This is a valuable and necessary addition to the children's historical fiction canon.
Prairie Lotus, along with Birchbark House, ensures that readers will not fall prey to the danger of a single story, as famously described by Chimamanda Adichie in her viral TED Talk. LH fans will find homages to the Ingalls within the pages, and even a character modeled after the famous Nellie Olsen :) In her thoughtful author's note, Park explains that she wrote the book "as an attempt at a painful reconciliation." She loved the Little House books so much that "fifty years later I still know countless phrases and passages by heart." But like all LH fans, she recognizes and acknowledges the issues of racism and colonialism in the text and set out to write another version of a homesteading family. Hanna is subjected to ridicule and racism, but finds solace and solidarity with other girls and women in town who eventually stand up for her.
Hanna's Chinese immigrant mother has died, and she and her white father are looking to start over by running a dry goods store in a small prairie town. Linda Sue Park has done those of us who grew up loving the Little House books a solid by writing this meticulously realized story of Hanna, a half Chinese girl who works as a dressmaker in her father's shop in Dakota Territory.
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