The “Picturing America” BookshelfThe We the People “Picturing America” Bookshelf is the literary complement of NEH’s Picturing America visual arts project. Instead of paint, marble, silver, or glass, words are the media used to portray significant themes in American history and culture. Readers are invited to steer their way across the continent by river with Lewis and Clark in 1802, travel the railroad with Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, or drive along the open highways with John Steinbeck and his dog Charley in 1960. Through the life and poetry of Walt Whitman emerge powerful images of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln; through the life and lens of Dorothea Lange we witness the impersonal forces and human faces of the Depression.
“Picturing America” is the sixth We the People Bookshelf program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will be distributed to 4,000 school (K-12) and public libraries. The National Endowment for the Humanities is proud to offer this program in cooperation with the American Library Association.This year's books include:
The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich
The Captain's Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe by Roland Smith
The Life and Death of Crazy Horse by Russell Freedman
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark TwainComment: In previous years there were
no books about Indians. The only books that included Indians were stereotypical ones such as
Little House on the Prairie. Apparently the NEH finally got the message about inclusiveness.
But what is
Tom Sawyer doing on the list? It isn't great literature, and its portrayal of Injun Joe is stereotypical if not racist. Surely they could've found hundreds of books better than this one.
For more on the subject, see
The Best Indian Books.
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