The Beaded Moccasins

June 1, 1998
Gr 5-8-With historical and cultural detail, Durrant tells the story of 12-year-old Mary Campbell's capture and first year of captivity among the Delaware Indians. Based on a real incident, this fictionalized account is entertaining, insightful, and compassionate. Kidnapped in 1759 from her Pennsylvania home, Mary is selected to replace the deceased granddaughter of the chief. Angry, lonely, and frightened, she resists assimilation into the tribe. However, by story's end, she recognizes her Indian family's genuine affection for her, helps with daily chores, and earns the name Woman-Who-Saved-the-Corn for her valiant efforts to salvage the tribe's crops. Throughout her ordeal, Mary weighs the amenities and relationships of her past life against the hardships and isolation of her current existence. The dissatisfaction she once felt for her real family fades as she struggles to understand the values of her tribal family. Mary's quaint, observant narrative reveals a young girl coming of age, discovering her inner strength, and gaining sensitivity to the needs and hopes of others. A glossary of Delaware terms, a list of sources, and an afterword that completes the facts of Campbell's true story are included. Readers will find Mary an appealing, courageous, perceptive character. Language-arts and social-studies teachers can integrate the girl's experiences into discussions of multicultural awareness, family values, and colonial-Indian conflicts.-Gerry Larson, Durham Magnet Center, Durham, NC

March 15, 1998
Gr. 5^-9. In this strong fictionalization, Durrant tells the story of 12-year-old Mary Campbell, who was kidnapped by the Delaware Indians from her family farm in Pennsylvania in 1759. She was to replace the dead granddaughter of the Delaware leader. Mary's first-person, present-tense narrative will hold readers fast: the terror of her capture, the physicalness of the arduous winter journey across the mountains to Ohio, and the candor about her inner struggle as a captive who begins to feel part of her new family. Few of the Delaware are individualized, except for her adoptive grandfather, but there is no reverential stereotyping. Mary has seen him order the scalping of a baby, but he is gentle with her, and she comes to love and respect him. Nor is there nostalgia for her lost home. Like the girl in Karen Cushman's "Ballad of Lucy Whipple" (1996), Mary has always resented her father for uprooting the family from their town in Connecticut and dragging them on his "westering" adventure. Far away now in a mountain cave, she is ashamed of that anger and bitterness, even while she knows it was not all her fault. She gets too articulate and messagey at the end of the story, but readers will be moved by the psychological truth of her adjustment and her yearning to prove herself and belong. ((Reviewed March 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)