“Fall in Line, Holden!”

By Daniel W. Vandever
Salina Bookshelf (2017)
32 pages

 Review by Tom Davis

Daniel Vandever, the communications director at Navajo Technical University, has just had his children’s book, “Fall in Line, Holden!” published by the Native-owned and -operated Salina Bookshelf. Written and illustrated by Vandever, the book is about the American Indian experience with boarding schools, and the regimentation and conformity they forced on generations of students.

Holden, a boy “deep in the heart of an Indigenous Nation,” attends a school that is “a strict Western school of stern education where everyone obeyed and did what they were told, and conformity ruled all to fit like a mold.” When Holden leaves the line of students and starts tooting his horn, a celebration of creative thinking and originality ensues.

Vandever is a creative designer whose illustrations liven up the book and help his rhymes drive home a meaning that is really at the heart of the tribal college movement. The founders of the movement could have continued in the education path established by the public and private colleges and university systems in the United States, but they chose instead to fall out of line and attempt to create an Indigenous model of education that fit tribal people rather than become the voices of regimented conformity.

This is a delightful book that dances on the page. Mostly for children, it still has a message for the tribal college movement and all the Holdens attending: Fall out of line, Holden, and forge a creative and original future for yourself and your people.

Tom Davis is a retired tribal college educator and administrator, as well as the author of three novels.