Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults is my new favorite book! What a great way for young people (and anyone, really) to learn about our healing medicines. So many teachings within the pages. I love the mix of photos, illustrations, and text boxes filled with reflective questions and translations. I will be purchasing boxes of this incredible book to share with loved ones! Chii miigwech!

Angeline Boulley, #1 NYT best-selling author of Firekeepers Daughter

Monique Gray Smith has exquisitely captured the tone of Robin Wall Kimmerers voice in this masterful adaptation for young readers of Braiding Sweetgrass . It has all the power, poetry, and passion of the adult edition but there is a delightful intimacy that will make YA readers feel as if Kimmerer is holding an intimate conversation with them about Indigenous knowledge and its connection to the well-being of the planet.

Jeffrey Canton, childrens book columnist, Globe and Mail Canada

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults is a book to grow up with and grow into. It is both medicine and a loud and urgent call to honour the gifts of the earth and the responsibility to give gifts to the earth in return. Imagine growing up guided by the questions How can we make our relations with the world sacred again? and What will your offering be? This book will plant a garden in young hearts and then, oh, what a world!

Shelagh Rogers, OC, host and producer of CBC Radio Ones The Next Chapter , former chancellor of the University of Victoria

What a gift this adaptation is for all of us! Monique Gray Smith and Nicole Neidhardt have crafted a beautiful bookinviting reflection, conversation, and activism that I hope young people will read and share in homes, communities, classrooms, and libraries across the globe.

Traci Sorell, award-winning author of We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga

Just as the original Braiding Sweetgrass offers a lifeline back to Indigenous teachings, this adaptation augments these stories with exquisite visuals such as Skywoman Falling and the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address as an epic gathering of all beings, and it wraps key concepts and questions within a braid of sweetgrass. This beautiful, imaginative revisioning is a gift to our children that teaches them how to follow the path of our ancestors.

Diane Wilson, award-winning author of The Seed Keeper

2022 by Lerner Publishing Group

Illustrations 2022 by Nicole Neidhardt

Published by Zest Books, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Minneapolis, MN

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review .

Adapted from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

2013 by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Published by Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN

Zest Books

An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

241 First Avenue North

Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com .

Visit us at zestbooks.net .

Designed by Danielle Carnito. Interior layout design by Martha Kranes.

Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kimmerer, Robin Wall, author . | Gray Smith, Monique, 1968 adapter . | Neidhardt, Nicole, illustrator . | Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding sweetgrass.

Title: Braiding sweetgrass for young adult s : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants / Robin Wall Kimmerer ; adapted by Monique Gray Smith ; [illustrated by] Nicole Neidhardt.

Description: Minneapolis, M N : Zest Books, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., [2022 ] | Includes bibliographical references and index . | Audience: Ages 121 8 | Audience: Grades 7 9 | Summary: Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerers best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass is adapted for a young adult audience by childrens author Monique Gray Smith, bringing Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022012153 (print ) | LCCN 2022012154 (ebook ) | ISBN 781728458984 (lib. bdg. ) | ISBN 781728458991 (pbk. ) | ISBN 781728460635 (ebook ) | ISBN 781728460666 (eb pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Kimmerer, Robin WallJuvenile literature . | Indian philosophyJuvenile literature . | EthnoecologyJuvenile literature . | Philosophy of natureJuvenile literature . | Human ecologyPhilosophyJuvenile literature . | NatureEffect of human beings onJuvenile literature . | Human-plant relationshipsJuvenile literature . | BotanyPhilosophyJuvenile literature . | Potawatomi IndiansBiographyJuvenile literature . | Potawatomi IndiansSocial life and customsJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC E98.P5 K56 2022 (print ) | LCC E98.P5 (ebook ) | DDC 305.8dc23/eng/20220408

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012153

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012154

Manufactured in the United States of America

1-50975-50238-6/17/2022

Lerner Publishing Group is committed to ecological stewardship. Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults is printed on acid-free postconsumer-waste paper that was sourced through well-managed forests, controlled sources, and recycled wood or fiber.

For Dio, Ben, and Nora

R.W.K.

For my parents, Ed and Shirley Smith, who taught my sister and I to love the land. And for my children, Sadie and Jaxson, you are the most precious gifts Ive ever been blessed with.

M.G.S.

To thriving Indigenous futures. May the love we put into this book continue setting in motion the worlds we wish to inhabit.

N.N.

As young people, you are much closer to remembering than adults. Remember a time when you felt connected to all living beings, not only the humans in your life but also the plants, animals, and the earth herself. It would bring me such joy to know that perhaps you have never forgotten that connection.

W e are in the time of the Seventh Fire, a time prophesied by my Anishinaabe ancestors. A sacred time when our shared remembering transforms the world. A dark time and a time filled with light. We can choose to live in the dark or in the light. We remember the oft-used words of resistance, They tried to bury us, but they didnt know we were seeds.

I invite you to remember another way of being in the world, in kinship. To be in a relationship with all living beings, our relatives. Often in the Western world, kinship is thought of only as human relatives, but in many Indigenous worldviews, kinship includes plants and animals. To remember what may have been buried by the noise of the world and by the commodification of nature. A remembering of knowing you can be good medicine for the land. And I hope, a remembering of or an understanding of your gifts (something that is unique to you) and how to share them to contribute to the well-being of the world.