by Ann Clark
Illustrations/Photography by: Andrew Standing Soldier
This is not your typical modern early reader book. No, this was written specifically for the children of the Sioux nation, and is bilingual, with the English text on one side of the page and the Dakota text on the other. It was released by what was then called the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, as part of a series of what was termed “Indian life readers.” The Grass Mountain Mouse tells the story of a young female mouse—who somehow combines characteristics of both a realistic field mouse and a realistic 20th-century Sioux—who lives a dutiful life until she goes to the rodeo. After that…all bets are off! Now she wants to be a rodeo cowboy! The story is by Ann Clark, who started writing children’s books while working as a teacher in a one-room New Mexico schoolhouse; eventually, she wrote 40 books, 31 of them about Native culture, and won both the Newberry Medal and the a Caldecott Honor Book Award. The book is filled with drawings by Ogalala Sioux artist Andrew Standing Soldier, who grew up and learned to draw on the Pine Ridge reservation and who illustrated a number of other children’s books for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and at least one other book with Clark. The Grass Mountain Mouse has been re-released several times, once by the B.I.A., once by a Lakota publisher, and recently by a print-on-demand publisher. This copy, though, is one of the 1943 originals.

Published in 1943 by Education Division, U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Lawrence, Kansas
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very good
Comments: No ISBN. Instead there is a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN): 94197779. Library of Congress notes in the catalog entry: "In English and Dakota. Cover title. (I.e., no title page.) Series: Indian life readers. Sioux series."

Seller Inventory #: 0000169