A great book about determination and succeeding at your goal. It touches on some of the abuse that happened at the boarding schools. ( )

Strongly based on a true story, so I'm not sure how to categorize it. Very well done. ( )

"Utterly compelling. The authors of Fatty Legs (2010) distill that moving memoir of an Inuit child’s residential school experience into an even more powerful picture book.

“Brave, clever, and as unyielding” as the sharpening stone for which she’s named, Olemaun convinces her father to send her from their far-north village to the “outsiders’ school.” There, the 8-year-old receives particularly vicious treatment from one of the nuns, who cuts her hair, assigns her endless chores, locks her in a dark basement and gives her ugly red socks that make her the object of other children’s taunts. In her first-person narration, she compares the nun to the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, a story she has heard from her sister and longs to read for herself, subtly reminding readers of the power of literature to help face real life. Grimard portrays this black-cloaked nun with a scowl and a hooked nose, the image of a witch. Her paintings stretch across the gutter and sometimes fill the spreads. Varying perspectives and angles, she brings readers into this unfamiliar world. Opening with a spread showing the child’s home in a vast, frozen landscape, she proceeds to hone in on the painful school details. A final spread shows the w, triumphant child and her book: “[N]ow I could read.”

Utterly compelling. (Picture book/memoir. 5-9)" A Kirkus Starred Review, www.kirkusreviews.com

I really liked this book for two reasons. I liked that it was in first person point of view and that it was Margaret/Olemaun telling the story. This helped to be able to see the struggles that Margaret went through to get to school and the challenges that Margaret faced when she was at school. It felt as through you were with Margaret when she was humiliated and punished by the nun and could feel the same emotions that Margaret was going through. The second reason that I liked this book was because of the characters. Combining both the text and the illustration helped to create the characters that were portrayed throughout the story. You could see the old, mean nun who mistreated Margaret and it made it so that she was a believable character in the story. Margaret’s determination with reading and the hurdles of humiliation and no one helping her learn to read made her story believable. The message of this book is to never give up even if someone is trying to stop you, if you put your mind to it you can reach your goal. ( )

Adapted from the memoir Fatty Legs by Canadian-Inuit Margaret Podiak-Fenton, this poignant story focuses on the cruel, humiliating treatment she suffered in an Indian Residential School. ( )