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A review by panda_incognito
Kaya's Hero: A Story of Giving by Janet Beeler Shaw
4.0
I rated this two stars when I originally added it to Goodreads, and it was my least favorite classic American Girl book. However, I had a very different experience reading it again as an adult, and even though this book still includes one of the top fictional deaths that I will never get over, I appreciated the moving messages about grace and acceptance.
However, even though I now like this book much more, I still stand by aspects of my criticism from when I was younger.
Also, this character's death is extremely abrupt and traumatic. It's reflective of real life, because horrible accidents happen all the time, but I can see why it was hard for me to process this as a young reader. Nothing foreshadows this awful event, it happens abruptly out of nowhere, and there is not a lot of book left for Kaya or the reader to process what has happened. The story moves on very quickly, addressing Native American burial and grieving rituals without having enough margin in the short book's word count to give this death and Kaya's feelings the space and detail that they deserve.
Still, I appreciate this book's honesty about life's harsh realities, and it has a great message about forgiveness and acceptance, because even though Kaya was too frightened to tell her mentor about her grievous past mistakes, her mentor already knew and loved her anyway. I really like that message, and I enjoyed this book more from an adult perspective. As a child, it was just too depressing and painful for me to deal with the sudden death, and with the fact that Kaya never had the opportunity to talk to Swan Circling again and come clean about everything she had been afraid to tell her.
On a less emotionally charged note, something else that I found interesting about this book was how the author stayed consistent with the usual shape of an American Girl series by emphasizing the New Year's holiday in this book. Even though this couldn't possibly be a Christmas story, the author still tied this into the regular series structure by emphasizing a winter holiday, and I thought that she handled that very nicely.
However, even though I now like this book much more, I still stand by aspects of my criticism from when I was younger.
Spoiler
It's very strange for the book to emphasize Swan Circling as a mentor for Kaya when she has never appeared in the series before. Her impact on Kaya is a huge part of the six books' story arc, but because she wasn't even mentioned in the earlier books, a reader has to get to know her and then see her die in far too few pages. I believe that this story would work much better if readers had already had the chance to get to know Swan Circling and know how important she was to Kaya.Also, this character's death is extremely abrupt and traumatic. It's reflective of real life, because horrible accidents happen all the time, but I can see why it was hard for me to process this as a young reader. Nothing foreshadows this awful event, it happens abruptly out of nowhere, and there is not a lot of book left for Kaya or the reader to process what has happened. The story moves on very quickly, addressing Native American burial and grieving rituals without having enough margin in the short book's word count to give this death and Kaya's feelings the space and detail that they deserve.
Still, I appreciate this book's honesty about life's harsh realities, and it has a great message about forgiveness and acceptance, because even though Kaya was too frightened to tell her mentor about her grievous past mistakes, her mentor already knew and loved her anyway. I really like that message, and I enjoyed this book more from an adult perspective. As a child, it was just too depressing and painful for me to deal with the sudden death, and with the fact that Kaya never had the opportunity to talk to Swan Circling again and come clean about everything she had been afraid to tell her.
On a less emotionally charged note, something else that I found interesting about this book was how the author stayed consistent with the usual shape of an American Girl series by emphasizing the New Year's holiday in this book. Even though this couldn't possibly be a Christmas story, the author still tied this into the regular series structure by emphasizing a winter holiday, and I thought that she handled that very nicely.