Indian in the Cupboard (Collins Modern Classics)

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They celebrate with a feast, featuring tiny food for the small people and regular-sized food for the boys.

I was very aware of how stereotypical the portrayals of Little Bear and Boone were, but it also got me to think about how the author handled it. He first sends the wampum belt back and senses through his psychic powers that Little Bear and his tribe have successfully and safely reached Canada and reveals this to his father along with the fact that his mother knows the truth. He also agrees to have Bright Stars make toys for them to travel into when they journey to the past.Our resources are crucial for knowledge lovers everywhere—so if you find all these bits and bytes useful, please pitch in. Patrick and Omri bring back their Marine friend Fickits, along with a complement of troops, and set them loose on the skinheads, who are peppered by tiny machine-gun fire, causing them to flee. Complications arise when Omri’s thoughtless friend puts his toy cowboy in the cupboard to see if they will fight. The book has received numerous awards and been both critiqued and praised on its literary merit and had once been recommended reading in school curriculum. Little does Omri know that by turning the key, he will transform his ordinary plastic Indian into a real live man from an altogether different time and place!

The point of the book seems to be to deconstruct the idea of the magical talking toy: these are real people with real emotions, needs, and desires. He presents them with an egg cup full of warm water, gets them to bathe, and puts them in his pockets for school. Little Bear is self-centered, violent, often in awe, at times magnaminous, but he is very much not a toy, and the point is made later in the book this transformation can easily have dire consequences. Fearing the tiny man will turn back into a toy if he leaves him in the cupboard, Omri asks him to come out.Kirkus Reviews observed, "The first book had a fine balance between childish desire to play with the tiny figures and awareness that, though small, they were real people who ought not to be so manipulated.

But when the cupboard door opens, Little Bull is slumped, unconscious, over his horse, two bullet wounds in his back. At first Patrick seems to have banished the memory of the tiny people from his mind, but then reluctantly shows Omri that he still carries the plastic figure of Boone in his pocket. I realize I've been conditioned by society's sensitivities, view of political correctness, and critical spirit of looking at everything as though it contains hidden hatred; I had to fight my initial internal distaste over the stereotypical depiction of the Indian. In fact, no one was nice in this book—except, again, Omri’s mother, who sounds like a dreadfully exhausted woman with a terrible household to run.He's new to speaking English, so it's a little short and abrupt, and I think she took it too far, but not to the point where he was a "grunting savage.