“I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read That Yet” #29 (Help Me Choose!)

Posted 26 January 2025 in can't believe haven't read /2 Comments

For this feature, I curate a small list of books that make me think, “I can’t believe I haven’t read that”. Then, you vote on which book I should read next. I hope that I’ll be able to ‘catch up’ on certain books that I ‘should’ have read ages ago and finally be able to discuss those books with my fellow book lovers.

#28’s Result – Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park

I may be nearly five years late, but I ended up loving this one! Apparently I had forgotten how much I loved Little House on the Prairie as a kid. I had (and still have, at my parents’ house) a treasured set of paperbacks which we read often while out at the lake. I haven’t reread those books since. I also felt some similarities in tone and atmosphere to Anne of Green Gables (in terms of an outsider finding space), which is something I’ve loved and engaged with a lot more recently – through both the novels and the recent CBC programme.

Prairie Lotus offers a wonderfully fresh take on the American pioneer experience. I enjoyed Hanna’s passion for dressmaking and how that guided the plot. I also appreciated how she navigates her relationship with her oft-prickly white father and how she often recalls and honours her deceased Chinese mother. The accessible writing make this an easy one to fly through. Many of 14 year old Hanna’s experiences could be considered upper middle grade content, yet the writing style and length should make it accessible to a broad swath of middle grade readers.

I recall there was some critique of Prairie Lotus’ representation of Indigenous people when the book was first released. In the story, they are identified as Sioux or Indian as per the protagonist’s perspective and itme period. Park specifically identifies them in the author’s note as Dakota speakers of the Ihanktonwan tribe of the Oceti Sakowin Nation. Hanna twice encounters the same group of women and children and recognizes that they have been treated unfairly and unjustly, but Prairie Lotus is Hanna’s story, not theirs. The Indigenous representation as well as the ties to Little House on the Prairie may not sit well with all readers. For further critique, see Indigo’s Bookshelf.

A final general thought: Reading Prairie Lotus reminded me of my experience reading When You Trap a Tiger. Both novels appear to be short and easy reads which I picked up years after adding them to my TBR. Both novels impressed me a lot more than I thought they would. (Also, both were published in the first quarter of 2020 by Korean American writers!)

#29’s Selection

The theme for the next edition of “I Can’t Believe” is non-fiction. One of my loosey goosey goals for 2025 is to read more non-fiction. To choose titles, I sorted my to-read-non-fiction shelf by date added, ascending, and selected the first four titles that jumped out to me (and that were available in my library catalogue 🫠).