Kateri Tekakwitha: Mohawk Maiden
Recommended. Age: 10+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Kateri chooses Christ when it costs her home, her standing and her safety, and she keeps choosing Him until she dies at twenty-four. That is a strong picture of conscience and purity for a child. The reservation is the 1958 vocabulary. A reader reports words like 'savages' used again and again for her own people. Name that as wrong.
For parents
Read aloud from 8, independent reading from 10. Kolbe uses it in grades 5 and 7, and Seton in grade 8. Ask what Kateri gave up to be baptized and whether she was right. Say plainly that the book's old words for Native people are not how we speak of anyone made in God's image.