Navajo

Yossel’s Journey

Yossel, along with his family, flees anti-Jewish Russian pogroms in the late nineteenth century and settles in the American Southwest where he forges a friendship with Thomas, a Native American Navajo boy.

When We Are Kind / [Oxia Script]

When We Are Kind celebrates simple acts of everyday kindness and encourages children to explore how they feel when they initiate and receive acts of kindness in their lives. Celebrated author Monique Gray Smith has written many books on the topics of resilience and reconciliation and communicates an important message through carefully chosen words for readers of all ages. Beautifully illustrated by artist Nicole Neidhardt, this book encourages children to be kind to others and to themselves.

Code Word Courage

In September 1944 eleven-year-old Billie lives with her great aunt, Doff, eagerly waiting for her older brother Leo to return from boot camp, and desperate to find the father that left when she was little; but Leo brings a friend with him, a Navajo named Denny, and the injured dog they have rescued and named Bear–and when the two young men go off to war Bear becomes the thread that ties them all together, and helps Billie to find a true friend.

First Laugh

A Navajo family welcomes a new baby into the family with love and ceremony, eagerly waiting for that first special laugh. Includes brief description of birth customs in different cultures.

Frog Brings Rain

As fire creeps toward the village of the First People, First Man and First Woman must find a way to quench the flames. First Woman asks the Bird People, the River People, and the Water People for assistance, but everyone she speaks to has an excuse. “Not me,” said Mockingbird. “The smoke would hurt my voice and I would never sing again.” “Not me,” said Snail. “I carry my house with me and I am slow.” “No,” said Beaver. “We’d like to help, but our river home would become a desert if we changed the flow of water.” At last, First Woman asks the mysterious Frog for help. Will he be able to stop the flames before they reach the village? Author Patricia Hruby Powell’s retelling of this Navajo folktale is as graceful as it is compelling, and as magical as the mythical time it describes.

The Precious Gift: A Navaho Creation Myth

A drop of fresh water must be retrieved in order for First Man to create a stream or lake in his parched homeland, and the members of his village are unable to do so, but, through an unexpected twist of fate, their doomed destiny may be saved.

Navajo Women: Saanii

“I am a child of Changing Woman.” That is a line in a Navajo prayer spoken by medicine men on behalf of patients, and in the old days it was symbolic and spiritual. Today, it is real. Navajo women, once relegated to bearing children, caring for the home, and raising livestock in a matrilineal society, have transformed themselves into businesswomen, attorneys, truck drivers, pilots, nurses, artists, presidential candidates, and more. Who is the Navajo woman and what drives her in 2007? Join Navajo writer Betty Reid and photographer Kenji Kawano on a journey through the cycle of a Navajo woman’s life, from east (birth and youth) to south (teenager and young adult) to west (adult) to north (elder).

It Had To Be Done

In early 1942, during the darkest months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a group of 29 Navajo Marines, young and fresh out of boot camp, were taken into a room with bars on the windows and a guard at the door. Their task: devise a top-secret code that would thwart the sharpest cryptanalytic minds in Imperial Japan. And they succeeded.