In the characters of Morning Girl and Star Boy, as well as in the narrator of my book, Guests, I allowed myself to speculate freely, to invite onto the page children who are curious, self-analytical, strong, moving toward independence. Too often, I think, when we reflect on the sweep of history, we fail to see the individual tree for the forest. It's an efficient process, and we value efficiency. But happily, it's not a rule that a writer must follow. Alone before a page, in the quiet of early morning, anything seems possible.
Dream children can come to life, and talk to one another in argumentative, demanding voices.
They assert themselves, expect to be heard. More About the Author Michael Dorris, of French, Modoc, and Irish ancestry, grew up in Kentucky and spent time with his father's family in Tacoma, Washington, and on various reservations in the Pacific Northwest. The first member of his family to attend college, he graduated from Georgetown with honors in English and received his graduate degree in anthropology from Yale. In 1972, he founded the Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College and taught there for fifteen years. It was the number one best-seller in the Younger Readers category of Publishers Weekly, which also selected it as one of the Best Books of 1992.