A Stranger at Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton

In a more practical vein, at least for budding sky watchers, he follows a simplified map of the moon’s near side with closer looks at 17 craters and other features easily visible through small telescopes or binoculars before closing, after a scenario of the moon’s probable end, with instructions for creating a plaster or papier-mâché moonscape and for drawing (not photographing!) lunar features observed through a lens. Then, in no particular order, he speeds through a jumble of lunar topics including tides and phases, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, werewolves, moon-based festivals, and visits both fantastic and real.

Olemaun’s spirit and determination shine through this moving memoir.Ī picture of our nearest cosmic neighbor, from violent origins to likely demise.Īguilar, a veteran science writer and illustrator, opens with a recap of (theorized) stages in the moon’s evolution over the past 4.5 billion years. A scrapbook of photographs at the end helps readers enter this unfamiliar world, as do the occasional notes and afterword. The first-person narrative is filled with details of this Inuit family’s adjustment to a new way of life in which books and reading matter as much as traditional skills. She has a home she can get used to again he would always be alien. She contrasts her experience with that of the man the villagers call Du-bil-ak, the devil, a dark-skinned trapper no one speaks to. Gradually, though, with the help of her understanding father, she readjusts-even learning to drive a dog team. Amini-Holmes illustrates this scene and others with full-page paintings in somber colors. At first, her mother doesn't even recognize her: “Not my girl,” she says.

In this stand-alone sequel, she describes a year of reintegration into her Inuvialuit world. Margaret Pokiak's story continues after the events of Fatty Legs (2010), which described her boarding-school experience. After two years in Catholic residential school, 10-year-old Olemaun returns to Tuktoyaktuk on Canada's Arctic coast, a stranger to her friends and family, unaccustomed to the food and clothing and unable to speak or understand her native language.

A Stranger at Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton