Driving Hawk The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood (review)

As the daughter of the Episcopal priest on their South Dakota reservation, Virginia is resigned to her family's custom of putting the needs of congregation members before their own. She's badly in need of a new winter coat, but when the mission boxes of donations arrive, she's not really surprised when the "shimmering gray fur with a satiny silver lining" in her exact size goes to Evelyn, a decidedly unamiable classmate, instead. Evelyn's lovely rabbit-skin coat gets wet on the way to school and begins to smell; Evelyn's mother sends it back as unsuitable, and now Virginia is forced to give up even her own second-choice cloth coat from the donation box. But her sacrifice, however reluctant, is apparently rewarded when another box arrives that contains the hooded red coat Virginia wanted all along ("Sometimes the congregations in the East send boxes especially for the priest and his family. They ask what the family needs the most and then they try to send those items"). Beier's somewhat bland watercolors capably interpret the action, but young listeners may certainly wonder why this entire congregation is in need of charity and why nobody seems to have paid attention to the needs of the Driving Hawk family in the past. No historical note is provided to address the implied poverty on the Rosebud reservation in the 1940s, or to explain whether the Christian Christmas rituals depicted here were prevalent across the reservation. Nevertheless, amid seasonal titles that emphasize the virtue of giving, it's refreshing to find a story that challenges listeners to imagine charity from the recipient's point of view.