Michaela GoadeRecensioni

-Fiction: Picture Book Traditional, Heritage
-Goade, Michaela. Berry Song. Illus by Michaela Goade. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022, Unp, Primary

-Berry Song is an enlightening story of a grandma and niece on a journey through nature on a beautiful day depicted by vibrant and gleaming watercolor illustrations. From the point of view of the child, Berry Song teaches the reader the importance of learning from Elders and respectfully living from nature that provides itself to us living creatures in a repetitive, calming tone that pleases the reader.

-AK: Nature, Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry, Huckleberry, Snowberry, Strawberry, Crowberry, herring eggs, Elder

-Activity: Before reading the book ask students about prior knowledge or experiences picking berries, harvesting herring eggs, or other traditional activities to help students connect with the text. Afterwards ask students questions about why it’s important to learn from Elders and respectfully harvest from the land.

This Caldecott Honor book is set "on an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea" and celebrates a Tlinget grandmother teaching her granddaughter "how to live on the land." As the land sings to them and sustains them, grandmother and granddaughter sing their gratitude to the land and forest and ocean. This is a beautiful story of familial love and the passing on of Indigenous knowledge.

PreS-Gr 2—A botanical guide to bright berries, an intergenerational journey in a wintry setting, an invitation to
explore Tlingit values, or simply a beautiful picture book—there are so many reasons to sing this berry song while
uncovering the lyrical elements of the natural landscape.

This book teaches about a little bit of a different way of learning then students may be used to. This books talks about how the little girl and her grandmother live off the land and they sing a song of thanks to the land for providing the berrys to them.

Childrens books
Picture book

Berry song
Realistic picture story book Grand mother and granddaughter love of wilderness

Goade Michaela Berry Song Illus Michaela Goade, Little Brown Books for Young Readers (July 19, 2022) 40pg. Primary

In this children’s picture book. The setting of this book is on an island in Alaska out picking berries and gathering other goods. As you hear The granddaughter narrate her adventures with grandma out picking berry’s she tells of all the joys it brings to her heart how much love she has for the land you can you see through her eyes the love and joy the land brings. She writes with a loving caring tone. The illustration are abstract and tie in a lot of elements that you may encounter in the wild. This book is a nice read and it really reminds me of my mom and grandparents taking us all out berry picking.

Plot Picking berries.
Characters Grandmother and Grand daughter
Setting A island in southeast Alaska
Theme Alaska native children’s picture book
Style Narrative
Tone is loving careing
Point of view
Illustrations look to be abstract
What you think of the book

Have I mentioned how much I love watercolor picture books? This was sooo beautiful!

A young girl and her grandma do many activities together. They express their positive relationship with the earth and being connected to it. They pick berries, gather seaweed, fish and more.

Y'all. This book is GORGEOUS.

First, let's talk the illustrations. Michaela Goade won a Caldecott Medal for "We Are Water Protectors." Those drawings, with the blues and the sweeping movements, truly encapsulated the story of the book. In Berry Song, Michaela uses the same techniques with an even larger color palette and creates utter magic. UTTER magic. From the land to the sea, to the girl and her grandmother, I feel the connectedness of one and all. As I discussed with my coworker, we felt the mist on our faces and the joy in our souls.

Then there is the writing (which Michaela does on her own this go around). I felt as if I was reading a love letter. And in so many ways I was. I was reading a love letter to Michaela's indigenous heritage, to the land, to her grandmother, to her way of life and the importance of a berry. Sadly, many cultures do not embrace hygge--simplicity--and no matter where a person stands politically or religiously, we need to be THANKFUL. We are where we are on the shoulders of others and of the land we land on.

READ THIS BOOK AND MARVEL!

While a grandmother teaches a young girl how to forage berries and other foods, she also enriches her with Tlingit culture, lore, and traditions so she'll be able to pass it on in turn. Nicely written and illustrated by an #OwnVoices creator.

(Another project! I'm trying to read all the picture books and graphic novels on the kids section of NPR's Books We Love 2022.)

berries ... oh, the lovely berries ...

A little girl and her grandma sing to the land and the land sings back to them. They sing to their ancestors and to the future. The berry song is sang and berry syrup is made. This book is good for the classroom because it shows that we are all connected and have songs to sing to each other.

Tlingit illustrator Michaela Goade, who won the Caldecott Medal in 2021 for her work on Carole Lindstrom's We Are Water Protectors, makes her debut as an author as well in this gorgeous, deeply-felt picture-book, and the result is a triumph! The simple narrative follows a young girl and her grandmother as they gather the many berries growing near their island home by the edge of the "wide wild sea." The beauty of the natural world around them, and the theme of gratitude for what the land provides are dominant themes, which is emphasized in Goade's lovely afterward, in which she speaks more of the spiritual aspect of her people's relationship with the world around them, and with the "medicine" of berry picking...

Having greatly enjoyed Goade's work in a number of other picture-books, including the Lindstrom title, and a few folkloric works published by Sealaska Heritage, I picked up Berry Song with great anticipation. I was not disappointed, finding it to be a lovely book, one which pairs a simple but emotionally resonant narrative with breathtakingly beautiful artwork. Some of the scenes were just so gorgeous, both in their overall composition and in the little details—the scene of the little girl entering the forest with her blue bucket, the one in which her hair is made of berries and her dress is the sea—that I needed to pore over them. There is true magic in these pictures! The narrative was also lovely, emphasizing the girl and her grandmother's relationship to land and sea, and the ties of love and gratitude that bind them together. As a berry lover myself, I was interested in the great diversity of different kinds mentioned, and I appreciated the use of both English and Tlingit words for them, on the gorgeously decorative endpapers. As someone who has only encountered cloudberries in Scandinavia before (I discovered them while visiting Sweden some years ago), I was tickled to see them included, and fascinated by some others (bunchberry, chalkberry) that I had never heard of before. Now I want to try them all...

Truly, a wonderful book, one I highly recommend to all picture-book readers looking for gorgeous artwork, stories of our ties to the land, or featuring a Native American / Tlingit cultural background. I borrowed this from the library, but I think I would like to own a copy of my own!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michaela-goade/berry-song/

See also: The First Blade of Sweetgrass by Suzanne Greenlaw; Molly of Denali

Beautiful endpapers show different kinds of berries, with their names in both languages. A notice on the front endpaper cautions readers not to eat wild berries they haven't had adult help in identifying.