And I recently had the opportunity to visit the Cherokee Nation’s Immersion School. I met with third graders. I knew they had read the book, their teacher had shared that. Unbeknownst to me, they had each prepared their own topics. She had 12 students in the class and each of the 12 topics they took on, and explained in the Cherokee language, alright, this is an immersion school so they don’t speak English in the classroom, everything is writing in the Cherokee syllabary, and that’s what they speak.
And they had taken each topic and what it meant to them. I almost started crying when this was explained to me because this is exactly what I wanted to have happen with this book, again, whether the kids are Cherokee, other Native Nations, or non-Native that they would take on the topic and learn something and apply it to their lives. And so to see our children from the Cherokee Nation taking this information in and understanding it at third grade, I mean, I was like, ‘It’s never going to get any better than this as an author for me.’
How much different our lives would be today if I had had that information and my generation had that information in third grade — wow, wow.