a lot of guts, and it's fun for me to ask my kids, "What would you do in that situation?" There are also always characters who aren't what they seem, and it's been neat to ask, "Do you think So-n-So is good or evil?" Because the story is so simple, it's possible to have these discussions with my 5- and 6-year-olds. They can usually defend their answers to me with examples from the text, and then I take heart and tell myself that getting my secondary ed teaching credential DID come in handy after all. Haha!
Another quick win in the kids' department. My boys are at the perfect age for Clyde Robert Bulla novels. These books are short, lean, and exciting. I'm mixing them into our homeschool read-aloud rotation, and even though we mostly just read them for fun, they give me the chance to squeeze in some light history, vocab, and basic reading comprehension skills.
This particular book wasn't quite on par with the other two Bulla books we've read, and I wanted my star rating to reflect that so I don't forget. I was especially intrigued by this one because it's about a Navajo boy living in, gosh, I'd say the '20s or '30s, way out in a middle-a-nowhere desert area. It sounded SO much like where my husband grew up on the border of AZ and NM in the Navajo Nation. I was hoping it would have some geographical references and name-dropping, but it didn't. However, it could've easily been set in that area where we still visit frequently.
Eagle Feather is an 11-year-old boy who lives with his parents and two younger siblings. His job is to tend the sheep and goats and, thereby, help provide a modest living for the family. His life is small, but he's content. Then, things begin to change for Eagle Feather, and he's confronted with some tough choices, and he must have courage...you get the idea.
Bulla's stories are so fluff-free (you could call them bare bones, really) that it's easy for little kids to focus. The main character is usually confronted with an impossible choice, something that requires a lot of guts, and it's fun for me to ask my kids, "What would you do in that situation?" There are also always characters who aren't what they seem, and it's been neat to ask, "Do you think So-n-So is good or evil?" Because the story is so simple, it's possible to have these discussions with my 5- and 6-year-olds. They can usually defend their answers to me with examples from the text, and then I take heart and tell myself that getting my secondary ed teaching credential DID come in handy after all. Haha!
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