Gitige - She/he Gardens
by Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Anishinaabe consultants Tom Jack, Tara Dupuis, Marcus Ammesmaki, Jodie Locking
Photographs by Autumn Aubu't
Anishinaabe consultants Tom Jack, Tara Dupuis, Marcus Ammesmaki, Jodie Locking
Photographs by Autumn Aubu't
Published in 2019
Published by Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing
Reviewed by Jean Mendoza
Review Status: Highly Recommended
The first lines of Gitige - She/he Gardens are, "Here is a story about gardening and what happens with a little watering, sunshine, and children's special care." It's a story that unfolds in the photographs, as it follows young children in their garden through a growing season.
Gitige is the latest of several delightful board books Fond du Lac Band has created that incorporate words in Anishinaabemowin (or Ojibwemowin). The others have all been reviewed or mentioned on AICL: Boozhoo/Come Play With Us, The Story of Manoomin, niimiwin/Everyone Dance, and Our Journey. Like several of them, Gitige is illustrated with photos of children from the Fond du Lac community. They show preschool-age children involved in the real work of gardening: digging, watering, working with adults, appreciating their plants, and sorting harvested food, as well as dressing up as flowers.
The photos on each page are labeled in English and Anishinaabemowin. At the end of the book is a page showing all the translations. One strength of the book is that the two languages are side-by-side on each page. There are nouns, verbs, phrases, and whole sentences for children to hear, see, and say.
Adults sharing the book can use the words in the captions to start conversations about the pictures, encouraging children's oral literacy in either language.
An adult who wants to hear the pronunciations of many of these words can find audio by native speakers on The Ojibwe People's Dictionary web site.
Anyone expecting to see a Three Sisters garden in the book may be disappointed. These kids are growing sunflowers, carrots, and a riotous assortment of flowers as well as corn and squash. I found only one problem with the book. On the first page, it looks like the English equivalent of zhoomiingweni has been left off inadvertently. I don't know if that's true for every copy or if mine is the only one. In any case, with adult help, children can do the detective work of figuring out via the glossary which English word belongs there.
You can order Gitige - She/he Gardens and those other great board books from the Fond du Lac Head Start Web site. [Editing on 1/30/2020 to report that until Fond du Lac Head Start is able to update their books page, you can order the book by emailing jeannesmith@fdlrez.com. Thanks, Sam Bloom for letting me know about that problem!]
And ...
Are you a Native writer or artist with an idea for a story? Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing would like to hear from you! Black Bears and Blueberries is a small Native-owned independent press dedicated to developing Native-themed books by Native authors and illustrators. They published and help to market Gitige. See their page of author info, or contact Betsy Albert-Peacock directly at balbert@d.umn.edu.
