Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Rain Is Not My Indian Name
    Unavailable
    Rain Is Not My Indian Name
    Unavailable
    Rain Is Not My Indian Name
    Audiobook3 hours

    Rain Is Not My Indian Name

    Written by Cynthia Leitich Smith

    Narrated by Jenna Lamia

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Read the ebook instead

    About this audiobook

    Cassidy Rain Berghoff is a young girl in mourning. Her best friend was recently killed in a car accident, and the tragic death of her mother from a freak accident years earlier still haunts her. At the suggestion of her brother, Rain decides to enroll in her great-aunt's Indian camp and quickly loves it. But Rain soon learns that she must fight for what she loves when public funding for the camp becomes limited. Will her efforts to save the camp work?

    Cynthia Leitich Smith creates a strong heroine in this beautiful audiobook, that follows a young girl who finds love and purpose in deep moments of despair.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 26, 2008
    ISBN9780739380185
    Author

    Cynthia Leitich Smith

    Cynthia Leitich Smith is the bestselling, acclaimed author of books for all ages, including Rain Is Not My Indian Name, Indian Shoes, Jingle Dancer, and Hearts Unbroken, which won the American Indian Youth Literature Award; she is also the anthologist of Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids. Most recently, she was named the 2021 NSK Neustadt Laureate. Cynthia is the author-curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and serves as the Katherine Paterson Inaugural Endowed Chair on the faculty of the MFA program in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and lives in Austin, Texas. You can visit Cynthia online at cynthialeitichsmith.com.

    Related to Rain Is Not My Indian Name

    Related audiobooks

    Children's Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 17, 2020

      It’s been a while since I’ve been completely blown away by a novel. Ocean Vuong’s devastatingly beautiful first offering is the coming-of-age story of Little Dog, a Vietnamese immigrant in the US. Framed as a letter from a writer in his 20s to his il

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dirty SOUTH

      Jul 5, 2020

      Dirty SOUTH
      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Aug 9, 2023

      Great Read
      2 min read

    • Article

      Searing And Hopeful, ‘Three Flames’ Chronicles Family’s Life

      Jan 28, 2020

      Alan Lightman’s novel “Three Flames” follows the conflicting desires of one Cambodian family as they navigate a changing society.

      1 min read

    • Article

      PERSPECTIVE: “I’m An Aboriginal Woman. I Write For My People To Feel Empowered”

      Jan 12, 2020

      “i come from a long line of storytellers. My mother was a great storyteller, and I had aunts and uncles who would put Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams to shame. I was the last of that generation to grow up at the feet of people who still told the o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Taken From Us

      Jan 20, 2023

      Taken From Us
      2 min read

    • Article

      Poetry

      Sep 29, 2020

      Poetry
      1 min read

    • Article

      Feelgood Viewing!

      Sep 12, 2021

      Feelgood Viewing!
      1 min read

    • Article

      TO The Baby-Sitters Club!

      Aug 6, 2020

      The series might be new on Netflix, but The Baby-Sitters Club has actually been around for almost 35 years! The episodes you see today have been adapted from the legendary books of the same name. Written by Ann M. Martin, the original book series (pu

      2 min read

    • Article

      'Love, Hate and Other Filters' Is 2018’s Most Important YA Novel so Far

      Feb 5, 2018

      As we witness the senior year of Maya Aziz – the teenage daughter in the only Indian Muslim family in Batavia, Ill. – we’re treated to a sliver of an American Muslim bildungsroman.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Loved-up In Lockdown

      Feb 12, 2021

      Loved-up In Lockdown
      4 min read

    • Article

      There’s Always A Silver Lining

      Aug 11, 2021

      There’s Always A Silver Lining
      12 min read

    • Article

      Turning Red

      Mar 23, 2022

      Turning Red
      2 min read

    • Article

      Christmas With A LEGEND

      Dec 9, 2021

      Christmas With A LEGEND
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book CLUB

      Apr 6, 2021

      Book CLUB
      1 min read

    • Article

      In loving Memory of Linda Mehney

      Dec 21, 2020

      In loving Memory of Linda Mehney
      18 min read

    • Article

      O Come All Ye Faithful!

