#danielle daniel

Happy World Kindness Day! Observed annually on November 13th, World Kindness Day encourages us to set aside our differences and focus on recognizing and participating in good deeds and kindness throughout our communities. In recognition of the day, we are sharing You Hold Me Up Gimanaadenim written in English by Cree author Monique Gray Smith with illustrations by Canadian First Nations author and artist Danielle Daniel, and translated to Anishinaabemowin by two UW-Milwaukee-associated Ojibwe-language specialists Angela Mesic and Margaret Noodin. 

While You Hold Me Up Gimanaadenim was written to inspire children to show each other love and support, the lessons are applicable at any stage in life. Gray Smith writes that the book was written in the “spirit of Reconciliation”, coupled with Daniel’s vibrant illustrations it successfully demonstrates how to be more empathetic and build loving relationships.  

You Hold Me Up was published in English in 2017 and met with many accolades including the 2017 American Indians in Children’s Literature Best Books award and 2018 Global Read Aloud award. It went on to be translated to Anishinaabemowin in 2021. Both versions were published by Orca Book Publishers out of British Columbia who notes that the translation “has been done according to more western conventions used by speakers of Anishinaabemowin. . . and matches the lexicon found in the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary.” 

View other Milestone Monday posts.

I Am Canada: A Celebration (2006)

Story: Heather Patterson -- Art: Jeremy Tankard, Ruth Ohi, Barbara Reid, Jon Klassen, Marie-Louise Gay, Danielle Daniel, Ashley Spires, Geneviève Côté, Cale Atkinson, Doretta Groenendyk, Qin Leng, Eva Campbel, Irene Luxbacher

Sometimes I Feel Like A Fox (2015)

Story and Art: Danielle Daniel Canadian

goodreads

In this haunting, groundbreaking, historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of her ancestors in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family link to a girl murdered near Trois-Rivières in the early days of French settlement. Marie, an Algonquin woman of the Weskarini Deer Clan, lost her first husband and her children to an Iroquois raid. In the aftermath of another lethal attack, her chief begs her to remarry for the sake of the clan. Marie is a healer who honours the ways of her people, and Pierre, the green-eyed ex-soldier from France who wants her for his bride, is not the man she would choose. But her people are dwindling, wracked by white men's diseases and nearly starving every winter as the game retreats away from the white settlements. If her chief believes such a marriage will cement their alliance with the French against the Iroquois and the British, she feels she has no choice. Though she does it reluctantly, and with some fear--Marie is trading the memory of the man she loved for a man she doesn't understand at all, and whose devout Catholicism blinds him to the ways of her people. This beautiful, powerful novel brings to life women who have literally fallen through the cracks of settler histories. Especially Jeanne, the first child born of the new marriage, neither white nor Weskarini, but caught between worlds. As she reaches adolescence, it becomes clear she is two-spirited. In her mother's culture, she would have been considered blessed, her nature a sign of special wisdom. But to the settlers of New France, and even to her own father, Jeanne is unnatural, sinful--a woman to be shunned, and worse. And so, with the poignant story of Jeanne, Danielle Daniel imagines her way into the heart and mind of a woman at the origin of the long history of violence against Indigenous women and the deliberate, equally violent, disruption of First Nations culture--opening a door long jammed shut, so all of us can enter.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox by Danielle Daniel

Before I start this review of sorts, I feel like I should preface it. Please don’t use the term “spirit animal” unless you are Native Indian/First Nations. Just as you wouldn’t go on the Hajj unless you are Muslim, you don’t get a spirit animal unless you are Native Indian/First Nations. There. I said it. Now let’s move on to this delicious picturebook. Hardcover, 40 pages Published August 1st…