The Barren Grounds

Starred review from June 15, 2020
Two uprooted Cree children find themselves in a dreamlike adventure in this series opener. The edginess 13-year-old Morgan feels runs deep. As a First Nations kid whose whole life has been lived in one white foster home after another, she feels little reason to get excited about anything. Two months in to her new foster home placement, she inherits a new foster brother, Eli, a young Cree boy who spends his time quietly drawing in his sketchbook. After a blowup with their earnestly well-intentioned white foster parents, Morgan and Eli shelter themselves in the attic, where a drawing in his pad seems to come to life, creating a portal into the wintry Barren Grounds of Misewa, where the passage of time is, Narnia-like, different from in Winnipeg. After Eli disappears into this world, Morgan is determined to go after him to bring him back. When she finds him, they discover that the Misewa community of animal beings needs their help to survive the White Time. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) carefully establishes Morgan's anger and feelings of alienation, her resentment at their foster parents' clumsy attempts to connect her to her culture culminating when they awkwardly present a gift of moccasins. The shift into a contemporary Indigenous fantasy is seamless; it is in this world that these foster siblings discover hope and meaning that sustain them when they return to Winnipeg. This middle-grade fantasy deftly and compellingly centers Indigenous culture. (Fantasy. 10-14)

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October 5, 2020
Robertson, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation, winks at C.S. Lewis’s Narnia tales in this Indigenous fantasy series starter, centering two Cree foster children in Winnipeg. Avid fantasy reader Morgan, 13, has been living with well-intentioned but culturally insensitive white couple Katie and James for two months. After being abandoned as a toddler and cycling through seven white foster families, Morgan is frustrated, and she expects no better from this home. Meanwhile, Eli, 12, arrives at Katie and James’s house, escaping his pain by drawing strange creatures in a sketchpad. When Morgan and Eli staple one of Eli’s drawings to the wall of their off-limits attic, they travel to the ever-winter land of Askí, where they meet bipedal animals that wear clothes and speak an English-Cree mix. Indigenous stories are touched on as the children and their new friends, Ochek (“fisher” in Cree) and Arikwachas, a squirrel, set out to make spring return to Askí. While the humans’ and animals’ voices are somewhat homogenous, the treatment of Cree culture resonates, and the engaging characters and folklore ensure readers will look forward to the next installment. Ages 10–up. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists.