When the Shadbush Blooms

Book cover When the Shadbush BloomsWhen the Shadbush Blooms is available as a paperback!   

 Signed and dedicated from: www.whentheshadbushblooms.net

Or from your local bookseller or in bulk from Lee and Low.

“The glory of white shadbush blossoms on the cover should be used as an excuse to pull it out in the spring and share it!”  

Please Note:  The video of my book, When the Shadbush Blooms is on to this page.  Password: Shadbush Blooms.  If it does not work, please send me an email: palenape@enter.net.  This video will not include Forward/Introduction, Background, Biography nor Activities page (for Activities visit the “child” page called Activities). Special Thanks to Anoush Khachatryan, Web-Dorado SUPPORT for her help!  The story is read by “Prof. History”. 


Mural Holland Township School District

Dr Nancy Yard & Carla Messinger 4 2015Dr. Nancy Yard Holland Township School District & Carla with mural in Dr. Yard’s office from When the Shadbush Blooms, 4/ 2015.You will find awards, what people said, excerpts and artwork on this page.  Look for the Shadbush Activity Page and the Children’s Page and for the book reviews page.fishing modern

Skipping Stones Honor AwardWe have won the 15th Annual Skipping Stones Honor Awards! The Skipping Stones Honor Awards recognize 26 exceptional books and teaching resources. Together, they encourage an understanding of the world’s diverse cultures, as well as nature and ecological richness. The selection promotes cooperation, nonviolence, respect for differing viewpoints and close relationships in human societies. Reading books is another way to explore cultures, places and even other time periods.  The winners are featured in the summer issue and also on www.SkippingStones.org.   5/15/08

National Children’s Choice Book Award Finalist! When the Shadbush Blooms has been named to this year’s list of Best Children’s Books by the Bank Street College Children’s Book Committee! The Committee reviews over 4000 titles each year for accuracy and literary quality and considers their emotional impact on children. It chooses the best 600 books, both fiction and nonfiction, which it lists according to age and category.

We have won the CCBC Choice 2008, Children’s Cooperative Book Center Award & 2008 Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts. Recommended to teachers by the National Museum of the American Indian, Spring 2008 Education E-Newsletter; Recommended on National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” November 2007; Featured in Kirkus Reviews’ BEA/ALA Big Book Guide 2007.

Excerpts- “My grandparent’s grandparents walked beside the same stream where I walk with my brother, and we can see what they saw.”  Today when a Lenape Indian girl ventures to the stream to fish for shad, she knows that another girl did the same generations before. Through the cycle of the seasons, what is important has remained: being with family, knowing when berries are ripe for picking, listening to stories in a warm home.

Told by Traditional Sister and Contemporary Sister, each from her own time, this is a book about tradition and about change. Then and now are not so very different when the shadbush blooms. “The book captures so much that is Native: cycles, the particular roles and joys of people of different ages, plants and animals as integral parts of life, the richness of lives lived simply, and our connection to the past, and thus to the future. The language is crystalline, pure and sparkling, nothing wasted; nothing more needed.” ‹ Karen Cody Cooper (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), Museum Training Coordinator, National Museum of the American Indian.

“Both text and pictures invite you in, not as a stranger viewing a different culture, but a welcome guest…. it does not imbed a Native nation in the distant past. Instead, we see both then and now side by side, deeply connected, flowing into each other.” ‹Joseph Bruchac, Abenaki storyteller and writer. “Over and against the plethora of “multicultural” writing for young children, this is the one I would choose to show them our pre-conquest lives: the balance of life, the belonging to the land and to each other, and how, for the fortunate among us, it still is that way. The traditions live, we adapt; what sustained us then, sustains now.” ‹Doris Seale (Dakota, Cree, and Abenaki), poet, and editor/author of Through Indian Eyes and A Broken Flute.

Border flowers

….”A three-page author’s note about the Lenni Lenape is informative and useful. This is a gentle introduction to the fact that Native Americans are an important part of our history-and of our present. (Picture book. 6-10)”