Just forty miles north of San Francisco, in the center of Sonoma sits the San Francisco Solano Mission, sometimes known as the Sonoma Mission. It is the northernmost mission, established by the Catholic Church in 1823. Approximately 600 miles to the south is Mission San Diego, or San Diego de Alcala, the southernmost mission and the first mission to be established in California. A total of 21 missions exist, including Sonoma Mission and Mission San Diego.
As anyone who has gone to elementary school in California knows, the study of the California Missions is part of the fourth-grade study of California history. Students spend weeks learning about the different Franciscan priests who established each of the missions, building models of the missions and learning what life was like in the missions.
Zia, by Scott O'Dell is a book that gives a fictionalized account of life in the missions by a fourteen-year-old girl whose ancestors lived on one of the Channel Islands located off the coast of California near Santa Barbara and Ventura. The residents of that island were part of the Nicolenos, a small band of American Indians which no longer exists.?Zia is a sequel to O'Dell's Newbery Medal-winning book Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Book Info
Title: Zia
Author: Scott O'Dell
Publisher: Sandpiper (2011)
ISBN: ?978-0547406336
Check out a slideshow of other books by Scott O'Dell
Zia and her younger brother Mando are living at the mission in Santa Barbara. Eighteen years earlier their mother had brought them there as small children when her family was rescued from San Nicholas, the smallest and most remote of the Channel Islands of California. Zia's aunt Karana was left alone on the island and it is her story that is told in Islands of the Blue Dolphin. In Zia, the story revolves around the young girl's efforts to rescue her aunt and be reunited with the only family member left, besides her brother.
Although Karana is safely reunited with Zia and Mando, it isn't the joyous reunion Zia expected. Zia no longer remembers the language of her mother and Karana knows no language but her native tongue. Life in the mission is hard, even cruel at times, and is realistically shown. Zia wavers from wanting to stay where she is fed and clothed, and running away with several others because of the policies and cruelities inflicted by the Catholic Church upon the 'heathen savages' whose souls they must save.
Island of the Blue Dolphins is a better book than its sequel. But Zia is a book worth reading, especially for nine and ten-year-olds that are studying the California Missions. It is also worth reading if one enjoys historical fiction. It does give an accurate portrayal of what life in the missions was like for neophytes. There were those who treated the natives with kindness and respect, but there were also long days filled with hard work and prayer.
This book, in addition to visiting the missions of northern California if possible, would only add to any education about California history. Other missions in northern California include:
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