You Hold Me Up
by Monique Gray Smith & Danielle Daniel
Description:
Publisher's description (Orca Book Publishers, 2017):
Starts a dialogue amoung young people, their care providers, and educators about reconciliation and the importance of supportive connections children make with their friends, classmates, and families." The author, Monique Gray Smith, is a woman of Cree, Lakota, and Scottish descent.
In this video, author Monique Gray Smith reads her picture book You Hold Me Up to an audience of children.
Author's biography (Orca Book Publisher, 2022):
Monique Gray Smith is an award-winning, bestselling author and public speaker. Her books cover a broad spectrum of ages, topics and emotions. Woven into all of Monique’s writing and her speaking engagements is the teaching that Love is Medicine. Her books include Speaking our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation, My Heart Fills With Happiness, You Hold Me Up, Lucy and Lola, Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience, Tilly and the Crazy Eights, When We Are Kind and I Hope. She has also created the young adult adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Monique is Cree and Scottish. She lives with her family on the Traditional Territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ Peoples.
Illustrator's biography (danielledaniel.com, 2023):
Danielle Daniel is a writer and artist, an award-winning author and illustrator—she writes books for children and adults. Her paintings have been collected in public and private collections across Canada, and throughout the US, the UK, France, and Australia. She has written two novels, Forever Birchwood, a middle grade novel set in her northern hometown and Daughters of the Deer, a historical fiction novel inspired by the lives of her ancestors— an Algonquin woman and a soldier/settler from France, and their first born daughter Jeanne.
Resource format: Picturebook
Age recommendation: Pre-K - Grade 3
Keywords: reconciliation, connections, family, friends, well-being, support, Plains Cree language, kinship, empathy, relationships, children, positive relationships, love, truth and reconciliation, Indigenous, compassion, kindness, acceptance, healthy relationships, behaviors, traditions
Year of publication: 2017
Publisher information: Orca Book Publishers
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!
You Hold Me Up K-6 Classroom Book
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