Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 10/01/2011 Noe draws on her own childhood experiences living on Indian reservations for her first novel, a slice-of-life story set in 1962 Oregon. Eleven-year-old Kitty is one of the few white kids at Warm Springs Indian Reservation, having moved there for her father’s government job. While her baseball-loving brothers fit in right away, Kitty finds the girls unapproachable until she starts school, where she’s surprised to learn they thought the same about her. Her relationships with classmates Jewel and Raymond open Kitty’s eyes to the casual discrimination Indians suffer from white teachers and town police. Noe’s pacing is uneven: the majority of the novel is uneventful, showing moments in Kitty’s growth over the year, but several dramatic events, including becoming trapped in a lookout tower during a forest fire and confronting Jewel’s violent stepfather, rush by in the last forty pages. Other authors have handled tensions among Indians and whites with more depth, but Kitty’s determination to speak out for her friends sends the right message. - Copyright 2011 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 11/01/2011 Gr 4–6—It's the summer of 1962 and Kitty's father's job as the forest manager for the Bureau of Indian Affairs has landed them on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon, where nearly everyone else is Native American. When she and her brothers attempt to find the local swimming hole, they are told, "You don't belong here." Kitty, 11, is both frightened and furious, and certain that she will never make friends at her new school. However, when her class is forced to sing the state song about free men bravely conquering the West for a Columbus Day assembly, the sixth grader begins to understand the resentment the Native American students hold for white people. Eventually, in the face of life-threatening wildfires, an Indian boy's abusive white stepfather, and an ultraconservative teacher, Kitty bravely stands up for a peer. Her narrative, interspersed with beautiful descriptions of the landscape, allows readers to make their own judgments about racism. Based on the author's own experiences, this novel fills a gap in the historical fiction genre. Great for classroom discussion as well as independent reading.—Mary-Brook J. Townsend, The McGillis School, Salt Lake City, UT - Copyright 2011 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 02/01/2012 Kitty is so used to moving with each of her father’s job reassignments that making friends in each new location is usually not much of an issue. The Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon is, however, a new experience, since she and her brothers are among the handful of white students in their new school. The brothers easily bond with Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute boys through common enthusiasm for baseball, but Kitty is intimidated by a pair of her classmates-dour, bullying Raymond and his snappish, aloof sister, Jewel. It doesn’t take long for Kitty to realize how negligently, and even disdainfully, the Indian students are treated by the white teachers, and as she offers some tentative criticism of the teachers’ attitudes, Jewel thaws a bit toward Kitty. Kitty is much slower to catch on to what the other Indian kids already know-that Raymond and Jewel are often at the mercy of their abusive white stepfather, and that the reservation police and their municipal police are so gridlocked by jurisdictional mandates and prejudice that the children feel they have no legal recourse. While Kitty’s gradual involvement with Raymond and Jewel forms the backbone of the novel, details of life on the reservation in the early 1960s, as seen through the eyes of a transient white family, are equally compelling, particularly the cooperative wildfire management between the government ranger and the Indian women who staff the lookout towers. An author’s note comments on the autobiographical aspects of the novel, and a glossary of terms from the local tribal languages (with pronunciation guide) is included. EB - Copyright 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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