Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day/Native American Heritage Month!
Title: My Heart Fills With Happiness
By: Monique Gray Smith
Published: 2016
Celebrates happiness and invites children to reflect on the little things in life that bring them joy.
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Ages 0 - 2.
Title: A Day With Yayah
By: Nicola I. Campbell
Published: 2017
On an outing in Nicola Valley, British Columbia, a Native American family forages for herbs and mushrooms while the grandmother passes down her language and knowledge to her young grandchildren. Includes glossary.
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Ages 3 - 8.
Title: Shin-chi's Canoe
By: Nicola I. Campbell
Published: 2008
Shi-shi-etko returns to the Indian residential school for her second year and this time she is accompanied by her six-year-old brother, Shin-chi.
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Ages 4 - 7.
Title: We All Play
By: Julia Flett
Published: 2021
Join celebrated artist Julie Flett on a joyful romp with animals. From chasing, chirping birds, to swimming, squirting whales, this book for young readers reminds them how animals play just like them.
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Ages 0 -7.
Title: Wild Berries
By: Julie Flett
Published: 2013
Clarence and his grandmother pick wild blueberries and meet ant, spider, and fox in a beautiful woodland landscape.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: Berry Song
By: Michaela Goade
Published: 2022
As a young Tlingit girl collects wild berries over the seasons, she sings with her grandmother as she learns to speak to the land and listen when the land speaks back.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: All Around Us
By: Xelena Gonzalez
Published: 2017
Finding circles everywhere, a grandfather and his granddaughter meditate on the cycles of life and nature.
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Ages 3 - 7.
Title: Still This Love Goes On
By: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Published: 2022
With breathtaking lyrics by internationally renowned Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie and stunning images by award-winning Cree-Métis author and illustrator Julie Flett, this book, based on the song of the same name, is a love letter celebrating seasons, place, Indigenous traditions, and community. It is a song of hope. Of home. Of power and place and change and time. Of summer flowers turning fields to sun, and hearts filled with drumbeats. Read it. Sing it. Share it.
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Ages 3 -7.
Title: Tâpwê and The Magic Hat
By: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Published: 2022
On a prairie reserve, Tâpwê receives a mysterious gift from Kokhom (grandma)―and finds himself on an unforgettable adventure.
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Ages 6-9.
Title: I Sang You Down from the Stars
By: Tasha Spillett-Sumner and Michaela Goade
Published: 2021
A Native American woman describes how she loved her child before it was born and, throughout her pregnancy, gathered a bundle of gifts to welcome the newborn.
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Ages 4-8.
Title: We Are Water Protectors
By: Carole Lindstrom
Published: 2020
Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all... When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people's water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.
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Ages 3 - 6.
Title: Hungry Johnny
By: Cheryl Minnema
Published: 2014
At the community feast, observing the bounty of festive foods and counting the numerous elders yet to be seated, Johnny learns to be patient and respectful despite his growling tummy.
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Ages 3 - 7.
Title: Brother Eagle, Sister Sky
By: Chief Seattle
Published: 1991
A Suquamish Indian chief describes his people's respect and love for the earth, and concern for its destruction.
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Ages 4 - 10.
Title: Jingle Dancer
By: Cynthia Leitich Smith
Published: 2000
Jenna, a member of the Muscogee, or Creek, Nation, borrows jingles from the dresses of several friends and relatives so that she can perform the jingle dance at the powwow. Includes a note about the jingle dance tradition and its regalia.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: At The Mountain's Base
By: Traci Sorrell
Published: 2019
At the mountain's base sits a cabin under an old hickory tree. And in that cabin lives a family--loving, weaving, cooking, and singing. The strength in their song sustains them through trials on the ground and in the sky, as they wait for their loved one, a pilot, to return from war.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-To-Be-Best-Friend
By: Dawn Quigley
Published: 2021
Hello/Boozhoo--meet Jo Jo Makoons! Full of pride, joy, and plenty of humor, this first book in an all-new chapter book series by Dawn Quigley celebrates a spunky young Ojibwe girl who loves who she is.
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Ages 6 - 10.
Title: Rez Dogs
By: Joseph Bruchac
Published: 2021
Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, about a Wabanaki girl's quarantine on her grandparents' reservation and the local dog that becomes her best friend.
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Ages 8-12.
Title: The Birchbark House
By: Louise Erdrich
Published: 1999
Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.
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Ages 8 - 12.
Title: Where Wonder Grows
By: Xelena González
Published: 2022
A grandmother explores her special garden with her granddaughters. Wonder grows everywhere but Grandmother especially loves to show it in her story garden. She invites her granddaughters to join her there in a sweet meditation on the treasures she's brought to that magical place--the rocks, the shells, the crystals, the meteorites : how they came to be, how they were formed, how they each have a story to tell.
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Ages 3 -7.
Title: Fatty Legs: A True Story
By: Christy Jordan-Fenton
Published: 2010
This book chronicles the unbreakable spirit of an Inuit girl while attending an Arctic residential school.
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Ages 9 - 11.
Title: Coyote Tales
By: Thomas King
Published: 2017
Two tales, set in a time when animals and human beings still talked to each other, display Thomas King s cheeky humor and master storytelling skills. Freshly illustrated and reissued as an early chapter book, these stories are perfect for newly independent readers.
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Ages 6 - 9.
Title: In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse
By: Joseph Marshall III
Published: 2015
Teased for his fair coloring, eleven-year-old Jimmy McClean travels with his maternal grandfather, Nyles High Eagle, to learn about his Lakota heritage while visiting places significant in the life of Crazy Horse, the nineteenth-century Lakota leader and warrior.
