This is a slim (112-pages total, so about 65 printed pages) non-fiction book that's perfect for a middle grade audience and builds on Joseph Bruchac's better known book, Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two. (See my WWII Code Talker unit for several lesson plans.) It expands our history to include the Sioux and the 32 other tribes who also served in WWII.
What I loved about this volume is it starts pre-WWII, with Sioux history in the Plains in the 1800s. It examines, although briefly, the question in a lot of readers' minds: why would Sioux enlist in the US armed forces after the way they were treated by the US government? Why fight for a government that had treated them so badly? The answer is complicated, like a lot of life is.
But it's an important question and follows through their exploits in the Pacific theater, using as many actual dispatches as possible to capture their actual words to each other. By the end of WWII, several Sioux warriors receive their Eagle Feathers.
Teaching Note
The book features an awesome Teaching Guide in the back.
Although it's printed, activities and questions are correlated to Common Core standards for 6-8th grades, and include:
- Identification of big idea themes
- Pre-reading activities
- Seven (7) background building exercises
- While reading activities
- A chapter-by-chapter vocabulary list (I love these!)
- A full lesson plan (!!!!!! Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!) for "Authors Play with Words"
- And post-reading activities.
I love this as a teaching / classroom bookshelf resource!
And there are additional resources for teachers on the author's webpage.
