A Coyote Solstice Tale

A Coyote Solstice Tale

by Thomas King & Gary Clement

Description:

Publisher's description (Groundwood Books)
Coyote is having friends over for a little solstice party in the woods when a little girl comes by unexpectedly. She leads the friends through the snowy woods to the mall -- a place they had never seen before. The trickster goes crazy with glee as he shops with abandon, only to discover that filling a shopping cart with goodies is not quite the same thing as actually paying for them. Thomas King is Cherokee.

Creator Biographies (House of Anansi)
Thomas King has written several highly acclaimed children’s books. A Coyote Solstice Tale, illustrated by Gary Clement, won the American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award for Best Picture Book and A Coyote Columbus Story, illustrated by William Kent Monkman, was a Governor General’s Award finalist. He was a Professor of English at the University of Guelph for many years, where he taught Native Literature and Creative Writing. He won the Governor General’s Award for his adult novel, The Back of the Turtle and he has been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Gary Clement is an award-winning author and illustrator. He has won the Governor General’s Award (Illustration) for The Great Poochini and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award (Illustration) for Just Stay Put, and Oy, Feh, So by Cary Fagan. He has also illustrated A Coyote Solstice Tale by Thomas King and Stories from Adam and Eve to Ezekiel by Celia Barker Lottridge. He is the editorial cartoonist for the National Post, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Gary lives in Toronto where he regularly exhibits his drawings and paintings.

Resource format: Illustrated Novel

Age recommendation: Grades 4 - 12

Keywords: trickster, solstice, coyote, Cherokee, animals, relationships, traditions, value system, hospitality, human-animal relationships, materialism, generosity, sharing, picturebook

Year of publication: 2009

Publisher information: Groundwood Books

Teaching and Learning Ideas

Our team collaborated with new teachers, alumni of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program, to create teaching and learning plans for texts in this website. With audiences ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Post-Secondary, lesson plans across this resource address a wide range of school subject areas, inclusive approaches, and Indigenous education topics, such as the revitalization of Indigenous languages. As this website was designed with Undergraduate Programs in Education instructors, as well as teachers in mind, connections to UPE courses have been flagged on each lesson plan. These lessons are intended as a starting place for educators, to help you envision ways in which you might bring Indigenous literatures, as well as ways of knowing, being, and doing, into your teaching contexts. Please adapt, use, and share these lessons in ways that are generative for your teaching practice. We offer our sincere thanks to the dozens of new teachers who gifted us with these creative ideas!

A Coyote Solstice Tale - grades 1-5 Lesson