Evangeline Parsons-Yazzie

This moving picture book tells the story of Dzání Yázhí Naazbaa', or Little Woman Warrior Who Came Home, a young Navajo girl who, in the 1860s, is among those captured by U.S. soldiers and forced on a 300-mile march to Fort Sumner. Despite its frank portrayal of the brutality of the soldiers, who shot anyone - the elderly, pregnant women - who couldn't keep up, Yazzie's narrative is more of a tribute to the resilience and courage of the people who endured the "Navajo Long Walk," and the subsequent four years in exile.

Awarded the 2007 Lacapa Honor Prize for Narrative, this bilingual picture book, presented in both Navajo and English, is cited by Oyate's Beverly Slapin as being a necessary "antidote" to other children's books on this topic, from Scott O'Dell's Sing Down the Moon to Ann Turner's The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, A Navajo Girl, New Mexico, 1864. Not having read either of these titles, I am unable to comment upon them, but an examination of the Wikipedia entry for the Navajo Long Walk, in which the death toll is listed as 200, when the actual total is believed to be more like 3,000, is convincing evidence that it isn't just children who need this "antidote."… (mere)