Remember

Remember opens with an instruction to look up: recall the sky of one's birth and learn the story of each star. The poem then turns to the moon and to the sun at dawn, which it names the strongest point of time.

This is a picture book adaptation of a poem by Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her language is simple and direct, and every line asks the young reader to stop and pay attention to who they are and the world they were born into.

Michaela Goade, who draws on her Tlingit culture, paints the pictures. Her illustrations are vivid and give the words a visible form that children can follow on each page.

The book is short and unhurried, built for slow reading and for pausing between lines. It keeps returning to one idea, that everyone on Earth is connected, and it places people inside that web of sky, moon, sun and one another.