Rate this book

Blessing's Bead (2009)

by Debby Dahl Edwardson(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0374308055 (ISBN13: 9780374308056)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

review 1: Okay YA book about natave Alaskan family. Starts out in the early 1900s around the time of the Spanish Influenza which wiped out whole villages about two sisters in a remote part of Alaska. How they become separated when one decides to marry into a tribe from across the Bering Sea. Then the influenza takes the remaining sister's whole family. Then the story shifts to more present day to the great-grandaughter who is reconnecting with here native culture when she is suddenly sent to live with her grandmother. Good story about family ties, cultural heritage. I learned some things I didn't know before.
review 2: A multigenerational story set on an Alaskan island far to the north, above the Arctic Circle. Nutaaq, a young Inupiaq girl, is devastated when her ... moreolder sister marries a Siberian boy, visiting from across the ocean, and leaves, never to be seen again. She gives Nutaaq two precious blue beads, and one of the beads is handed down, through Nutaaq's descendants, eventually found and treasured by a new Nutaaq, the Blessing of the title, who takes it from her grandmother's sewing tin in 1989. The other bead is buried with a baby who has died of the Spanish Influenza, which decimates Nutaaq's village. Most of the story takes place in modern day, as we watch Blessing and her younger brother adjust to life in a rural village, after being taken from Anchorage and their alcoholic mother. Blessing slowly learns to value her heritage and her Inupiaq identity. Lovingly, beautifully written, this is a marvelous story by an Alaskan author who has personal knowledge of her book's culture, having married into it. 5th grade and up. less

Download links for: Blessing's Bead

Advertising