The Light in the Forest is an adequate, somewhat dry portrayal of a boy captured as a young child by Native Americans and raised as one of them. At the beginning of the book he finds himself returned to a white American town and his birth parents and the culture shock for him is clear. It's a fine story, but nothing that will stay with me long.

I've read a number of reviews which seem to feel having been assigned to read this book in eighth grade somehow makes it a poisoned pill of sorts. I don't agree that if some book is required homework means the subject assigned must be crappy moralistic stuff grownups are yet again shoving down juvenile throats in a painful forced feeding. When teachers teach anti-bullying messages that we should all be kind to our classmates and stop bullying, do not most of us think, "forced" lesson or not, that bullying should be stopped?

Unjustified vilification is the first step towards bullying and this book, which is about the conflict of very different cultures, demonstrates that aspect of social ostracism and hatred of those different from our particular social milieu. Whatever mechanism which lies in our crocodile primitive brains that leads to bullying is the very same brain trait which helped the whites justify their theft of America from the Native Americans.

All cultures develop under environmental and historical circumstances. Habitual behaviors in time feel rational even when the reasons for doing something have disappeared. Such behaviors then look strange, or unnecessary to cultural outsiders who have no idea of the history behind a custom that looks loony to outsiders of the culture. Worshipping on your knees before a wooden crosspiece with a statue of a bleeding crying man punctured with stab wounds and in obvious agony pinned to the wood can look like a culture that worships torture and death and blood, but if you were raised in a Christian culture, you know people are worshipping the man, not his tortured death. Christians often celebrate by eating bread and drinking wine in church with the underlying understanding that you are simulating the eating of dead human flesh and drinking blood. An outsider might believe Christians are all happy admirers of cannibalism.

The plot of 'The Light in the Forest' involved the return of a teen white boy to his white family after having been raised with an American Indian family since he was a toddler. He could not understand anything his white family did, which indirectly highlighted the conflict between white European culture and Native American life in the early years of America. Obviously, it was the cultural environment he had learned early in life which shaped his understanding, not his racial characteristics.

The book did a fantastic job of quickly outlining all of the issues between the original Native Americans and the white Europeans. It showed how each side viewed positively their own culture and how they misunderstood the other people of a different culture. Additionally, the book not only shows the shameful treatment of the original owners of America, which grew out of white greed for Indian property, but also that the conflict included the need for controlling the resources of the land for people to survive.

Natives and Europeans alike over time found it difficult to see the other as human, but originally it began as a tragedy of misunderstood manners, similar to when Westerners casually cross their legs showing the soles of their shoes when sitting with people from the Middle East, unaware that showing the sole of your shoe to many Middle Eastern persons is a deadly insult as horrible as spitting in someone's face in the West. Without a common language or an understanding of cultural norms hatred can begin because of assumed insults. Also, with such misunderstandings, the other person can appear dangerously irrational or mental.

The specific issues of the novel was about the complex knots of misunderstood cultures and greed, and how all of us sometimes make the mistake to think cultural differences are because of skin color or physical appearance and not because of one's upbringing. The book wants to show the reader culture is not about race in fact, but about education and environment.

Obviously, gentle reader, there is a bigger discussion available to a class of eighth graders reading this book that goes beyond the issue of a kidnapped white boy raised by "Indians". However, disappointingly, many of the reviews sound as if some readers believe the book was either without modern applications ("what does the conflict between Indians and whites in 19th-century America have to do with anything now?" - a common thought. Or readers think it is simply a stupid John Wayne fiction story). The way Europeans justified the extermination of Native Americans was no different than the justifications of extermination and demonization by Germans of the Jews in World War II, the attempt to exterminate those of other faiths in the Serbian War, the genocide of other tribes in the Rwandan War and Saddam's War against the Kurds. Not only does this issue continue to plague all human thinking, it apparently is ongoing in a destructively 'minor' fashion (only in scope) in our schools for juveniles.

Why NOT read this book in the eighth grade? What kind of discussion is NOT occurring in your classroom? Some of the reviews about this book have caused me despair. Reading the book should bring out in thoughtful persons hundreds of questions about human behavior.

Ann Miner collection. I got it for free. Passing it on to the next guy because I do try not to help censor books.
Found all three chapters I read extremely racist. Like, it makes me feel dirty, level racist. Would love to see some Native American voices publish books about being Native American in the near future. PLEASE.

This is yet another example of why kids don't like reading books in school. I originally read "The Light in the Forest" in early high school (maybe middle school) and I had all but forgotten it until I saw it on a shelf. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I decided to read it again. I didn't recognize one scene.

The story has great potential, but there is just no depth here. The basic story is that a white baby is kidnapped/taken/rescued by a native American tribe in eastern Ohio/western Pennsylvania in the late 18th century. He is raised by the natives until he is recaptured by the white when he is an adolescent and returned to his family in central Pennsylvania. He is very resistant to being converted back to white culture, escapes and goes back to his native family where he learns they are not as pure and good hearted as he thought and he makes a decision that ends with him being cast out of the tribe, forbidden from ever returning. Like I said, lots of potential for complex relationships and thought processes, but the story stays on the surface and just skims along. I never got the chance to get to know any of the characters. It is almost more of a travelogue than a novel.

There were parts of the book that reminded me of the "begat" parts of the bible. There were lists of names that had absolutely no bearing on the story. The only purpose I could see was to show Richter's knowledge of or creativity with native names.

I sure hope teachers have been able to find better young adult novels dealing with white/native experiences in early America.

This book had a profound effect on me as a teen. It's a fictionalized account of a white boy's kidnapping by Native Americans and living with them long enough to identify with them, and I'd never realized either of those things could happen. Although I think this is still true, a few subsequent years of reading Debbie Reese's work have ensued, and would probably change a new reading of this book and its representation of Native Americans. http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/

I have vague memories of this book. I honestly think I started it in middle school and abandoned it. I like books that try and put you in a certain time of history. This book does a good job of painting an image of this point of history. This point where history is about to fully tip to the white world. We know it is coming. Makes for a sad sad book.

This was the worst, most boring book in the history of the universe!!!!!!!

The ending was really sad. I don't like to read sad books.