My Heart Is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880

In 1880, Nannie Little Rose, a Lakota child, is sent to the government-run boarding school

My Heart is on the Ground caused an outcry when it was published. Scholars found the book to be historically and culturally inaccurate. The book follows Nannie Little Rose as she attends Carlisle, an infamous Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania. Throughout the book, Nannie sees assimilation as the only option for her people and presents her experiences as mostly pleasant. In fact, there was much resistance to assimilation within Carlisle and was a very unpleasant experience for many Native Americans. In addition to not meeting expectations for accuracy, the fiction of this historical fiction leaves much to be desired. Sometimes Nannie's thoughts are infantile, especially when learning about white culture. Her entry on learning about show more the revolution sounds like the ramblings of a small child instead of someone the teachers see as exemplary enough to be given a diary. For this age group, a better selection of Native American historical fiction is The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. show less

I don't remember much of these books as individual books, but I remember reading them all as a young, avid reader. I think that ultimately these books are the reason why I love historical fiction novels so much. They all did such a great job of taking me to a different time and place and making it come alive, seeing the world through an older, historical lens. I highly recommend any of the Dear America books to younger readers who love history and need to get hooked on reading!

This entire series is a wonderful way to learn history or teach it to adolescents. I find today's generations seem to recall more when they learn through other people (pop songs, celebrity gossip, etc.), so what better way to teach history than through someone else's perspective? Yes, "authentic" diaries would be "better", but would the language really hold the modern student's attention? Did the diary writer know what WOULD be important in the context of history? Probably not.

I was impressed with the extent of the historical research that was done prior to the writing of the novel. I was also veyr pleased with the historical accuracy. Although written in diary format, I often became bored while reading the trials and tribulations of Nannie Rose's experiences while at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. I appreciated the photos taken of the Native Americans of the people who were portrayed in the story as well as the historical note. The historical note at the end of the story really put things into perspective and made the story quite real. Overall I enjoyed the book and feel this is a good multi-cultural book for middle school students focusing on the obstacles that the Native Americans faced when show more their land was taken away from them. show less

This is a wonderful book about a Sioux girl who goes to Carlisle Indian school. In this fictional diary, she describes what it's like to live there--showing the way it was like from the student's point of view. Then her friend Pretty Eagle comes to join her, and Little Rose discovers that she goes into trances. And then...well, I can't spoil it!
--Saro

In the diary account of her life at a government-run Pennsylvania boarding school in 1880, a twelve-year-old Sioux Indian girl reveals a great need to find a way to help her people.