85 pages 2 hours read

Louise Erdrich

The Birchbark House

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1999

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Introduction

The Birchbark House

  • Genre: Fiction; middle-grade historical
  • Originally Published: 1999
  • Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 970L; grades 3-7
  • Structure/Length: 14 chapters; approx. 223 pages; approx. 5 hours, 26 minutes on audio
  • Protagonist and Central Conflict: Seven-year-old Omakayas, a young Anishinabe girl, helps nurse her family through a smallpox outbreak that shatters the rhythm of her family’s life. After the outbreak, Omakayas discovers her true calling.
  • Potential Sensitivity Issues: Disease and hunger; genocide; death of an infant; lasting grief

Louise Erdrich, Author

  • Bio: Born in 1954 in Minnesota; raised in North Dakota, where both parents taught at an Indian Affairs Boarding School; attended Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University; member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa; treats many issues involving Indigenous communities and their struggles in her works, though some works represent other cultures and genres; won the 2012 National Book Award for The Round House, the 2015 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Night Watchman; has also published poetry, short fiction, and children’s fiction (notably, The Birchbark House)
  • Other Works: Love Medicine (1984); The Beet Queen (1986); The Bingo Palace (1994); The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year (nonfiction, 1995); The Birchbark House (1999); The Sentence (2021)
  • Awards: National Book Award Finalist (1999); Western Heritage Award (2000); American Indian Youth Literature Award (2006)