      Dec 2, 2021

      O Come All Ye Faithful!
      1 min read

    Reviews for Rain Is Not My Indian Name

    3.5/5

    45 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I love the writing in this book -- Rain's voice is so effortlessly believable and engaging. Her story is a hard one, but she's finding ways past tragedy. She's sophisticated, intriguing, and a talented photographer. She's also eloquent about what life is like in a small town for (in this case) the handful of Native Americans that live there. Packs a lot of punch in a short book. Fine for kids, but probably
      more appealing for tweens and teens.

      advanced reader's copy for new edition provided by Edelweiss.
    • 2/5
      Interesting as an art, not so much a story, with a comfortable ending.
    • 3/5
      The first book that only got three stars from me so first I have to say that its not because I didn't like it as much of several of my four star books. It's more that I want to begin to be a little more specific and critical and I have more to compare to than I did when I began this. So this is supposed to be a point of progression in my ratings. It's also been nearly a month since I read it. I think I'm going to make it a habit of waiting a little while (although hopefully not this long) before writing my reaction to a book to see how I think its going to stick with me.

      I did like this. It's closer to a 3-1/2. I think it would have topped a 3-1/2 and received 4 stars if it were longer and there was an opportunity to get more involved with the characters. On the other hand it wasn't a big time investment and was very worthwhile. I had feelings for Rain and an interest in a couple other characters and would liked to have come to know them better. There's an argument for taking the length into account and raising the rating but I'm going to stick with my reaction - how much the book affected me and not try to over think this.

      This was a very good if limited look at cultural interaction with realistic characters in realistic circumstances in a real place. I believe that's exactly what it was meant to be rather then an exciting story. There was what I saw as a side theme of Rain's overcoming a traumatic event that immediately preceded the main story and was much less addressed or developed but was nevertheless present throughout the book as a conflict in the process of resolution.

      A worthwhile if not totally memorable read. If a sequel came out I would definitely read it but it wouldn't be immediately placed at the top of my list.
    • 3/5
      Rain is Not My Indian Name is a book about an Indian girl named Rain who loses her best friend on the night of her birthday. She once loved taking pictures but stopped doing that until she got a job at an Indian camp to take photos. While she deals with the death of her best friend, being harassed by his mother, and dealing with her ex-second-best friend, she learns a lot about who she is. She comes to realize more about her Indian heritage and where she came from. She also learns to make sense of the world and the people around her. If I were teaching this book to adolescents, it would probably be in a history class. I think this is a good book to teach for students to learn about different cultures and backgrounds. They can learn about the importance of knowing where they came from and having knowledge about their family backgrounds. They can also learn about cultural diversity and racism. There is also different story elements that can be talked about with them if this novel were used in a literature class. This book was not one of my favorites but it was not bad. This was a great book about Rain growing as a person and becoming strong. It was also really sad right from the beginning and I did not like that. I was hoping the book would be abut Rain and Galen but he was killed right in the beginning. I am glad I read it, though. IT was interesting to read a book that had a lot of Indian culture in it.
    • 3/5
      This is a pretty good book about grief and dying, and learning to move on with life after losing someone close to you. It'd probably work well for young people, but as an adult, I didn't really get much out of it. That being said, I was interested in Rain's story and what was going on with her family and friends, and it's a very quick read, so you might as well give it a try if it's at all interesting to you.
    • 5/5
      After Rain's best friend Galen dies, she shuts herself off from the world for six months, until she unwillingly gets involved in the Indian Camp her aunt's running that summer. For such a short book (it's not even 150 pages long) this is about a whole lot of things, though probably the two main themes are small town life and what it means to be Indian.I picked this up pretty much based on the title alone, which just sounded really awesome. As I started reading, my first thought was oh, this is too teenagery for me, but I quickly changed my mind. It's definitely a young adult book, but I really enjoyed it a lot.One thing I particularly liked, which was just a little characterisation detail, not any part of the plot itself, was that she's a fan and reads fanfic. I think this is the first book I've ever read with a protagonist who reads fic! And it's obvious the author knows what she's talking about, too.
    • 3/5
      Good characters wrought by tragedy - Rain falls in love with her best friend Galen, only to learn the next day he was killed in an accident on the way home. I am always on the lookout for realistic contemporary fiction with Native American characters, due to the often overlooked tendency on the part of students who do not live near Indian reservations to believe that Indians no longer exist! For example, I was looking through a World Book publication on Native American activities with one of my middle school students and remarked that I thought I could have found some real Indians to photograph for the book instead of all these little blond kids. "I thought there weren't anymore Indians," she said. So yes, I pay attention to Joseph Bruchac and anyone else willing to show us that Indians exist today, not just in American history books. Although I wanted to really like this book, it never engaged me as I'd hoped. The conflict between Rain and Galen's mother wasn't resolved, which is okay - not all pieces need to be neatly tied up, but something more needed to happen there.