Twelve-year-old Wesley Wilder (Upper Skagit) starts the day nervous but excited on two fronts. Her poem, “We Still Belong,” is in the school newspaper for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and she plans to ask a boy named Ryan Thomas, whom she’s gotten to know through gaming club, to the upcoming school dance. Wesley misses the opportunity to ask Ryan to the dance in order to reach out to Ella—a girl some of her classmates predicted would be the one to go with him—at a moment when the other girl is visibly upset. But it’s the reaction—and non-reaction—to her poem that’s most disappointing. For the most part, few people say anything, while her English teacher, who gives students extra credit for submitting to the school paper, says she didn’t follow his guidelines and should have used her piece to argue a position about Indigenous Peoples’ Day in relation to Columbus Day. By the end of the school day, Wesley is feeling disheartened and discouraged. But strands of Wesley’s day come together in surprising and wonderful ways when she attends a powwow with her family that evening. This lively, swift-paced story rejects broad tropes of middle school drama in favor of moments of genuine connection, with wonderful, relatable characters in Wesley, her family members, and friends. In addition to the inclusion of gaming culture—among Wesley and her friends and online, including Native gamers—the story and author’s note offer thoughtful perspectives on Native identity. (Ages 9-12)

A thoughtful and heartfelt middle grade novel by American Indian Youth Literature Honor–winning author Christine Day (Upper Skagit), about a girl whose hopeful plans for Indigenous Peoples’ Day (and plans to ask her crush to the school dance) go all wrong—until she finds herself surrounded by the love of her Indigenous family and community at an intertribal powwow.

Wesley is proud of the poem she wrote for Indigenous Peoples’ Day—but the reaction from a teacher makes her wonder if expressing herself is important enough. And due to the specific tribal laws of her family’s Nation, Wesley is unable to enroll in the Upper Skagit tribe and is left feeling “not Native enough.” Through the course of the novel, with the help of her family and friends, she comes to embrace her own place within the Native community.

Christine Day's debut, I Can Make This Promise, was an American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award Honor Book, was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, School Library Journal, the Chicago Public Library, and NPR, and was also picked as a Charlotte Huck Honor Book. Her sophomore novel, The Sea in Winter, was an American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award Honor Book, as well as named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and School Library Journal.

We Still Belong is an accessible, enjoyable, and important novel from an author who always delivers.