Shaw, Janet Beeler. Meet Kaya. Middleton, Wisconsin: American Girl Publishing, 2002. 80 pages. (Historical Fiction)
The main character is Kaya. This story takes place in the Nimiipuu tribe of Salmon River Country in 1764. The problem Kaya faces is she boasted about her horse, Steps High, being fast and then she raced against Raven and Fox Tail. While racing, she was in the lead, when suddenly, Steps High, head down and hooves high, started to buck! Uh-oh!! Kaya bit her tongue and tasted blood. Raven spun around and grabbed Steps High’s reins and pulled her to a stand still. Then Kaya slid off; her legs were jiggly from fear. When Kaya was walking her horse to cool down, she remembered she’d told Speaking Rain, a blind girl who lived with Kaya’s family and was a sister to her, to watch the twins! Wing Feather and Sparrow, Kaya’s twin brothers, who are four winters old, are VERY mischievous. So, Kaya and Speaking Rain searched for them and found them in a tree. Then, ALL the children had to get a switching for Kaya’s selfish act. The switching was done by Whip Woman, from her name you can tell what a switching is, and how bad it was for the children. They had to lie on their stomachs and pull their dresses up if they were girls, and the boys had to pull their pant legs up and they got them on the back of their legs, only one switching per child. The book didn’t tell how old they had to be to get one. Anyway, Kaya’s main problem (all this leads up to the main problem) was that all the children started calling her “Magpie”, a selfish bird. At first, the name “Magpie” stung Kaya like a hornet, then she went along with it, but in the book it said: “Every time Kaya heard that name it reminded her she’d done something bad.” Kaya and her family were heading back up the mountain and her grandmother, Aalah, left her knife over by the river, so she sent Kaya and Speaking Rain to look for it. Kaya let Speaking Rain slip off Steps High, so they could continue searching and split up. Then, the land under Speaking Rain gave way! To know the ending, read the book.
I would definitely recommend this book because it’s adventurous, dramatic and it gives a sneak peak into the time Kaya lived in, gives definitions for some Indian words, and another sneak peak to the next book in the Kaya series: Kaya’s Escape.
Reviewed by: TinkerBell14
