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Summary
Summary
This charming and poignant contemporary story about two Lakota girls and their Laotian friend illuminates for children and adults the Lakota meaning of family, friendship, life, and death. In the Lakota way, Lana and her cousin Lori are like sisters, growing up together under the caring eyes of an extended family of parents and grandparents. Also like sisters, they have their share of squabbles and fights, but when they meet a new girl at school who has recently arrived from Laos, they are drawn closer by their shared friendship, their discoveries about cultural differences, and their experience with loss and death. An image of footprints in the snow, one under the other so that it looks as if only one person is walking, becomes the central compelling image in the story. "We can't keep snow from melting," says Grandpa, "But the footprints will always be there, even if we can't see them." nbsp; Taking her inspiration from Lakota and Asian students in her home state of South Dakota, award-winning children's writer Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve has crafted a simple story of friendship that survives a tragic year, beautifully illuminating along the way many profound truths about the human spirit.
Author Notes
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve is a well-known author of stories and essays about Native American life and culture and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. She is the author of Grandpa Was a Cowboy and an Indian and Other Stories and The Trickster and the Troll , both available in Bison Books editions. Her memoir, Completing the Circle (Nebraska 1995) won the North American Indian Prose Award.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Driving Hawk Sneve's unassuming yet potent chronicle of a fateful year in the lives of two preteen cousins follows the Lakota calendar observed by her characters, who according to Lakota tradition are sisters. Lori, the narrator, paints Lana as mischievous, often lazy and something of a show-off, but her admiration and envy also come through, and there's never any question that these two are the closest of friends. Lori and Lana's new, strong friendship with a third girl, a Hmong refugee, demonstrates the vitality of their own bond even as it allows the author to draw parallels between the Lakota and the Hmong. Throughout, the grandparents teach the "sisters" Lakota traditions and beliefs, prepare them for their naming ceremony-this proud, happy Native American community stands in stark contrast to the rez of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Readers may not notice right away when chapter titles begin to deviate from the Lakota names for the months ("Moon When Winter Sets In") and reflect events important to the girls ("Moon of New Names"; "Moon of the Hats"), but these present an early clue to the calamitous, barely foreshadowed development at the end: Lana's cancer diagnosis. Rather than manipulate readers' emotions, the author uses the tragedy to underscore the value of tradition and community. Despite its tendency to tell instead of show, this novel repays readers with its portraits of the sisters and their living heritage. Ages 8-up. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
From the Moon When Winter Sets In (November) to the Moon When the Berries Are Ripe (June) and beyond, twelve-year-old Lakota cousins Lori and Lana squabble and go to school and squabble and go to church and squabble and learn to make star quilts...Quiet, responsible Lori, the narrator, resents reckless show-off Lana's knack of sweet-talking herself out of trouble. Lana can be a good kid -- as when she tries to persuade the principal to extend Indian benefits to Hmong newcomer Shoua: "She looks like us." And after one escapade, she's chastened by the belief that Lori has saved her life. But what follows breaks a new, distinctly Indian path of steady, open-ended acceptance. Throughout, the girls are tutored in Lakota customs and lore by Grandpa and Grandma; they take part in Indian rituals and celebrations; and at the annual powwow both Lori and Lana yearn for a jingle dress to wear the following year -- which Grandma makes them for Christmas. (The melding of Christian and Indian traditions is a recurrent motif.) Then Lana contracts cancer; but she'll be cured, Lori believes, if she dances in her jingle dress. Lana isn't: it's the Moon of the Terrible (January). Over the years, Sneve has written a variety of fiction as well as a series of tribal profiles; her tone is unfailingly calm, her turns of plot are almost always unexpected, her symbolic touches are felicitous. Here, with little overt action, she does need a committed reader. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
In the Lakota way, Lori and her cousin, Lana, are sisters, and while their parents work, the girls spend much of the time together with Grandpa and Grandma High Elk. Lori, quiet and obedient, is jealous of her lively cousin, a theme that plays out in the background during the course of 12 Lakota moons, as the girls celebrate Indian festivals and naming ceremonies, as well as Christmas in church, and make friends with a new classmate, whose Hmong family has arrived from Laos. The interweaving of traditional culture is sometimes heavy-handed ( We, the Lakota, believe ), but the mix of Great Plains history with the contemporary scene (including occasional e-mails) rings true, whether in the Indians' view of the buffalo, Custer's Last Stand, or the famous presidents enshrined at Mount Rushmore. Lori's lively personal narrative will draw readers as she copes with anger, guilt, sorrow, and, finally, the loss of her sister, even as she realizes that, in the Lakota way, the girls will always be connected.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2008 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. vii |
| Lakota Moons | p. viii |
| 1 Moon When Winter Sets In | p. 1 |
| 2 Moon When Deer Shed Their Antlers | p. 13 |
| 3 Moon When There Is Frost inside the Lodge | p. 23 |
| 4 Moon When the Geese Return | p. 33 |
| 5 Moon When the Leaves Turn Green | p. 43 |
| 6 Moon When the Berries Are Ripe | p. 51 |
| 7 Moon of New Names | p. 63 |
| 8 Moon When the Buffalo Run | p. 77 |
| 9 Moon When the Leaves Blow Off | p. 89 |
| 10 Moon of the Hats | p. 97 |
| 11 Moon of the Dance | p. 103 |
| 12 Moon of the Terrible | p. 111 |
