Mandie and the Medicine Man
Mandie #6
by Lois Gladys Leppard
My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction
I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that.
This book felt a like a rehash of book #2, Mandie and the Cherokee Legend, in several ways. Mandie and friends traipse around the Cherokee lands, some of the kids end up tied up by bad people, and Tsa’ni is a jerk. That last one is particularly odd, considering how he was suddenly kinder at the end of book #2. He actually has some POV scenes in this book, though, which I think could have been really good, if the author had delved just a little more into the reasonings behind his choices, rather than him just thinking about how he’d pretend to do nice things but not do them or lie about whatever he was asked but not ever really explaining his justifications for these things other than him not liking white people. Though I suppose that’s about as complicated as anything ever gets in this series meant for 9-12-year-old kids. Overall, though, this book is a decent one for the series. I didn’t care for Mandie’s continued disrespect for her mom, which she gets away with again and is probably something that kids who read the book should be made aware of as something they should not do. So while I think these books can still be good for younger people to read, especially if you’re looking for something with Christian content, I strongly recommend discussing what’s good and bad in them with your kid(s) after they read it.
Find out more about Mandie and the Medicine Man
If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!
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