The Education of Little Tree

ANNOTATION

The super-seller memoir of a Cherokee boyhood in the 1930s. The most sensitive and evocative autobiographical account ever of the Cherokee way, as seen through the eyes of a young boy in the Appalachian Mountains.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This story has entranced readers of all ages since it was first published twenty-five years ago. The Education of Little Tree tells of a boy orphaned very young, who is adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression." ""Little Tree," as his grandparents call him, is shown how to hunt and survive in the mountains and to respect nature in the Cherokee Way - taking only what is needed, leaving the rest for nature to run its course." Little Tree also learns the often callous ways of the white businessmen and tax collectors, and how Granpa, in hilarious vignettes, scares them away from his illegal attempts to enter the cash economy. Granma teaches Little Tree the joys of reading and education. But when Little Tree is sent to an Indian boarding school run by whites, we learn of the cruelty meted out to Indian children in an attempt to assimilate them, and of Little Tree's perception of the Anglo world and how it differs from the Cherokee Way.

FROM THE CRITICS

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