Rez Dogs by Joseph Bruchac

Summary from Goodreads:

From the U.S.'s foremost indigenous children's author comes a middle grade verse novel set during the COVID-19 pandemic, about a Wabanaki girl's quarantine on her grandparents' reservation and the local dog that becomes her best friend

Malian was visiting her grandparents on the reservation when the COVID-19 pandemic started. Now she's staying there, away from her parents and her school in Boston. Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but on the reservation, everyone protects each other, from Malian caring for her grandparents to the local dog, Malsum, guarding their house. They always survive together.

Malian hears stories from her grandparents about how it has always been this way in their community: Stories about their ancestors, who survived epidemics of European diseases; about her grandfather, who survived a terrible government boarding school; and about Malian's own mother, who survived and returned to her Native community after social services took her away to live in foster care as a child. With their community and caring for one another, Malian and her family will survive this pandemic, too.

Review:

I wrote on Goodreads: This book was a brief, but beautiful. It's a little window into the life of a kid on a reservation during the pandemic. It's also an ode to dogs and stories. It's written in verse, so it moves quickly. It's truthful and doesn't sugarcoat racism or Covid, like some of the other "current" books today do. I loved it. We need more honest books like this. But, also, it's just full of beautiful stories.

I’m not really sure what I was expecting this book to be. Maybe more dog story, less real world in the now. But, I got a little bit of both. And I feel a little bit of a hypocrite because I literally just told someone a couple days ago that reading for me, these past few months has been my escape from the “now.” But, sometimes reading stories in the “now” are good too. And there are not a lot of kids books that do it. Most current Middle Grade books pretend the pandemic never happened or that it’s over now….and there’s something so refreshing about how honest this book is. Kids don’t need to be lied to. This author gets that. The teacher in the novel got that. And the grandparents in the story definitely got that too.

How can we lie about something so big? And Bruchac’s answer: we can’t. But, he tells his truth with such power and wisdom. There were stories about dogs wearing clothing mixed with the fear we all had at some point being around someone coughing. It’s the magical kid befriending a dog story mixed with the reality of the pandemic that is still going on, mixed also with stories of racism and the history of Mailan’s family.

I found this book to be special. It resonated with me in a way I wasn’t expecting it to. I sat on my sofa, next to my dog, reading about the connection humans have always had to dogs. But, also just loving this main character and how much compassion she had for her family. I think this is something that can be read in the classroom years, decades even from now, when hopefully this pandemic will be in the rearview mirror and this moment in time can be someone else’s history lesson. I give this a 10/10.