Dear Canada: These Are My Words

Violet Pesheens is struggling to adjust to her new life at residential school. She misses her Grandma; she has run-ins with Cree girls; at her "white" school, everyone just stares; and everything she brought has been taken from her, including her name she is now just a number. But worst of all, she is afraid of forgetting the things she treasures most: her Anishnabe language, the names of those she knew before and her traditional customs. A fear of forgetting who she was.

Drawing from her own experiences at residential school, Ruby Slipperjack creates a braveyet heartbreaking heroine in Violet, and lets young readers glimpse into an all-too-important chapter in our nation's history.(From Scholastic Canada)

These Are My Wordsis for readers ages 912.

Ruby Slipperjack is a member of the Eabametoong First Nation. She has written seven novels for middle grade and teen readers. She lives in Thunder Bay, Ont., and recently retired as a professor in the Indigenous Learning Department at Lakehead University. Shewon the 2017Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.

• 48 books by Indigenous writers to read to understand residential schools
• What would children's writer Ruby Slipperjack tell her younger self?
• 44 books to read from Indigenous creators who identify as women and/or two-spirit

From the book