Important Story Not Told Well Enough

Cheyenne Again by Eve Bunting


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Eve Bunting is a great author of children's books and I admire her work. That said, I was a little disappointed in this book which is told in the voice of a young Cheyenne boy who is forced to go to a boarding school to be "civilized." The text is laconic (as opposed to Lakota - hrr hrr) and pared down to bald statements of fact. The illustrations seem stiff (unless they contain horses) and I'm torn between thinking that was intentional (showing the rigidity of the school and the cookie-cutter effect on the children), intentionally naive, or not that good. So I had to calibrate by re-reading The Train to Somewhere and So Far from the Sea, both of these historical fiction about separation and/or minority abuse.
The former, about orphans from the east being sent out west for "adoption," immediately brought me to tears and I marveled at the illustrations in the latter, which was about the Japanese internment camps during WWII.
Well, maybe Cheyenne Again is a "boy book." A young boy will probably be able to identify with the constrictions of school life and won't be weighed down with pesky emotions dripping all over the page. As a girl, I like A Train to Somewhere.

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