FREE TO FLY

Hope is the thing with feathers in this soaring tale of indefatigable Indigenous identity.

Qal finds Aapa (Grandfather) painting in his treehouse by the sea, where the elder reminisces about time in “a crying place” (one of the residential schools where hundreds of thousands of Native children faced abuse) and shares tender insights. Now, dreaming and creativity “reminds me that I’m free,” but Aapa once drew hope from imagining his future family: “I built a nest, wisp by feather, for my dreams.” Iceberg’s (Aleut/Alutiiq) succinct text is tucked neatly into quieter corners of Littlebird’s (Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) immersive digital illustrations, which feature copious feathers and images of the brown-skinned pair sporting full wings in moments of particular strength. Cool, soothing blues in the swooping art are accented with strategic pops of Aapa’s orange clothing, a nod to Canada’s Orange Shirt tradition marking the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Like the strongest picture books about American Indian residential schools, such as Kay Dupuis, Kathy Kacer, and Gillian Newland’s I Am Not a Number (2016) and David A. Robertson and Julie Flett’s When We Were Alone (2016), this powerful work touches on the immeasurable loss of life, language, and cultural identity while modeling resilience for processing these institutions’ lasting individual impact. Backmatter lends additional color and context and includes a hopeful author’s note offering a brief history of cultural erasure.

A moving multigenerational story that urges us to look forward with optimism even as we acknowledge the pain of the past.