With my newest picture book that will come out in early 2022, Powwow Day, I return to the fictional side of things.
The illustrations inside are just breathtaking. Madelyn Goodnight is a Chickasaw illustrator. And so I’ll just share — she’s got just beautiful, beautiful color inside the book that I absolutely love. Every page pops with color.
So it’s about this young Ojibwe girl named River, but they really could be from any tribe in terms of Powwow Day because I don’t have a specific language used in this picture book.
River is recovering from a serious illness. I don’t say cancer in the book, but it certainly could be that, it could be a number of things, and all she does is look forward to dancing with her sister and her cousins and her friends in her jingle dress dance at the powwow. So how is she going to experience or enjoy? Why should she even go to the powwow if she’s not able to do what she loves to do?
And sometimes we have to understand that we can’t always do what we want to do when we want to do it. It’s very hard, but sometimes we have to let other people care about us and take care of us, and recognize that there will be a time for that. So it’s dedicated to a couple of friends’ kids who were able to overcome childhood illnesses and then also in memory of those who were not able to recover and return to the circle.
