Cultural politics for kiddies

Miya Wears Orange
by Wanda John-Kehewin (illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina)

Winnipeg: HighWater Press, 2025
$21.95 / 9781774921258

Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic

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This past week I caught an episode of BBC’s Junior Bake Off. For the sheer value of watching kids drop desserts, it’s priceless.

For the Showstopper challenge the bakers were tasked with decorating bread they’d shaped to look like “baddies.” As an adult watching youngsters over fifty years my junior, I really had no idea who any of them would pick as a baddie. For kids from Manchester, London, and Yorkshire, who, circa 2024, merited the tag baddie? Would there be an orange-hued hamburger bun, a Borodinsky loaf shaped like Vladimir Putin? Would anyone make kaiser roll Hitlers? (Probably not. He died over seventy years before any of the contestants was born.) Also, was otherwise lighthearted Junior Bake Off getting serious?

Turns out, the question was not who but what. Most of the kids chose characters. For example, the legendary rogue and highwayman immortalized in “The Ballad of Dick Turpin.” And Miss Trunchbull from Matilda appeared—twice. There was Coach Brunt from Carmen Sandiego, Captain Hook, Maleficent… and a jellyfish. Contemporary figures from politics didn’t enter into the picture, and as a result no Showstopper looked anything like a villain most adults would have leapt on in a heartbeat.

There was a certain logic to the kids’ choices. They’re raised to enjoy games, play outside, and dive deeply into make-believe; their innocence is protected from a world with fentanyl overdose data, drone strikes, dictators, and militias. You know, the real world. 

Their reading curriculum might include classic “Once upon time” tales. Or Simon Stephenson’s The Snowman Code, about a magical friendship between a bullied girl and a Albert Framlington, a 600-year-old snowman, and Rob Biddulph’s I Follow The Fox, in which a boy meets a fox and helps her on a magical winter adventure. In contrast, The Early Warning Project’s “Countries at Risk for Intrastate Mass Killing 2024-25,” Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index,” and The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List of Threatened Species” are kept far, far from the inquisitive eyes of children.

But what of reality, of politics, of historical actuality? If it enters into a book aimed at an audience of 6-8-year-olds, how much detail is apropos? With colourful, expressive support from illustrator Erika Rodriguez Medina, Vancouver-based Wanda John-Kehewin’s candid, warm-hearted Miya Wears Orange offers a winning example. 

In it, young Miya arrives home from school with an aching belly. She’s in a state of anxious questioning. Miya needs answers and her mother’s right there with them.

Earlier at school, Miya, the only Indigenous student in her class, had listened intently to Mrs. Munro, her teacher, at storytime. Mrs. Munro informed her students about “a place called residential school” and the reason why orange shirts are worn today.

Panicked and unable to explain her knotted thoughts, Miya waits till she’s safely at home before she asks, “Am I going to residential school, too?” She wonders as well if other Indigenous kids her age are already in residential schools. 

Miya’s mother assures Miya—Miyasisiwn at home—that while residential schools were a horrible fact “for a long time because the government and church wanted to take away our culture,” Miya “will never be taken away.” She also replies to Miya’s question about Mrs. Munro’s purpose in telling the story. It’s important to honour and remember those children, she explains, and to “understand the truth of what happened, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

After an extra day away from school, Miya returns confidently, with a vow to wear her orange shirt “a lot.” “It will help me remember,” she exclaims. 

In her “Note From the Author” John-Kehewin comments that Miya Wears Orange is based on her own daughter’s “fear and sadness of being sent to a residential school” (where John-Kehewin’s brothers were once sent, in Alberta and Saskatchewan). The storybook helps create awareness and understanding, she adds, and those, in turn, can lead to dialogue and healing.

For a picture book, Miya Wears Orange approaches a complex and challenging topic with admirable candour. John-Kehewin does not shy away from unpleasant truths, even though her story locks them away entirely in the past. For kids in schools that support orange shirt-wearing in relation to Truth and Reconciliation Day, parents and teachers alike will appreciate a story that’s matter-of-fact and yet eloquent as it expresses enlightening thoughts that adult educators themselves may find hard to formulate.

Whenever he finishes it, Cull will be Brett Josef Grubisic‘s sixth novel. He assigns, edits, and posts fiction, poetry, and children’s lit reviews for BCR; occasionally, he contributes reviews as well. [He’s recently written about books by Ryan O’Dowd, Michael V. Smith, David Bouchard, Alice Turski, Louise Sidley, K.J. Denny (ed.), Sonali Zohra, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop, Kristen Pendreigh, Sam Wiebe, Maureen Young, Daniel Anctil, and Adam Welch for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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