Native American Classics presents great stories and poems from America's earliest writers. Featured are "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" by Zitkala-Sa, "On Wolf Mountain" by Charles Eastman, "How the White Race Came to America" by Handsome Lake, and seven more tales of humor and tragedy. Also eight poems, including Alex Posey's "Wildcat Bill" and E. Pauline Johnson's "The Cattle Thief". The volume is edited by Tom Pomplun, with noted Native American writers John E. Smelcer and Joseph Bruchac. The Graphic Classics series has cast a wide net lately, branching out from illustrated adaptations of short stories by the likes of Poe and Lovecraft to surveys of tales centering on African Americans and, now, Native Americans. Collecting stories by Native American writers from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, this is a fine plunge into a culture that’s been shamefully underrepresented in the format, infrequent exceptions like the anthology Trickster (2010) and George O’Connor’s Journey into Mohawk Country (2006) notwithstanding. Not surprisingly, many of the poems and stories focus on the tense relationship with the “White Man” and the fading of the Native American way of life, and a tone of melancholy pervades much of the book. Toward the middle, though, humorous stories pop up, including an encounter between a coyote god and a wild potato, and hope also springs up, as in the poem “Changing Is Not Vanished.” Much care has been taken to match the appropriate art style to each adaptation, and though no big names supply illustrations, each story—from the tragic to the funny—slips gracefully into its visuals. Grades 7-12. --Jesse Karp Once again Graphic Classics demonstrates the art of comics adaptation with its new collection, Native American Classics. Pulling from a rich tradition of fiction, poetry, and oral narrative, and illustrated by a who s who of Native American creators, this twenty-fourth volume of the series sets the standard for comics and its engagement with American ethnic identity. --Derek Royal, ComicsAlternative.com Collecting stories by Native American writers from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, this is a fine plunge into a culture that s been shamefully underrepresented in the format. Not surprisingly, many of the poems and stories focus on the tense relationship with the White Man and the fading of the Native American way of life, and a tone of melancholy pervades much of the book. Toward the middle, though, humorous stories pop up, including an encounter between a coyote god and a wild potato, and hope also springs up, as in the poem 'Changing Is Not Vanishing.' Much care has been taken to match the appropriate art style to each adaptation, and each story from the tragic to the funny slips gracefully into its visuals. --Jesse Karp, Booklist A good deal of the excitement readers will undoubtedly share upon cracking open Native American Classics is the sense of experiencing early writers at the front lines of what was and remains literally a clash of civilizations. For example, The Soft-Hearted Sioux , by Zitkala-Sa, tells of a young man with Bible in hand returning to his tribe after graduating from a missionary school. His naive attempt at proselytizing to save the soul of his dying father leads to a rite of passage that turns the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son on its head and ends with the kind of multicultural ambiguity that would do even the most hardened postmodernist proud. It s one of the highlights of an anthology chockablock with highlights both literary and artistic. --Bob Wake, Cambridge Book Review Used Book in Good Condition