Joseph Bruchac by Shawna Becker

“It is always important to remember, as my grandmother once told me, that life is not supposed to be easy. Therefore, take heart from this, if you are having problems you are not alone.”

His Books:

“My favorite book is always the one I'm working on right now.”

Joseph Bruchac has written over 120 books including the following:

Code Talker	Skeleton Man	The First Strawberries	The Great Ball Game
Bearwalker	Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back	The Winter People	A Boy Called Slow
Pushing Up the Sky	Eagle Song	Hidden Roots	How Chipmunk Got His Stripes
The Arrow Over the Door	The Journal of Jesse Smoke	Native American Animal Stories	March Toward the Thunder
The Girl Who Married the Moon	The Dark Pond	Dawn Land	When the Chenoo Howls
Flying With the Eagle, Racing the Great Bear	Gluskabe and the Four Wishes	Children of the Longhouse	Jim Thorpe
Our Stories Remember	Squanto’s Journey	Ndakinna	Native Plant Stories

Listen to Joseph Bruchac read some of his poems at http://www.josephbruchac.com/.

Biography

Joseph Bruchac has been creating short stories, novels, poems, anthologies, and music for over 30 years. He is the author of over 120 books for both children and adults. Bruchac lives in Greenfield Center, New York in same house his maternal grandparents raised him in. He has Abenaki Indian ancestry, which can be seen in many of his works. This is why he works a lot with projects that are working to preserve the Abenaki culture, language, and traditions. Bruchac performs traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers. See more about the group at: http://www.josephbruchac.com/honorsongs.html.

See a more detailed biography at: http://www.josephbruchac.com/bruchac_biography.html

“My interest in Native American stories comes from a number of what I consider to be logical sources. First of all, it is part of my own cultural heritage - my family is Abenaki on my mother's side. Second, I've always been fascinated by the natural world. Many American Indian stories and traditions help us understand and relate to nature. And third, the lessons found in our traditional stories seem to be even more meaningful today.”

Other Sources:

Joseph Bruchac’s website: http://www.josephbruchac.com/

Video interview: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/video.jsp?pID=1640183585&bcpid=1640183585&bclid=1685978871&bctid=1688365625

“The special skills necessary for being a storyteller are really very simple. I actually talked about them in a book of mine called Tell Me a Tale . Those basic skills are to listen, to observe, to remember, and to share.”

Book Summaries:

My Father is Taller Than a Tree

This explains how little boys look up to their fathers. It has very few words, which is unlike most of Joseph Bruchac’s books. It’s geared more toward younger readers with its simple rhyming sentences. Also unlike his other books, this book is not related to the Native American culture. I liked that this book was such a great representation of diversity in father and son pairs. There is even a blind father in the story.

Raccoon’s Last Race

This story explains why the raccoon has such short legs. Like many Native American stories, this one explains how something in nature came to be that way. The story uses talking animals and inanimate objects to tell the tale of raccoon’s selfishness. I noticed this book has fewer words and more pictures than many of Joseph Bruchac’s books. Like most of his stories, this one is a traditional American Indian tale that has a moral. This particular moral is to be careful what you do because it could bring you trouble in the end.

The First Strawberries

Like Raccoon’s Last Race, this book is explains how a natural thing occurred for the first time. This story explains how strawberries came to the earth. It starts by telling how the Creator made a man and a woman, and they were very happy together. However, one day, the man came home from hunting to find that the wife was picking flowers instead of making their meal. They argued, and the woman left. When the man realizes he was wrong, the sun offers to help him stop his wife. This has the same storytelling style of many of Joseph Bruchac’s other folktale stories. I did not like the reinforcement of stereotypes that are found in this book. The woman is expected to cook while the man hunts. The woman is dramatic, and the man goes running after her.  However, there are many gender stereotypes that the Native American culture supports simply because that is how their culture functioned. This would be something to discuss with students and compare and contrast with our societal norms.

Squanto’s Journey

This is the true story of the Native American, Squanto. It’s nonfiction, but is written more in the first-person format of a children’s fictional story. Squanto was taken from his homeland and forced to live in Europe. When he returned, he found his entire family wiped out by disease brought by the Europeans. He then uses his English-speaking skills to help the white people that have been kind to him. Bruchac must have written this story with the content in mind more than the audience. It has a lot of writing, but would be good to use in a lesson rather than individual reading time.

Biography of sources

o   http://www.josephbruchac.com/

o   http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/joseph-bruchac

o   http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Bruchac/e/B001H6KFWE

o   http://www.childrenslit.com/childrenslit/mai_bruchac_joseph.html