Here's why that happened.
Back on Tuesday, May 28 of 2019 I wrote a post called Personal News: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People. Since then, the book came out and Jean and I have been to several places to talk about it.
On August 9th, I was in California at the Indian Education for All conference hosted by the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center. I gave the keynote lecture there and signed books. It was the first book signing I've ever done. Doing that signing at a Native education gathering held on the lands of the Pala Band of Mission Indians made it memorable in a way that nothing else could. One of the people I met who added to it being so memorable is Mary Levi. I was wearing a traditional belt that day. Mary noticed and mentioned it because it is something that pueblo people recognize. As we talked, Mary told me that her mom met me a few years ago. I remember her mom, vividly, because we were talking about books illustrated by one of their family members, Fred Kabotie! Here's me and Mary:
On August 25, Jean and I were together in Chicago at 57th Street Books for the official book launch. The event was memorable for many reasons. Our families were there, we sat together and signed books, and Elisa Gall gifted us cookies with the image of the book cover on them:
On social media, some people thought they were decks of cards. Which, of course, gives us ideas on what a deck of cards about the book might include!
Previous to the launch day, Jean and I had been talking about the need to create a companion website for the book. A day after the launch, I pulled it together (using blogger). The first blog post is a photo essay of the launch.
The following week, we were at the Urbana Free Library in Urbana, Illinois. Then I was in Washington DC where I did the keynote for a Teach-In at the National Museum of the American Indian. From there I went to the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs where I met with librarians about collection development and gave two talks to students in teacher education courses. Meanwhile, Jean was at Third Place Books last night, and has another event coming up near there, next week.
So... we've been busy! That's why there's been six weeks... SIX WEEKS!... with no posts to AICL. But we are definitely reading and drafting posts about old and new books, because that's what we do. Read, think, write.
Oh! Before I hit "publish" on this post, I will add that An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People is selling quite well! It is in its 7th printing. I think about 15,000 copies have been sold. Several times, we've gotten emails from people who said they can't get a copy because it is sold out at their store or on back order with an online bookstore. In my last email from Beacon (the publisher), I learned that more books are now available. I hope you'll buy one for our home, school, or university library! Here's a photo of the 7th printing (the lowest number in that string of numbers in a book tells you what printing the copy you're holding is part of).
I hope you'll buy one for our home, school, or university library!
