Yáadilá! Good Grief!
Written by Laurel Goodluck (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara)
Illustrated by Jonathan Nelson (Diné)
Published in 2025
Publisher: Heartdrum (HarperCollins)
Reviewer: Debbie Reese
Review Status: Highly Recommended
****
Back in 2016 I read a comic called The Wool of Jonesy -- and I loved it. Since then I've followed Jonathan Nelson's work. Again and again, his words and art are precisely what I want Native kids to have. Then in 2022, I read Laurel Goodluck's Forever Cousins. Her storytelling hits me like Jonathan's does. Her books are the ones I want all Native kids to have. He did the illustrations for Forever Cousins. If you've participated in webinars I do online, you know that I talk about their book a lot. And now, they're partnered up again in Yáadilá! Good Grief!
Imagine me opening Yáadilá! Good Grief! Then imagine my smile as I see the sheep in the endpaper art! Something about Nelson's illustrations of sheep appeals to me in ways I can't explain. There aren't any on the cover (shown above) but sheep are a significant part of the story Goodluck and Nelson give to us. On the cover, you see a family (a grandmother, parents, and two children).
Here's the synopsis:
Bahe and Dezba are helping their grandmother, Nali, move from her sheep camp home to their house. The family is packing up, carrying heavy boxes, and settling into a new life together, which isn’t always easy. At every frustration, they throw up their hands and exclaim, “Yaadila!” Good grief!
Bahe sees that this big change is hardest for Nali. But he has a secret plan. Whatever can he be doing with a bucket of water, all that yarn, and Dezba’s dollhouse?
In this heartwarming and quintessentially Navajo (Diné) story, author Laurel Goodluck (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian) and illustrator Jonathan Nelson (Diné) together show a big change for an Elder made easier with a creative gesture of love and care.
In my webinars, I tell participants to go right to the end matter in a book to study the author's notes. Those pages are packed with information that teachers, parents, librarians -- anyone who is going to use the book -- need to fully engage the story.
When you flip to the back of this book to find the Author's Note, the first thing you'll is a large red box with a note (white text on a red background) from the "Helpful Narrator" who says
Shhh. Don't tell Bahe, but I'm sneaking back. Wow, wasn't that a fun story? You learned how to yáadilá. You saw how a little sister could be annoying when you're busy doing something nice for your nali. And how cool was it to learn new Diné words? Now it's that time in a picture book when you learn about the author. The author--
In the midst of that sentence, we see an interruption in black text: "Excuse me? What are you doing here?" and then, the final sentence in the red box:
The author has a few words to share on her own. Yáadilá! I'm really done. Hágoónee'.
And beneath that red box/note from Helpful Narrator, we find the Author's Note.
We first met Helpful Narrator in the opening pages. There, it tells us (the readers) how to say yáadilá and how to convey it, too, with body language. As soon as I get a hard copy of the book, I'll be back with some screen captures to show you how this all plays out.
Helpful Narrator's purpose is to speak to us in ways that resonate with me. Within Native communities--and yours, too, perhaps--a reading or storytelling has moments when the reader/speaker steps out of the story to say something. It is a natural way of storytelling. In film, that's called "breaking the fourth wall" and it annoys some people, but I like it because it feels right to me. Storytelling is not strictly a performance! Storytellers might perform but they also engage their audience. That's what Helpful Narrator does in the opening pages, and at the end, too.
I'll be back with more to say about this wonderful book. Obviously I am delighted with it which means I'm highly recommending that you get it for your public and school libraries, and for your classrooms, and your home library, too!
