Description
Art Coulson is a writer of Cherokee, English, and Dutch descent and comes from a family of storytellers in all three traditions. Art served as the first executive director of the Wilma Mankiller Foundation in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma after an award-winning twenty-five-year career in journalism. A 2023 McKnight Fellow in Children’s Literature, Art is the author of twenty books, graphic novels, and plays, including Chasing Bigfoot, Bank Street Best Book of 2020 The Reluctant Storyteller, All the Stars in the Sky, and Look, Grandma! Ni, Elisi!, which was named a best STEM children’s book by the National Science Teaching Association. Winona Nelson is a fine artist and illustrator of comics and children’s books. Her fine art, which often focuses on the stories and history of her tribe, the Ojibwe of Minnesota, as well as on gender and diversity, has been featured in galleries across the country.
This bighearted picture book is about a young boy who learns the Cherokee lesson of gadugi—how working together and helping each other makes the whole community stronger.
When eager Clay asks his elisi (grandmother) for help to be named star of the week at school, he’s surprised by her answer: No one person is more important than his family and his community. But is Clay still important at all?
This contemplative exploration of community, individualism, and responsibility—accentuated with traditional beadwork in the art—is a moving invitation to consider an indigenous perspective of one’s place in the world and how we all light up our sky, together.