Amik Loves School: A Story of Wisdom

By katherena vermette and Irene Kuziw

Amik loves going to school, but when he shares this with his grandfather, he finds out Moshoom attended residential school. At Moshoom’s school, students were forbidden from speaking their language. It sounds very different from Amik's school, so Amik has an idea…

In this heartwarming story, an Anishinaabe child shows his grandfather how his school celebrates the culture that residential schools tried to erase. A pronunciation guide for the Anishnaabemowin words can be found at the back of the book.

Rich in culture and grounded in traditional knowledge, Katherena Vermette’s The Seven Teachings Stories series features themes of love, wisdom, humility, courage, respect, honesty, and truth. Contemporary Indigenous children explore the Seven Teachings of the Anishinaabe through stories of home and family that will look familiar to all young readers in these books for ages 3–5.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HighWater Press
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781553798118

katherena vermette

KATHERENA VERMETTE is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her first book, North End Love Songs (The Muses Company), won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her NFB short documentary, this river, won the Coup de Coeur at the Montreal First Peoples Festival and a Canadian Screen Award. Her first novel, The Break, is the winner of three Manitoba Book Awards and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and it was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and CBC Canada Reads.

Book preview

Reviews for Amik Loves School

[carlathelibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a good, simple, introduction to the idea of the residency schools, and should probably be followed up with something that is a little more detailed. The history of the Residential Schools is a dark mark on Canadian History, but it needs to be told. The youth of today need to know that this happened and our government needs to continue to work toward reconciliation with the Native Canadians.

Amik loves school and shares this with his grandfather. When he discovers that his grandfather did not like his school, he asks why. Grandfather tells him very briefly about the residential school he lived in. He does not give a lot of detail about the horrors that many children experienced while at residential schools. Amik comes up with an idea to share how different his school is from the one his grandfather went to. He invites him to spend time with him at school and shows how the language of his people are taught at the school, and his heritage is now respected. They even smudge the room every morning, just as they do at home. His grandfather is happy that this school is not like the one he endured. The illustrations are well done and very respectful to the culture.

This is one of seven books that teach about the "Seven Teachings of the Anishinaabe—love, wisdom, humility, courage, respect, honesty, and truth." I am looking forward to reading the other six in this series. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book via Netgalley.