niwîcihâw / I Help

By Caitlin Dale Nicholson

“Textured acrylic paintings, done in rich earth tones...portray the sanctity of the natural environment...a sensitive, respectful portrayal of contemporary Native Americans.” — School Library Journal

This simple story in Cree and English explores a young child’s relationship to his grandmother, or nôkhom, as they go for a walk in the woods to pick rosehips. The young boy follows his grandmother, walking, listening, picking, praying and eating, just as she does. In doing so, he absorbs the rich cultural traditions and values of his Cree heritage.

Caitlin Dale Nicholson’s acrylic-on-canvas illustrations portray the close relationship between the boy and his grandmother and the natural beauty of the bush. Her text has been translated into Cree by Leona Morin-Neilson, who was also the inspiration for niwîcihâw / I Help.

Formerly titled Niwechihaw / I Help, this revised paperback edition features updated text, including Cree syllabics in addition to standard roman orthography and English.

Key Text Features
recipe

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.3
With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.6
With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.7
With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts).

• Language: Cree
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781773061962

Caitlin Dale Nicholson

CAITLIN DALE NICHOLSON is a graduate of the First Nations Studies program at the University of Northern British Columbia. Her family and Leona Morin-Neilson’s family have been close friends for many years, and Caitlin continues to learn about traditional plant medicines from Leona. Caitlin has written and illustrated the first two books in the Nôhkom series — niwîcihâw / I Help and nipêhon / I Wait. She is currently living with her family in Tahltan Territory in northern British Columbia. 

Book preview

Reviews for niwîcihâw / I Help

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just as lovely as I Wait -- simple, bilingual Cree story, great art, great pacing.

[junipersun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My early/reluctant-reader grandchild enjoyed reading this book. The repetition made reading easy enough to enjoy, yet the detail in the illustrations provided much interest for her very imaginative and creative mind. The story ends with a simple recipe for making Rose Hip Tea (the story shows the progress of the pair in collecting rose hips).Each 2-page spread shows grandmother doing something on one side and the child on the other. The same phrase is used for both, with the substitution of "I" for "Nokom", and the phrases are written in 3 languages, giving the reader the choice of which they read while exposing young people to the reality of other languages and alphabets existing in our world. There is no pronunciation guide, so if you are not from that culture you may want to also use some of the other available tri-lingual Cree books to help you read the Cree aloud.I understand there is a series of these simple books, so we'll be looking for more of them.

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

With its simple, bi-lingual text in English and Cree, and beautiful, full-page acrylic illustrations, Niwechihaw / I Help is a lovely cultural and linguistic introduction to the indigenous Tahltan/Cree peoples of British Columbia. As a young boy assists his kôhkom, or grandmother, in picking berries, simple phrases are repeated in both languages, offering a subtle lesson in Cree culture: "Kôhkom pimohtew / Kôhkom walks. Nipimohtan / I walk. Kôhkom âyamihâw / Kôhkom prays. Niayâmihan / I pray." And so forth... The repetitive nature of the text makes it an excellent language-learning tool, but also emphasizes the bond between grandmother and grandson, in which the young boy learns to do by imitating his kôhkom.Echoing another reviewer, my sole complaint lies in the fact that there is no accompanying CD to help the reader pronounce the Cree words. Then again, I see on the dust-jacket that Leona Morin-Neilson teaches Cree at the "Power of Friendship" Aboriginal HeadStart program in Prince George, British Columbia, and get the sense that this is a book largely intended for Cree children themselves. Outsiders interested in hearing the sounds of Cree might want to pick up a copy of David Bouchard's recent bilingual English-Cree picture-book, The Drum Calls Softly, which does come with a CD.