SEASONS OF THE CIRCLE

The prolific chronicler of Indian culture for children tries to distill a complicated set of cultural signals into the great circle of the seasons. In doing so, this package falls victim to its own reductionism and in the end serves up little more value than as an introduction to young children of the different tribes and key moments in their years. “February: Along the surface of a frozen lake Mohawk men and boys play the game of snake.” That’s it for February and the Mohawks. There are other, better books along this line, Bruchac’s and Goetzl’s award-winning Many Nations (1997) among them. The meat of this is in an author’s note, an appendix of tribal names and information, a map, and a chart of moon names. All this material convinces the reader that other stories or nonfiction forms or even the Web site it shills might be more useful—but this outing leaves one considering the addenda, not the text. (Picture book. 5-10)