If You Lived With the Indians of the Northwest Coast (If You Lived)

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Kids Book
Review: This is a very nice book aimed at the 3-6th grade audience. It is written in plain simple language, but not simplistic or condescending "little kid talk."

Using a Question/Answer format (one question per page), it is a very good, reasonably thorough telling of what life was like. It goes beyond "they ate berries and salmon," and asks (and answers) such human-interest questions as "Did they have parties? What was most valuable to them? Were grown-ups strict?"

Not only are these questions good at revealing what life was like for these people, they are the sort of questions kids ask, and thus it draws them into the answers.

It might be a bit too much for the K-2 grades, but 3rd through 6th graders who read this on their own will mostly enjoy it and learn from it. Indeed, I've been doing in-depth reading in this area for years, and I not only enjoyed reading it myself, I actually got a better perspective on some things.

If you have a kid in this age range, and you want them to learn about this generally under-publicized yet fascinating native culture, this is an excellent book.