Shin-chi's Canoe

by Nicola Campbell, Kim Lafave (Illustrator)

Overview

Winner of the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award and finalist for the Governor General's Award: Children's Illustration

This moving sequel to the award-winning Shi-shi-etko tells the story of two children's experience at residential school. Shi-shi-etko is about to return for her second year, but this time her six-year-old brother, Shin-chi, is going, too.

As they begin their journey in the back of a cattle truck, Shi-shi-etko tells her brother all the things he must remember: the trees, the mountains, the rivers and the salmon. Shin-chi knows he won't see his family again until the sockeye salmon return in the summertime. When they arrive at school, Shi-shi-etko gives him a tiny cedar canoe, a gift from their father.

The children's time is filled with going to mass, school for half the day, and work the other half. The girls cook, clean and sew, while the boys work in the fields, in the woodshop and at the forge. Shin-chi is forever hungry and lonely, but, finally, the salmon swim up the river and the children return home for a joyful family reunion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780888998576
Publisher:	Groundwood Books
Publication date:	08/01/2008
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	218,994
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

NICOLA I. CAMPBELL is Interior Salish and Metis, and she grew up in British Columbia's Nicola Valley. She is the author of Shi-shi-etko (Aboriginal Children's Book of the Year) and Shin-chi's Canoe (TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, Governor General's Award Finalist for Illustration, USBBY Outstanding International Books), both illustrated by Kim LaFave. Nicola lives in Vancouver.

KIM LAFAVE has won the Governor General's Award, the Ruth Schwartz Children's Book Award and the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award for his illustrations in Amos’s Sweater by Janet Lunn. He illustrated Shin-chi's Canoe by Nicola I. Campbell, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award. He lives in Roberts Creek, B.C.

Editorial Reviews

This book is an important addition to this literature with its intertwining of historical fact with an engaging narrative and evocative illustrations.

CM Magazine

LaFave's digitally colored pencil sketches contrast the austerity of boarding-school life with the natural beauty of the children's home.

Book Links

Kim LaFave's illustrations for this book are...bold and beautiful...an evocative accompaniment to a powerful text.

Globe and Mail

Gr 2-5

This realistic, tender story recounts the experiences of Native siblings sent to a government-mandated, church-run boarding school such as those that were common in Canada and the United States from the late 1800s until the 1970s. Hauled away with the other reservation children in a cattle truck, six-year-old Shin-chi and his older sister, Shi-shi-etko, try to memorize life at home from the "trees, mountains, and river below." Shin-chi clutches a tiny carved canoe, a forbidden memento homemade by her father. During the school year (until the sockeye salmon return), Shin-chi and Shi-shi-etko are not allowed to speak to one another and must endure the cruel treatment and restrictions forced upon Native children as they work and go to mass and to school. Hungry and lonely, young Shin-chi tries desperately to hold on to his Native traditions, sneaking out to sing his grandfather's prayer song and release his canoe in the river. LaFave's striking yet soft digital illustrations are appropriately somber and deftly capture the mood with subtle earth tones on each page. An author's introduction details the practice of sending Native children to residential schools. An accessible and important contribution to Native literature.-Madeline J. Bryant, Los Angeles Public Library

School Library Journal

Shi-shi-etko (of the 2006 eponymous title) is returning for a second year to one of the Indian residential schools that the Native children of Canada were once required to attend. This year, her six-year-old brother, Shin-chi, will accompany her. They are loaded into a cattle truck with many others (most of whom look to be adults), and Shin-chi is encouraged to take special note of the natural elements that must sustain his spirit until his summer return: fish, trees, mountains, waters. The children's school days are full of regulation and restriction, but Shin-chi takes comfort in the river and in the palm-sized cedar canoe Shi-shi-etko has given him as a sort of talisman. LaFave's digitally manipulated art has a film-like quality that softens his stylized, anonymous figures. Home and nature scenes are tinted blue and gold, but a palette of institutional colors is used for the school-set pages, where the children's jackets-hers red, his blue-set them apart, Schindler's List-like, from the dun masses. This gentle look at the residential school program concludes with the children's reassuring return to their loving family. (Picture book. 6-10)

Kirkus Reviews