The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

I loved this book. I started it Sunday afternoon and finished it last night. (I worked 13 of those hours so it slowed me down.) It is the kind of book that you want to stand on the street corners and preach about. It needs to be on your future reading shelf. Go buy it. I won't mind if you take a break from reading this to toggle over to your favorite online book seller to do so.

Enough gushing, it's time to get into the meat and potatoes of this book. Arnold Spirit is a young boy that lives on an Indian reservation in Washington State. The deck is stacked against boys like Arnold. Expectations for boys like him are low. Diary lets the reader in to Arnold's truth. He wants to be a comic book illustrator, he's a good basket ball player, and he was born with an abnormal number of teeth. As it moves along Diary becomes laugh out loud funny and lip biting painful. Being 15 isn't easy. Being 15, poor, being the only brown kid in an all white school, and being labeled a traitor by all your old friends makes life almost impossible. Arnold handles it with grace and humor. 

Alexie's writing style is completely accessible to young readers. He knows how to speak to the heart of a disaffected young person. My greatest wish is a book like this gets put in the right hands. I can see buying this book over and over again, giving it to that special young person who is reaching out for it. 

My next book is going to kick off the 2012 Reading Project for March. March's theme is children affected by dictators. Between Shades of Gray talks about a young girl who was deported during Stalin's invasion of Lithuania.  Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is the second selection. I can not wait to do the write ups for these books.