The Rough-Face Girl

About:

When I taught Junior High School, one of my challenges was to reinterest 12-16-year-olds in the powerful medium of the picture book. Two great, award-winning books that helped me do this were versions of Cinderella from our Native cultures.
It helped that the first of these was titled “Sootface*. That a book with that title should be housed and promoted in the library was unthinkable. A well-told story with wonderfully bright illustrations reflective of the sunshine on Eastcoast birches and seashells, they read it with enthusiasm! It was an easy next step to interest them in a personal favorite, Rafe Martin's The Rough-Face Girl, so handsomely illustrated by David Shannon. Soft, dark tones suggestive of the woodlands and the deer around them, depict their homes, campfires, and clothing. "Awesome" was the students' word on the surprise portrait of The Invisible One in the sky! Natural elements like two birds, flying above the trees, for eyes make the face an exciting discovery. The Invisible One can only marry someone kind and honest. Across the lake, He lives with his sister awaiting the woman whose kindness and honesty would reveal her as his future wife - she alone would have seen him and could describe to his sister his bow and its strings. My older students felt for this young, scarred Cinderella with the singed hair, flapping her way across the village toward the lake in her father's too-big moccasins. ( They're all he has left to give her after dressing her lazy, older sisters for their attempts to bluff their way into marriage with The Invisible One). When her inner beauty and worthiness become clear to The Invisible One's sister, she embraces this young woman so marked from tending the open fires all the time in her two older sisters' stead. The Rough-Face girl is magically transformed as she bathes in the nearby lake and then dresses in the beautiful new attire provided by her future sister-in-law who directs her to the wife's place of honor by the doorway to welcome The Invisible One home. As in most of the over 1500 Cinderella tales in the world, this hard-done-by younger sister triumphs and lives happily ever after. Older children enjoy the differences and sameness in everyone's "Cinderella". The justice in Cinderella has universal appeal for all ages!

The Rough-Face Girl
By Rafe Martin
Illustrated by David Shannon
Penguin Young Readers Group
ISBN:978-0-698-11626-9

*Sootface: An Ojibwa Cinderella Story
Retold by Robert D. San Souci
Illustrated by Daniel San Souci
Dragonfly Books (Random House)
ISBN:978-0-440-41363-9