We Still Belong
by Christine Day
Middle School    Heartdrum/HarperCollins    256 pp.
8/23    9780063064560    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780063064584    $10.99

Twelve-year-old Wesley Wilder is excited to have her poem, “We Still Belong: An Indigenous People’s Day Poem!” published in the school paper. When the time comes, she’s unprepared for some of the reactions she receives, for better or worse. The story takes place during one day—Indigenous People’s Day—with well-timed extended flashbacks and first-person rumination rounding out the characters, setting (Everett, Washington), and main narrative. Wesley lives with her single mother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, and baby cousin; her matrilineal tribal affiliation is Upper Skagit, though she does not qualify for enrollment. She has a supportive best friend, Hanan, and wants to ask a cute fellow gamer to the school dance. Readers learn these details organically as the day unfolds; it’s an effective, relaxed way for Day (The Sea in Winter, rev. 3/21) to convey information and endear readers to her protagonist. As Hanan says, when Wesley’s poem is discounted by a teacher for not having a “clear thesis statement”: “You are enough…You always have been. You have nothing to prove…You’re a gamer and a poet and a good friend. You’re kind and funny and nerdy and weird.” This is a story of quiet determination and triumph, with well-defined characters who push each other and are there for each other, and which culminates in sweet heart-to-heart conversations at a powwow in a high-school gym. An appended author’s note provides further detail about the story’s setting, tribal citizenship (Day is a tribal citizen of the Upper Skagit Tribe), and names and naming.

From the July/August 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.