High Plains Book Award -

Thunderous won the “Children's Middle Grade” category.    https://www.highplainsbookawards.org/ 

Thunderous by M. L. Smoker & Natalie Peeterse; Illustrations by Dale Ray DeForest / Curiosity Books: 96 pages. $16.99

Reviewed by C. Adrian Heidenreich

A High Plains Book Awards finalist in both the Indigenous Writer and Children’s Middle Grade Book categories, this excellent book is a graphic novel about a teenage girl who connects with her Lakota tribal tradition through a visionary dream journey. There is a combination of contemporary and traditional characters and themes. The Native girl is challenged by a trickster Raven and helped by natural and spirit-world allies.

Aiyana is a schoolgirl who makes extensive cell phone use, including viewing traditional stories in on-line posts. Her grandmother doesn’t like the stories put on-line, because although viewed by a million people, there is no personal or social context.

The city in which Aiyana lives is on traditional Lakota land, but not on the Rosebud Reservation (“home”) with the extended family, a place one can rely on for fellowship, meals, and sharing of stories. Aiyana’s young cousin says “we do not have to live on the rez to stay connected.…”

On a school field trip, Aiyana and her classmates travel to Black Elk Peak. The ranger is a Native Lakota, a contemporary role model. Challenged by classmate peer pressure, she climbs a tower to take a selfie. During a thunderstorm, she accidentally falls and is knocked senseless. When she awakes, she is alone in nature, there is no cell phone service to call for help, and she is left to her own strategies.

A trickster in the form of a Raven sends her on a quest to find and give four special offerings to the spider Iktomi, the greatest Lakota trickster. If she does, she will be free to return home, or else be trapped forever with the Raven.

The four offerings are: the coat of a great animal, a backwards point, the stone of the land, and a heart song. It is a “deal” without details, and this reviewer will leave it to the reader to see the four items and their meanings.

The book illustrates how storytelling and personal experience are important. Use of riddles is a traditional approach, a way of thinking and learning useful for youth today. A person must make both clever and wise choices and be open to learning from others.

References to the visionary Black Elk, the trickster Raven, Iktomi the spider, and other characters might stimulate students to pursue more information about Native traditions.

Beautiful, striking illustrations give the story flow and completion. A note on language considerations and a glossary of Lakota words used in the book are valuable.

Adrian Heidenreich, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Native American Studies/Anthropology, Montana State University Billings.