5 New Picture Books By Indigenous Authors for Indigenous Peoples Day

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 Ch...