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list price: $21.95
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Non-classifiable
published: Nov 2018
ISBN:9781553797562
publisher: Portage & Main Press
imprint: HighWater Press

Surviving the City

by Tasha Spillett, illustrated by Natasha Donovan & Donovan Yaciuk

tagged: canada, girls & women, coming of age, non-classifiable
Description

Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan is Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape—they’re so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez’s grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can’t stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can’t bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez’s community find her before it’s too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don’t?

About the Authors

Tasha Spillett

TASHA SPILLETT is an Inninewak (Cree) and Trinidadian award-winning poet and author who is also working on her doctoral degree in Indigenous land–based education. She makes her home in Treaty 1 territory, Manitoba, where she raises her daughter, Isabella, with her husband. She is the author of the New York Times best-selling picture book I Sang You Down from the Stars and the award-winning Surviving the City graphic novel series.


Natasha Donovan is a Métis illustrator from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on comics and children's illustration. Her short comic work has appeared in The Other Side Anthology (2016), edited by Melanie Gillman and Kori Handwerker, and This Place Anthology (2018), published by Portage & Main. She illustrated the award-winning children’s book The Sockeye Mother (written by Brett Huson) and the graphic novel Surviving the City (written by Tasha Spillett). She has a degree in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia, and has worked in academic and magazine publishing. She currently lives in Bellingham, Washington.


Since 1998, Donovan Yaciuk (he/him/his) has coloured books published by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse comics, and HighWater Press including the A Girl Called Echo and The Reckoner Rises series, as well as select stories in This Place: 150 Years Retold. Donovan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of Manitoba and began his career as a part of the legendary, now-defunct Digital Chameleon colouring studio. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, with his wife and two daughters.

Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
Age:
12 to 18
Grade:
8 to 12
Awards
  • Winner, Winner of the Indigenous Voices Award, Alternate Format
  • Winner, Co-winner of the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Auth
  • Winner, In the Margins Top Fiction Novel for 2020
  • , Finalist for the Cybils Award, Young Adult Graphic Novels
  • , Nominated for the Forest of Reading 2020 Red Maple Fiction program
  • Winner, Winner of the Manuela Dias Design and Illustration Award, Graphic Novel category
  • Winner, Winner of the Manitoba Indigenous Writer of the Year Award
  • Winner, Winner of Manuela Dias Design and Illustration?Awards, Graphic Novel
Editorial Reviews

Engrossing... [this story] remains a tribute to the missing and murdered and a clarion call to everyone else.

— Kirkus Reviews

Nominated for the Forest of Reading's Red Maple Award

— Ontario Library Association

[A] haunting graphic novel... debut author Spillett and Donovan... present a story of girls growing up with the historical legacy of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people, particularly women and girls.

— Publishers Weekly

Centering the strong hearts of Indigenous women and girls and shattering racist assumptions, Surviving the City is a beautiful, uncompromising honour song to those of us that not only survive the urban, but navigate through it with the courage of our Ancestors.

— Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of This Accident of Being Lost

Selected as an AIYLA Young Adult Honor Book

— American Indian Youth Literature Award (AIYLA)

Selected for 2020 Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, an annual booklist of the best feminist books for young readers

— American Library Association (ALA)

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