Not My Girl

by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

Illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard

Annick Press

978-1-554516247

36 pp.

Ages 6-9

January, 2014

Last year, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton's first biographic story, Fatty Legs (Annick, 2010), was successfully transformed into a picture book, When I Was Eight (Annick, 2013), reviewed here on April 28, 2013.  This book started the telling of Margaret's delivery to a residential school and her experiences there.  A subsequent book, A Stranger at Home (Annick, 2011) has Margaret, or rather Olemaun as she is known to her family, returning home.  Not My Girl is the poignantly illustrated version of that second book.

Margaret had been sent from her home on Banks Island, part of the Arctic archipelago, to attend a Catholic residential school in Aklavik, North West Territories, almost 750 km away as the crow flies (though I'm sure Margaret's journey was far more arduous). Two years later she returns to her home.  Not surprising, when her mother sees her daughter, now with shortened hair, wearing clothes and shoes unfamiliar in their community, she shouts out, "Not my girl!" (pg. 3)

Thankfully, a warm welcome from her father, calling her Olemaun again, has her mother and siblings joining in that accepting embrace.  But no matter how much Olemaun wants to fit back into her family, her stomach is unaccepting of their food, the sled dogs don't recognize her scent and she has forgotten her language and the skills she'd learned as a child.  Her disappointment even leads to negligence when she keeps a new pup from his mother, almost causing his death.  But with patience and practice, both mother and daughter find their way back to each other, and the words, "My girl!" (pg. 35) spoken with pride again.

Margaret Pokiak-Fenton dedicates this book as follows:

"For all the children still trying to find their way home.  May you each discover a way to step out from the darkness behind you into the light ahead." (pg. 36)  

She obviously can recall the darkness of the residential school trials and knows of the difficulties associated with going home as a child altered by her experiences.  It is only with the love of her family and the connections with those who were similarly displaced that Olemaun/Margaret was able to find her way home.  While A Stranger at Home indicates that the process of that acceptance was much more complex than illustrated in Not My Girl, the selection of anecdotes here presents a general impression of those struggles without overwhelming younger readers with the horrors and emotional pain that were inevitable.  Gabrielle Grimard's multi-faceted illustrations display that same complexity of spirit, using pencil, gouache, watercolour and even oil paint. There are subtle details in watercolour, the brights of gouache and the depth of oil.  But it's Gabrielle Grimard's drawings of people that convey the breadth of emotions with just the simplest of strokes.  The sorrow and disappointment that must have been part of Olemaun/Margaret's homecoming are evident in the eyes, the turned cheek, the frowning lips.  But just as striking are the brilliant dance of the northern lights and the snow-flying dog-sledding.

Take Not My Girl as a biographic telling of a dark history for Olemaun/Margaret and so many Aboriginal People but experience the lesson of how a little girl and her family were able to turn to the light eventually and together.  The hope for that light is in the words and the illustrations of Not My Girl, and not to be missed.

When I Was Eight

by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

Illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard

Annick Press

978-1-55451-490-8

32 pp.

Ages 6-9

February, 2013

The retelling of a story in a different format rarely amounts to anything distinctive.  Whether in graphic format or picture book or movie, many stories are just abridged versions or subsets of the original or greater work.  When I Was Eight is that one story that is not only distinctive, it is exceptional. 

A picture book version of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton's true story of her experiences at residential school, originally told in Fatty Legs (Annick, 2010), When I Was Eight is an even more powerful read due to its emphasis on concise, affective text coupled with Gabrielle Grimard's quietly unpretentious artwork.

Regardless of her father's reluctance to deliver her to the residential school, Olemaun's desire to read convinces him of the value of sending her away for additional schooling.  There Olemaun is converted outwardly into Margaret, the girl with short hair who wears the required tunics and wool stockings and labours at her cleaning chores.  But by making it clear that she believes she should be learning to read, Margaret incurs the wrath of one mean-spirited nun whose desire to humiliate and scare the young girl both torments and challenges her. 

The stories of the residential schools are involved and harrowing, and Margaret's tale is not any different.  What is unique is her passionate desire to learn to read which consequently points her towards the school.  In fact, she learns to read in spite of the schooling and treatment she endures there.  Without her strong character and sense of justice, Margaret may have taken nothing from the residential school experience except abuse and loss of self.  Instead, Olemaun keeps with her the valuable learning both pre- and post-schooling, and uses it to help her reconfigure herself so that she is less a stranger at home than many other children from the school.  While her return to Banks Island as an awkward local is addressed in A Stranger at Home (Annick, 2011), the sequel to Fatty Legs and When I Was Eight, Oleamun/Margaret's struggle and ability to manage her own life has her returning to her homeland as a reader, fulfilling her foremost desire.