Traci Sorell is the author of Indigenous from A to Z, illustrated by Natasha Donovan, out now from Workman Kids. Below, she recommends five recent picture books by Indigenous authors for Indigenous Peoples Day.
Indigenous Peoples Day helps us as a country to celebrate the contributions, the resilience, and the humanity of Native Nations and their citizens. When I set out to write Indigenous From A to Z, a new nonfiction picture book illustrated by Natasha Donovan, I thought about how to blend those aspects of what our ancestors lived and taught us with our present-day realities as Native people in the US. How fun to choose a word or phrase for each letter and illuminate for young readers what they may or may not know about wide-ranging topics like activism, joking, and Native languages.
In previewing other recent Native created picture books, I found stories that take a deeper dive on topics I shared in my book. Sisters—filmmaker Jen Loren and Caldecott Medalist Rebecca Lee Kunz—share their great aunt’s civil rights organizing in Ruth Muskrat and the So-Called Indian Problem. Ojibwe narrator Red Bird offers modern, humorous takes on Paul Bunyan’s fabrications in Dawn Quigley and Chief Lady Bird’s Paul’s Bunion: A Tall Tale Resized.
Three other picture books integrate Indigenous languages in stories about the seasons, military service, and a dear grandfather becoming an ancestor. Seasons by the Lake, created by Naja Lund Aparico and Alex Nees, provides a colorful, fun look over one year in the lives of two Inuit brothers in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Gabriel’s Winter Count from the late Andrea M. Page and Alfreda Beartrack Algeo features a grandmother teaching her grandson how to stay connected to his parents serving far away by making a traditional Lakota calendar. In Until We Meet Again Donadagohvi by Christine Hartman Derr and Morgan Thompson, a young girl stays connected to her late grandfather, a first-language speaker, by talking in Cherokee.
Another reason to applaud these stories is that they are all the picture book debuts for these five authors. I love seeing Native creators craft narratives in new formats for young people. That’s definitely cause for celebration as well!
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