Maggie Lou, the beloved, vibrant, spirited, young girl created by Cree-M\u00e9tis\u00a0author Arnolda Dufour Bowes, is on to her second adventure in Maggie Lou Meets Her Match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, as in Maggie Lou, Firefox, the first of a planned three-book series, the teenager is at it again with her headstrong antics.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me this book is very personal. It’s based on how I was brought up, some life experiences,\u201d said Dufour Bowes. She has family roots in \u00cele-\u00e0-la-Crosse, Lestock\/Punnichy M\u00e9tis\u00a0Road Allowance, and George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
While her family encouraged her to be outgoing, other people around her tried to keep her \u201con the quieter side, you know? Don\u2019t make a ruckus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dufour Bowes is clear in her general dedication in the book that she doesn\u2019t want pre-teen girls to feel silenced. She writes, \u201c\u2026to all the girls who have heard they are too loud, strong, bossy, or too much. Keep taking up space! And continue to lead with the intelligence, tenacity and strength you are blessed with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dufour Bowes says it\u2019s also important for pre-teen boys to understand that girls can be leaders and that assertiveness shouldn\u2019t be misconstrued as \u201cshe\u2019s aggressive or she\u2019s angry or she\u2019s a little too bossy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maggie Lou Meets Her Match not only showcases the young girl, but it also showcases her extended M\u00e9tis\u00a0family. Within the story, Dufour Bowes weaves in the Michif language and M\u00e9tis\u00a0culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s just something \u2018home\u2019 about language,\u201d said Dufour Bowes. She grew up in Saskatoon, so Dufour Bowes wasn\u2019t fluent in Michif like her older siblings who grew up in \u00cele-\u00e0-la-Crosse were. But when she heads north and listens to her mother and aunties speak the language, \u201cthere’s just something so comforting and there’s just a peace about it. I just think language is such a beautiful thing and I just wanted to make sure to include it because it is so integral to our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maggie Lou\u2019s life is also filled with traditional M\u00e9tis activities, like willow weaving, beading, fiddling and, the main event of the book, the Otip\u00eem\u2019sowak race. The six-person relay race begins with a runner, then a canoe team of two, a hill runner who carries a 50-pound sack of flour, a jockey on a horse, and ends with chopping wood.<\/p>\n
For Maggie Lou to make her relay team successful, she needs to ask her soon-to-be cousin Rosie to join as the jockey. But Maggie Lou has issues with Rosie.<\/p>\n
In getting Maggie Lou to understand that she and Rosie are each strong and beautiful in their own ways, Kohkom tells Maggie Lou the story of two star sisters, Piyak and Niso, who were always fighting. In the end, the sisters supported each other \u201cand together they help to create our world. Each sister doing very different things but both shining bright.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI took liberty with the mythology,\u201d said Dufour Bowes, who was trying to figure out a way that Kohkom would address two girls who were fighting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, she would tell a legend\u2026As a storyteller\u2026That’s what I wanted. I wanted a way for the Kohkom to convey the importance of each girl, but in a living way that they would understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dufour Bowes says when she was growing up, the tales that she was told were mostly \u201cthings to scare you not to go out at night and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Rosie, Dufour Bowes deliberately brought in a character with red hair and freckles. And members of Maggie Lou\u2019s family participate in hockey and boxing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted people to realize we all don’t have dark skin and dark hair like me and most of my family. It’s to expand, I guess, against stereotypes; for us to realize that we are so diverse, but yet we’re still the same beautiful M\u00e9tis people regardless of what we look like or where we live or where we work,\u201d said Dufour Bowes.<\/p>\n
Maggie Lou Meets Her Match, illustrated by Karlene Harvey, who is T\u0161ilhqot\u2019in and Syilx, is for children ages nine to 12 years. It is published by Groundwood Books and was released earlier this month. It can be ordered at houseofanansi.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maggie Lou, the beloved, vibrant, spirited, young girl created by Cree-M\u00e9tis\u00a0author Arnolda Dufour Bowes, is on to her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-61775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}