Content Warning (C.W.) / Trigger Warning (T.W.): This book discusses difficult topics like Residential School trauma, abuse, and racism.

These are My Words: The Residential School Diary of Violet Pesheens by Ruby Slipperjack is the latest installment in the Dear Canada series by Scholastic Canada. This is a work of Historical Fiction about a young girl named Violet (“Pynut”), who is sent from her home in Flint Lake, Ontario, to a Residential School in Northern Ontario. The book follows Violet’s school year from 1966 to 1967 and is written in first-person diary-entry format. Through Violet’s diary entries, Slipperjack skillfully weaves a narrative that explores the profound impact of cultural erasure and the resiliency of the human spirit.

The book’s diary format provides an enriching first-person perspective that immerses readers into the past. Readers quickly understand the harsh and oppressive conditions inside Canada’s Residential Schools. Violet grapples with her identity as a young Anishinaabe woman as she is robbed of her language, culture, and identity upon becoming a student at the Residential School. She feels like her life has split into two: there is the version of herself at Residential School, and the version she once was back home with her Grandmother on Flint Lake.

What is most interesting about this book is that Violet’s story is based on Slipperjack’s own life. It would be interesting to know whether Slipperjack too, like Violet,  kept a diary in secret as an act of resistance and self-preservation.

This book provides a sensitive and thoughtful introduction into the dark history of Canada’s Residential School System and how recently it has impacted individuals. This book would be best suited for a read-a-loud or independent novel study for  students in Grade 5 and up. If readers have liked books like The Diary of Anne Frank or Catherine, Called Birdy, they will enjoy this book.

By Grace Jansen