Showing posts with label Crossing Bok Chitto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crossing Bok Chitto. Show all posts

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Posters for your classroom or library


The American Library Association has this poster available at their site. It is the art from the cover of Tim Tingle's outstanding picture book, Crossing Bok Chitto. That art is by Jeanne Rorex Bridges. What is especially cool is that the poster includes the title in the Choctaw language. Awesome! The poster is $16.00, and there are bookmarks, too, for $8.50.

You can order the book from Oyate.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Presentation of American Indian Library Association Youth Lit Award

If you're attending the American Library Association's Annual Conference this summer (June 26-July) in Anaheim, get a ticket for the American Indian Library Association's Youth Literature Award presentation. It'll be on Monday, June 30, 5:30 to 7:00. Tickets are $25.

Accepting awards there will be:

Joseph Medicine Crow, for Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond

Sherman Alexie, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Tim Tingle and Jeanne Rorex Bridge, for Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom

To order tickets, send a check or money order made out to:

Lisa Mitten
32 Stewart Street
New Britain CT 06053

Monday, January 29, 2007


Good News about Tim Tingle's Crossing Bok Chitto

Tim Tingle's Crossing Bok Chitto has been selected for inclusion on the American Library Association's "2007 Notable Books List."

Visit Tim Tingle's website to learn more about his work. He is a Choctaw storyteller. Looking at his webpage, I see he's got a few other books that I will order.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Tim Tingle's CROSSING BOK CHITTO


[Note: This review used by permission of its author, Beverly Slapin. It may not be published elsewhere without written permission of the author.]
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Tingle, Tim (Choctaw), Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom, illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges (Cherokee). Cinco Puntos Press, 2006. Unpaginated, color illustrations; grades 2-5

Crossing Bok Chitto, originally one of the stories in Tingle’s excellent collection, Walking the Choctaw Road, is now a picture book.
In the early 1800s, Mississippi’s Bok Chitto River was a boundary, dividing the home of the sovereign Choctaw Nation from the “Old South” of plantation owners and their human property. Enslaved Black people who were able to get to the Choctaw side of Bok Chitto were free. According to the story, the Choctaws built a stone path just below the muddy surface of Bok Chitto—built it up in times of flooding and built it down in times of drought. It is this unseen stone path, and the generosity of a Choctaw family, that aids an enslaved Black family to cross to freedom. 

When her momma asks Martha Tom to fill her basket with blackberries for an upcoming wedding, the little girl crosses Bok Chitto, loses her way, and encounters the calling together of a Black church secreted in the Mississippi woods. After an enslaved Black father instructs his young son how to move among the white people without being seen—“not too fast, not too slow, eyes to the ground, away you go!”—Little Mo escorts Martha Tom past the plantation house and back to the river, where she shows him how to cross. The relationship between the two children and their respective families deepens, and when trouble comes—“it always does, in stories or in life, trouble comes”—magic is made, and the Black family is empowered to cross to freedom. 

There are two concerns with this otherwise extraordinary story. One is that, in moving the text from a short story to a picture book, the description of the Choctaw was changed from “a sovereign nation of people” to “a nation of Indian people.” “Sovereign” may be one of the most important words in Indian Country, and children old enough to read this book—or have it read to them—need to be taught its meaning. 

There is something else that needs to be considered. For people to be defined by their condition of servitude—“slaves”—is a social construct that holds the institution of slavery in place. Rather, the word “enslaved” places the responsibility for servitude on the owners rather than on the owned, and raises a level of consciousness that the word “slave” does not. 

These issues notwithstanding, Crossing Bok Chitto is an awesome story of survival, generosity, courage, kindness and love; enhanced by Jeanne Rorex Bridges’ luminous acrylic on watercolor board paintings on a subdued palette of mostly browns and greens. In an endnote, Tingle describes how this particular story came to be. Today, Choctaw families—as well as Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole—continue to tell the stories of how they aided the “runaway people of bondage. "

—Beverly Slapin

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

NY Times, Tim Tingle and Marge Bruchac

Children's books by Native authors and illustrators rarely receive attention from mainstream papers like the New York Times. So, it was a surprise and a treat to read this week's article on children's books. The article is about multicultural literature. Three books are featured, two of which are the work of Native people.

Here's the link to the article: "Children's Books".

Take a look. It includes a photograph of Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle. His book is called Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom. I've looked at a copy of the book. My first impression is good. His writing drew me into the story, into its time and place. I'll read it again (just returned from vacation and must prepare for the start of the school year) soon, but if anyone has read it and wants to comment, please do.


Update on Sep 30 2023: I (Debbie Reese) no longer recommend Bruchac's work. For details see Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki? The second book featured is by Marge Bruchac. Her Malian's Song is based on an event that happened in 1759. Bruchac is Abenaki. She is also a historian using her training to write children's books that counter the feel-good story of America. She does precisely that in Malian's Song. Along with the review in the NY Times, you can listen to a Vermont Public Radio commentary about the book or read the transcript here: "Malian's Song".

For more information about Tingle and his books (there is an audio CD available), go to his webpage: "Tim Tingle, Storyteller".