Stealing Little Moon

Starred review from June 1, 2024
Grades 4-7 *Starred Review* Jones' (Ponca Nation) powerful and honest memoir describes the three generations of his family that attended the Chilocco Indian Boarding school in Oklahoma. His memoir begins as he recounts an Indian agent forcibly taking away his grandmother, Elizabeth, to an American Indian school in 1884, when she was four. He reports the physical and sexual abuse that occurred at these institutions in an attempt to ""assimilate"" the youth into white society. While Chilocco prohibited physical abuse, students endured being forced to march everywhere and do hard labor. Despite this, Jones says many of his relatives who attended Chilocco excelled, and his mother even thrived, though at the cost of losing her Ponca identity. Although Jones never attended Chilocco himself, he was working there when the school closed in 1985. Readers will understand how the attempted erasure of Native American culture through Indian Boarding Schools impacted generations of family members. More than a family history, this book explains Native American history and Indigenous peoples' fight for equality. Poet Denise K. Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) provides a foreword. Historical black-and-white photographs (some not seen), a bibliography, acknowledgements (not seen), and author biography add to the richness of the text. A timely, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful memoir that powerfully illustrates the resilience and enduring spirit of the Native American people.

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August 15, 2024
Relays the heart-wrenching experiences of the American Indian boarding school era. This comprehensive and complex text by Jones (Ponca) follows four generations of his family's education at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, starting with the experience of his grandmother. In 1885, when she was just 4, government officials stole her from her family and drove her a great distance away by wagon for boarding school. Ponca Tribe members had already been forcibly relocated from their Nebraska homelands by the U.S. government to Oklahoma. Jones explains how the boarding schools erased Native culture from students' lives to assimilate them into dominant white society. He details the cultural genocide and displacement of Native peoples, describing the poverty and other lingering effects through subsequent generations. Throughout the text, which combines general historical background with his family's story, readers learn about the abuse of and systematic attacks on American Indian people over the century that the boarding schools were in existence. The density of the information included requires some patience from readers, but Jones also offers hope, describing the revitalization of Native culture and people's ability to live in two worlds despite the U.S. government's history of legal restraints on sovereign Native nations. Text boxes provide extensive context, but their placement can distract from the flow of the narrative. Jones' truth-telling and the family experiences he weaves throughout will surely ignite a fire deep within the souls of Native youth today. Presents harsh realities and thought-provoking content critical to understanding U.S. history. (bibliography, photo credits)(Nonfiction. 9-14)

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Starred review from August 19, 2024
In 1885, armed federal agents stormed the Ponca reservation. Though panicked parents tried to hide their children, four-year-old Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight was one of several Native youths taken from their families. The children were transported hundreds of miles to the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma; there, they were cut off from their culture, and many given new, “American” names. Via urgent, intimate-feeling first-person prose, Jones (Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters), Little Moon’s grandson, chronicles the history of Chilocco from its opening in 1884 to its closure in 1980. Through extensive research and interviews with key figures, the author details the goal of North American residential schools (“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man”), their strict rules, and the inhumane and traumatic conditions under which the children lived. Quotes and stories from Chilocco survivors—as well as relevant personal experiences from his childhood that Jones threads throughout—unravel heartbreaking situations and further deepen the text’s visceral and empathetic depiction of this horrific chapter in U.S. history. Ages 8–12.

Starred review from September 20, 2024

Gr 4-6-The Jones family was present through the entire existence of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, from the 1885 opening to its 1985 closing. Covering four generations of a Native Ponca Nation family, memories and accounts are recited from the family's painful boarding school legacy. Each generation had to adjust to its new life of rules, punishments, and loneliness, taken miles away from their homes. Over the course of the century, what was permissible in standards for this schooling had changed for the better with efforts led by Native advocates. With content and themes of assault and colonial violence, Jones respectfully portrays the lived and intense experience inflicted on his and so many other Native families. Embedded through the chapters are short snapshots of a mentioned key event or person, giving larger context and details. Black-and-white photographs provide a visual element, from Tribal Leaders and Heroes to Chilocco's campus over the years. With this book, readers will enhance their critical thinking skills, reflect on systemic mistreatment, develop diverse discussions, and appreciate the power of culture and family. VERDICT Detailed with emotional sympathy inherent in the retelling from a family's lineage, this narrative nonfiction title pays homage and remembrance to those harmed and intended to be forgotten.-Kaitlin Srader

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2024
Jones straightforwardly chronicles the story of his family's (members of the Ponca Nation) experience in the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, one of many residential boarding schools established in the nineteenth century by the U.S. and Canadian governments to strip Indigenous children of their culture. In 1885, when she was four years old, Jones's grandmother Elizabeth (her Ponca name translates to Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight) is forcibly taken from her home and brought to the White Eagle School; a year later school officials transfer Elizabeth to another school, Chilocco, without her family's knowledge. After graduating, Elizabeth works as a matron at the school; the author provides a poignant account of the changes her family observes in her when she finally returns home. Her daughter and granddaughter attend Chilocco -- by choice, unlike Elizabeth -- and although the author does not attend Chilocco as a student, he does maintenance work at the school before it closes in 1980. Jones deftly mixes his family history with larger Indigenous history. The varied perspectives through the years add nuance, while the book acknowledges the atrocities of the American Indian boarding schools throughout. Middle-grade and middle-school readers will gain a deeper insight into Indigenous history through this family account. An extensive bibliography is appended. Nicholl Denice Montgomery

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2024
Jones straightforwardly chronicles the story of his family's (members of the Ponca Nation) experience in the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, one of many residential boarding schools established in the nineteenth century by the U.S. and Canadian governments to strip Indigenous children of their culture. In 1885, when she was four years old, Jones's grandmother Elizabeth (her Ponca name translates to Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight) is forcibly taken from her home and brought to the White Eagle School; a year later school officials transfer Elizabeth to another school, Chilocco, without her family's knowledge. After graduating, Elizabeth works as a matron at the school; the author provides a poignant account of the changes her family observes in her when she finally returns home. Her daughter and granddaughter attend Chilocco -- by choice, unlike Elizabeth -- and although the author does not attend Chilocco as a student, he does maintenance work at the school before it closes in 1980. Jones deftly mixes his family history with larger Indigenous history. The varied perspectives through the years add nuance, while the book acknowledges the atrocities of the American Indian boarding schools throughout. Middle-grade and middle-school readers will gain a deeper insight into Indigenous history through this family account. An extensive bibliography is appended.

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)