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Ages 10 - 14.
Title: The Barren Grounds
By: David Robertson
Published: 2020
Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities, are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected from their culture and from each other. And they struggle to fit in at school and at their new home--until they find a secret place, walled off in an unfinished attic bedroom.
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Ages 10 - 13.
Title: Hiawatha and the Peacemaker
By: Robbie Robertson
Published: 2015
Hiawatha, a Mohawk, is plotting revenge for the murder of his wife and daughters by the evil Onondaga Chief, Tadodaho, when he meets the Great Peacemaker, who enlists his help in bringing the nations together to share his vision of a new way of life marked by peace, love, and unity rather than war, hate, and fear.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: Powwow Day
By: Tracy Sorrell
Published: 2022
Because she has been very ill and weak, River cannot join in the dancing at this year's tribal powwow, she can only watch from the sidelines as her sisters and cousins dance the celebration--but as the drum beats she finds the faith to believe that she will recover and dance again.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: Healer of the Water Monster
By: Brian Young
Published: 2021
Nathan, a young Navajo boy from Phoenix, Arizona, goes on an epic hero's journey.
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Ages 8 - 12.
Title: Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids
By: Various; Cynthia Leitich Smith (edited by)
Published: 2021
A collection of intersecting stories set at a powwow that bursts with hope, joy, resilience, the strength of community, and Native pride.
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Ages 8 -12.
Title: Awâsis and the World-famous Bannock
By: Dallas Hunt
Published: 2018
As young Awâsis searches for the ingredients to make Kohkum's world-famous bannock recipe, they run into a variety of other-than-human relatives that help them along in their journey.
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Ages 4-8.
Title: Bowwow Powwow: Bagosenjige-niimi'idim
By: Brenda J.Child
Published: 2018
When Uncle and Windy Girl attend a powwow, Windy watches the dancers and listens to the singers. She eats tasty food and joins family and friends around the campfire. Later, Windy falls asleep under the stars. Uncle's stories inspire visions in her head: a bowwow powwow, where all the dancers are dogs.
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Ages 3 - 7.
Title: Sharice’s Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman
By: Sharice Davids
Published: 2021
This inspiring picture book autobiography tells the remarkable story of Sharice Davids, one of the first Native American women elected to Congress and the first LGBTQ congressperson to represent Kansas.
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Ages 4 - 8.
Title: Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer
By: Traci Sorrell
Published: 2021
Mary Golda Ross designed classified projects for Lockheed Air Corporation as the company's first female engineer. Find out how her passion for math and the Cherokee values she was raised with shaped her life and work.
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Ages 7-11.
Title: Saltypie: A Choctaw Journey From Darkness Into Light
By: Tim Tingle
Published: 2010
Choctaw author Tim Tingle tells the story of his famly's move from Oklahoma Choctaw country to Pasadena, Texas.
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Ages 7 - 12.
Title: The Sea Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas
By: Maria García Esperón
Published: 2021
Presents a collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents, the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it, from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska.
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Ages 8 - 14.
Title: We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga
By: Traci Sorrell
Published: 2018
Journey through the year with a Cherokee family and their tribal nation as they express thanks for celebrations big and small. A look at modern Native American life as told by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
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Ages 3 - 7.
Title: We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know
By: Traci Sorell
Published: 2021
Highlighting the fact that contemporary Native life is ongoing, this ... picture book presents truths about Native Americans that everyone should know. Whether facing forced assimilation or tribal termination or celebrating self-determination or the Indian Child Welfare Act, Native people in the United States will always declare: We are still here!
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Ages 7 - 10.
Title: The Woman Carried Away by Killer Whales: A Haida Story
By: Janine Gibbons
Published: 2017
When a woman is carried off by killer whales, her husband embarks on a journey to get her back. Aided by friends he meets along the way, the man follows her trail across the bottom of the sea to the Killer Whale House.
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Ages 5 - 6.
Title: The Woman Who Married The Bear
By: Frank Henry Kaash Katasse
Published: 2017
A retelling of an ancient west coast First Nations' tale of the experiences of a young woman after she encounters a clan of Bear People and learns to respect the natural world.
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Ages 5 - 6.
Title: Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask
By: Anton Treuer
Published: 2021
From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young readers alike.
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Ages 12 and up.
Title: Young Water Protectors: A Story About Standing Rock
By: Aslan Tudor
Published: 2018
8-year-old Aslan arrived in North Dakota to help stop a pipeline. A few months later he returned -- and saw the whole world watching. Read about his inspiring experiences in the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock. Learn about what exactly happened there, and why.
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Ages 6 - 12.
Title: The Christmas Coat : Memories of my Sioux Childhood
By: Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
Published: 2011
Virginia and her brother are never allowed to pick first from the donation boxes at church because their father is the priest, and she is heartbroken when another girl gets the beautiful coat that she covets.
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Ages 5 - 8.
Title: Sky Wolf's Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge
By: Eldon Yellowhorn
Published: 2022
Indigenous knowledge has much to teach us about modern problems: how to deal with forest fires, how to grow food in ways that will ensure that future generations will be fed, how to heal our communities and our planet, and more. Drawing on the wisdom of Elders, traditional stories, and profiles of present-day Knowledge Keepers, this book introduces us to a body of knowledge that has shaped the lives of countless generations and allows us to see it in action today.
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Ages 11 - 17
