"The kids at school call is Lake Rats..."

Jeannie loves the lake where she lives, but doesn't love being called a Lake Rat by the kids at school. Her Grampa listens to her, tells her about the kids at school calling him a Frog when he was younger, but helps her use her knowledge of the lake and its animals to transform the meaning of the intended insult. He tells her a creation story of Muskrat swimming to the bottom of the water to bring up some earth to put on Turtle's back.

Back matter includes notes on the story (the version of the Skywoman story told here is a Seneca one, but is also told among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. About the author, about the illustrator. ( )

A young girl of mixed French and Abenaki heritage loves her home and community on the edge of a lake in this lovely picture-book from Cheryl Savageau - an author who is also of French and Abenaki descent, and who grew up in similar circumstances - but is discouraged at the ridicule she endures at the hands of her classmates. Jeannie, the young narrator of Muskrat Will Be Swimming, enjoys her early morning walks by the lake, and the glimpses that they offer her of the animal world around her. Her home - one of the "cellar holes, trailers, and old winterized cottages left behind from the days that the lake was a vacation spot for the wealthy - may be poor, but it is happy. But although she tries to explain the beauty and joy of her home to her peers, they refuse to listen, seeing her only as a "Lake Rat." It is Jeannie's grandfather, who reminds her of the muskrat's important role in the (Iroquois) creation story, that takes the sting out of this name...

Published by one of my favorite smaller presses, Maine-based Tilbury House, Muskrat Will Be Swimming is a book I have long wanted to read. I was able to convince my public library to order some copies recently, as none of the county branches had any on the shelves, and it finally came in! As I expected, the story is both moving and thought-provoking. It demonstrates, in a fairly gentle way, that sometimes bullying doesn't get addressed at school, and that children have to find coping mechanisms in order to deal with it. It also emphasizes the importance of family, community and cultural traditions, in building up a young person's strength and sense of self-worth. I loved Grandpa's comment about the nature of insults that compare people to animals - "Some people do that - when they want to make you feel bad, they compare you to an animal. We don't think that way. We know the animals are our relatives. We can learn a lot from them" - as it highlights the fact that such bullies aren't just doing wrong, but are thinking wrong. This is an important idea to communicate, I think, both to children who have been bullied, and to those who bully.

Just as Savageau's narrative is poignantly compelling, so too are Robert Hynes' illustrations, which have a lovely soft quality to them that is very appealing. All in all, this is a book I'd recommend to young readers who have been bullied, either for being poor, or for being different in some other way, and to anyone interested in stories featuring contemporary Native American children. ( )