Cover Image

Buffalo Bird Girl : a Hidatsa story

by Nelson, S. D.

Format: Print Book 2012
Availability: Available at 5 Libraries 5 of 5 copies

Available (5)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - Squirrel Hill Children's Biographies j E99.H6 N45 2012
Location  CLP - Squirrel Hill
 
Collection  Children's Biographies
 
Call Number  j E99.H6 N45 2012
 
 
Dormont Public Library Juvenile Non-Fiction J 978.4 N33
Location  Dormont Public Library
 
Collection  Juvenile Non-Fiction
 
Call Number  J 978.4 N33
 
 
Moon Township Public Library Juvenile Non-Fiction J 978.4 NELS
Location  Moon Township Public Library
 
Collection  Juvenile Non-Fiction
 
Call Number  J 978.4 NELS
 
 
Mt. Lebanon Public Library Children's Non-Fiction j 978.4 Nel
Location  Mt. Lebanon Public Library
 
Collection  Children's Non-Fiction
 
Call Number  j 978.4 Nel
 
 
Northland Public Library Children's Nonfiction J 970.004 N33
Location  Northland Public Library
 
Collection  Children's Nonfiction
 
Call Number  J 970.004 N33
 
 

Summary
A stunning picture book biography of a 19th century Hidatsa woman, from award-winning author and illustrator S. D. Nelson



Buffalo Bird Girl (ca. 1839-1932) was a member of the Hidatsa, a Native American community that lived in permanent villages along the Missouri River on the Great Plains. Like other girls her age, Buffalo Bird Girl learned the ways of her people through watching and listening, and then by doing. She helped plant crops in the spring, tended the fields through the summer, and in autumn joined in the harvest. She learned to prepare animal skins, dry meat, and perform other duties.



There was also time for playing games with friends and training her dog. When her family visited the nearby trading post, there were all sorts of fascinating things to see from the white man's settlements in the East.



Award-winning author and artist S. D. Nelson (Standing Rock Sioux) captures the spirit of Buffalo Bird Girl by interweaving the actual words and stories of Buffalo Bird Woman with his artwork and archival photographs. Backmatter includes a history of the Hidatsa and a timeline.

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Drawing on Buffalo Bird Girl's historic personal accounts, this handsome picture-book biography tells her story in the first person about growing up American Indian on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century. Born in the Hidatsa tribe in Like-a-Fishhook Village, she is raised by loving grandparents and aunts after the devastating smallpox epidemic, brought by the whites, kills her parents. Despite the losses and hardships, which include brutal winter blizzards, she remembers a blissful childhood. Along with archival, sepia-tone photos, Nelson's moving pencil drawings and acrylic paintings show the girl and her community throughout the year: the women and girls harvesting, cooking, dressing up; the men hunting. Her grandmother teaches her to use a buffalo shoulder blade like a shovel. She loves the wonderful new luxuries the white traders bring, including kettles, sugar, and guns. But then comes the buffalo hunting for trade, the hides in piles like mountains. The personal focus is bound to spark discussion, and many readers will want to go on to the very lengthy informative notes.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2010 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Blending archival material with original prose and artwork, Nelson (Black Elk's Vision: A Lakota Story) crafts a first-person biography of Waheenee-wea (Buffalo Bird Woman), a member of the Hidatsa tribe that flourished near the Missouri River on the Great Plains. Photographs of the Hidatsa people tending to crops, preparing food, and dressed in traditional attire bring their daily activities and traditions into vivid relief. Nelson's acrylic paintings and b&w pencil drawings are intriguingly interlaced with the photographs, contrasting Native American figures in blunt profile with harvest colors and background textures that mimic dried spears of grass, leather skins, and basket weaves. Quotations from Buffalo Bird Woman's writings (which she recorded in collaboration with an anthropologist in 1906) appear throughout, including a lament over the loss of land and customs after her people were relocated to a reservation: "I am an old woman now. The buffaloes and black-tail deer are gone, and our Indian ways are almost gone. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I ever lived them." A memorable account of perseverance. Ages 6-10. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved."

Additional Information
Subjects Waheenee, -- 1839?-1932 -- Juvenile literature.
Waheenee, -- 1839?-1932
Hidatsa women -- Biography -- Juvenile literature.
Women -- Biography -- Juvenile literature.
Blind women -- Biography -- Juvenile literature.
Hidatsa Indians -- Social life and customs -- Juvenile literature.
Hidatsa Indians -- Biography.
Women -- Biography.
Blind women.
Hidatsa Indians -- Social life and customs.
Publisher New York :Abrams Books for Young Readers,2012
Language English
Notes Maps on endpapers.
Description 47 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 26 cm
Bibliography Notes Includes bibliographical references (page 46) and index.
ISBN 9781419703553
1419703552
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