• Age: 4 to 9
• Grade: p to 4

In this lyrical coming-of-age story, Governor General's Award-winner Rudy Wiebe captures the anxiety of a boy who feels powerless to help his people, but who must speak his dreams if they are to survive. Steeped in aboriginal myth and lore, Hidden Buffalo is also the tale of how a whole tribe can turn its gaze from the horizon to see to the wisdom of a child.

Original paintings by noted Cree artist Michael Lonechild capture the colorful palette of the prairie landscape in autumn and the rich detail of Cree life in the late nineteenth century.

• 2004 Alberta Children's Book of the Year
• Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award shortlist 2004
• Finalist, ForeWord Magizine Book of the Year Award
• 2004 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Notable Title
• Alberta Book Illustration of the Year Nomination
• Canadian Children's Book Centre Our choice Selection

Rudy Wiebe was born near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in 1934. From the University of Alberta, he received a B.A. 1956 and a M.A. in Creative Writing in 1960. He studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen in West Germany, and in 1962 he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Mennonite Brethren Bible College. In 1962ᆧ63 he was editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position which he resigned because of the controversy over his first novel,Peace Shall Destroy Many. From 1967 to 1992 he was Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta. Wiebe has published twenty-five books, including nine novels and the non-fiction best-sellerStolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, co-authored with Yvonne Johnson. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction forThe Temptations Of Big Bear in 1973, and again in 1994 forA Discovery Of Strangers. He is also the winner of the Lorne Pierce Gold Metal of the Royal Society of Canada for his contribution to Canadian literature ླ87). Wiebe has served as chairman of both the Writer’s Guild of Alberta and the Writers’ Union of Canada. He now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Rudy Wiebe's profile page

Michael Lonechild is a Cree, Native-Canadian painter best known for his brightly colored depictions of historical and present-day Cree culture. His oeuvre contains images of hunting buffalo and customary preparations for camp fires on winter days. Using acrylics Lonechild builds up many layers of paint to produce a glowing and textural quality to his works. "My technique is what people like to call the 'overlapping style',” the artist has said of his process. “I continue to paint over and over the same area in order to build up the mood." Born in the October of 1955 on the White Bear Reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada, Lonechild is self-taught, learning all he knows from books and observing other artists work. Early on in his career, the aritst was recognized in Dr. John Anson Warner’s book The Life and Art of the North American Indian (1991) as an influential painter of the Cree nation. His works are in the collection the Estevan Art Gallery and Museum in Canada and the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C., among others. Lonechild lives and works between Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada.

Michael Lonechild's profile page

"Wonderfully crafted."
— Books in Canada

"A not-often-realized dance of cadenced, incantatory, inforced prose and still, golden paintings that glow with a kind of inner light."
— Globe & Mail

"Michael Lonechild's paintings are beautiful, full of texture and light of the prairies and a powerful sense of an ancient culture."
— Calgary Herald

"Provides an evocative introduction to the life on the plains and the ways of these people."
— School Library Journal

"Skillfully told and illustrated."
— Booklist