Book Review: Small Wolf

Small Wolf, by Nathaniel Benchley, is both children’s literature and historical fiction. The story is about a first contact between Native Americans and Europeans on the island of Manhattan. The story does not go far enough in detail to describe the harm to Native Americans caused by immigrants. An e-audiobook version of this story on Hoopla was used for this review. Therefore, this review cannot comment on illustrations if they exist in the original print version of this book.

In the story, a Native American boy named Small Wolf, goes on a hunting trip and sees whites with ships and strange new animals for the first time. He returns home to tell his father. Small Wolf’s father speaks to a white man, who says that some Native Americans sold them the land. According to Small Wolf’s father they had no right to do so. The story’s dialogue demonstrates that Native Americans do not have the same concept of land as do Europeans. Land is not something that can be privately owned, but used like air we breathe.

The conflict arose when the Europeans’ animals either ate or trampled the Native Americans’ crops. Small Wolf’s father says the whites are ruining the land. Small Wolf and his father attempted to speak to the whites about ruining the land, but whites shoot at them with guns on sight. The story mentions a thud as if a different Native American was shot down by whites. However, the matter of murder and death does not enter the story as easily as the author wanted readers to know that Europeans bought Manhattan from Native Americans. The author, Nathaniel Benchley, treated the conflict over land as a misunderstanding rather than a crime.

In the story, Small Wolf, more whites came and whites took more land away from Native Americans. Small Wolf’s father moves the family numerous times, trying to survive the invasion of immigrants. The story ends by saying that things did not end well for the Native Americans. This is a flagrant understatement of how things turned out for Native Americans.

The author, Nathaniel Benchley, originally published this book, Small Wolf, in 1972. Perhaps, parents sheltered their children from topics such as death and murder. However, in recent times, young children are watching television shows and playing video games where death, dying, violence, and murder are prominent themes. If a young child is mature enough to understand death and murder on television, movies, and video games, they can understand death, murder, stealing, and genocide in history and the present.

Parents have to decide when their child or children are mature enough to discuss or read about death, murder, stealing, and genocide. If parents can teach their child or children not to steal and not to commit violence without provocation, then they can teach children about what really happened to Native Americans. Native Americans suffered irreparable consequences from the invasion of immigrants. Sanitizing human rights crimes from a children’s book such as Small Wolf separates accountability and consequences from the people, who caused the irreparable harm to Native Americans, and from the descendants of immigrants, who have inherited the ill-gotten land and wealth from the genocide of Native Americans. Sanitizing historic narratives creates a worldview where the children of immigrants takes no responsibility to make amends to Native Americans.

Small Wolf by Nathaniel Benchley cannot be a stand-alone juvenile exposure to Native American life and history. This book needs to be augmented by discussions, dialogues, debates, and other juvenile books about Native Americans, immigrants, imperialism, and first contacts. The story, Small Wolf, teaches children that the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land by immigrants were a misunderstanding. No one is at fault. No debt needs to be paid. No one needs to make amends. This worldview is unjust and selfish. The adults, who sanitize the crimes and evils from juvenile literature, do so for their own selfish reasons and guilt, not because children are too immature to handle concepts like stealing, death, dying, injustice, murder, and genocide.

Reference

Benchley, Nathaniel. Small Wolf. E-audiobook. Hoopla. New York: HarperCollins Publishers: 2008.

Links:

Nathaniel Benchley’s biography by HarperCollins Publishers

Small Wolf at HarperCollins Publishers

Talking to Children about Death by Hospicenet.org

The Do’s and Don’ts of Talking with a Child about Death at PsychologyToday.com

BarberShopBooks.org article: Murder in a Children’s Book: Is it a bad thing?

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