Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Title: Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by one of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII Author: Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila Publication Info: Paperback: Dutton Caliber, 2011, 296 pages. Original hardcover, 2011, Berkley Source: Purchased at the Grand Canyon! Publisher's Blurb: Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty-nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them. [Note: this was true as off 2011]. In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Mar...

Title: Two Roads Author: Joseph Bruchac Publication Info: 2018 Dial Books. 320 pages  Source: Library digital resources   Publisher’s Blurb: It's 1932, and twelve-year-old Cal Black and his Pop have been riding the rails for years after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Cal likes being a knight of the road with Pop, even if they're broke. But then Pop has to go to Washington, DC--some of his fellow veterans are marching for their government checks, and Pop wants to make sure he gets his due--and Cal can't go with him. So Pop tells Cal something he never knew before: Pop is actually a Creek Indian, which means Cal is too. And Pop has decided to send Cal to a government boarding school for Native Americans in Oklahoma called the Challagi School. At school, the other Creek boys quickly take Cal under their wings. Even in the harsh, miserable conditions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, he begins to learn about his people's history and he...

Title: Talking Leaves Author: Joseph Bruchac. Read by the author Publication Info: 2016, Random House Audio. Original 2016 by Dial Books, 256 pages Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Thirteen-year-old Uwohali has not seen his father, Sequoyah, for many years. So when Sequoyah returns to the village, Uwohali is eager to reconnect. But Sequoyah’s new obsession with making strange markings causes friends and neighbors in their tribe to wonder whether he is crazy, or worse—practicing witchcraft. What they don’t know, and what Uwohali discovers, is that Sequoyah is a genius and his strange markings are actually an alphabet representing the sounds of the Cherokee language.  The story of one of the most important figures in Native American history is brought to life for middle grade readers. 
 My Review:   This is both a story of a boy coming of age and learning to understand his father, and a story of something very important in Native American history...