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| https://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/693208.The_Absolutely_True_Diary_of_a_Part_Time_Indian |
Alexie, S. & Forney, E., Illustrator. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time indian. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company.
ISBN-13: 9780316013697
Format: Paperback
Cost: $8.99
Annotation: 14-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr. (Junior) is a gifted artist growing up on an Indian reservation in Spokane, Washington. Determined to escape from the poor, alcoholic despondency of the reservation and become a famous cartoonist, he leaves his school to attend a public school far from the reservation and finds it difficult to balance the red Indian world and the white public school world.
Awards: 2007 National Book Awards for Young People's Literature
2007 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award
2007 School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
2008 American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book
2009 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audio book Production Honor
2010 American Indian Library Association Award
Booktalk: This coming of age story is filled with drawings, cartoons, and art that wonderfully reflect the thoughts and feelings of Arnold Spirit, Jr. a.k.a. Junior, a quirky, unusual looking 14-year-old Indian trying to figure out his identity, and desperately wanting to escape the helplessly poor and self-destructive lifestyle that seems to prevail on the Indian reservation:
Rowdy is Junior's frenemy protector:
But when Junior decides to go to the white public school far away, the friendship is strained:
Junior is considered a traitor by the Indians and doesn't quite fit in at the public school. These two worlds are difficult to balance:
And when tragedy strikes Junior close to home, he reflects on who he is and what he needs to do to become successful in life. Read this humorous, dark, tragic yet hopeful story of a boy just trying to survive in the middle of two very different worlds.
Available Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Hardcover, Audible Audio Edition, Audio CD
Quote: Taken from page 217:
"I wept and wept and wept because I knew that I was never going to drink and because I was never going to kill myself and because I was going to have a better life out in the white world. I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants."
Multimedia: In 2007, Mr. Alexie read a portion of his book and did a radio interview with NPR. You can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14586575.
Extra! Extra! Check out The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian on Tumblr here: https://www.tumblr.com/search/the-absolutely-true-diary-of-a-part-time-indian.
