Jingle Dancer

Description

Brown Sugar & Spice values first-person accounts and authenticity – letting people of color tell their own story.
This author is a mixed-blood member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Brief Description:
Jenna a member of the Muscogee or Creek Nation borrows jingles from the dresses of several friends and relatives so that she can perform the jingle dance at the powwow. Includes a note about the jingle dance tradition and its regalia.

Jacket Description/Back:
Tink tink tink tink sang cone-shaped jingles sewn to Grandma Wolfe’s dress.
Jenna’s heart beats to the brum brum brum brum of the powwow drum as she daydreams about the clinking song of her grandma’s jingle dancing.
Jenna loves the tradition of jingle dancing that has been shared by generations of women in her family and she hopes to dance at the next powwow. But she has a problem–how will her dress sing if it has no jingles? The warm evocative watercolors of Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu complement author Cynthia Leitich Smith’s lyrical text as she tells the affirming story of how a contemporary Native American girl turns to her family and community to help her dance find a voice.
32 pages
Reading level: 3.7