My six-year-old nephew reads many of the same books I read when I was his age, from Margaret Wise Brown's inveterate 1947 bedtime story Goodnight Moon to the 1960s classics Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. While I'm a fan of the golden oldies, I've often wondered, What book might I read to him that would better reflect the world we live in today?

I can't imagine a better choice than We Are Water Protectors (Roaring Brook Press, 2020). This rallying cry of a story is beautifully written by Carole Lindstrom, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, and vividly illustrated by Michaela Goade, an enrolled member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes who won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for the book—the first Indigenous artist to do so. We Are Water Protectors tells the story of a young Ojibwe girl and her people as they take on the "black snake" of an oil pipeline threatening their way of life.

In flourishing watercolors that ripple across every page—a celestial mother holding her pregnant belly toward the sky, a hummingbird darting past diaphanous foliage—our young protagonist considers how mni wiconi (the principle that "water is life") shapes her people's relationship to the land. They will need solidarity and courage to defend their land against the black snake, with recognition that what unites us—"the winged ones, the crawling ones," the plants, trees, rivers, lakes—is that "we are all related." Readers of all ages will appreciate the glossary of Ojibwe, Lakota, and Tlingit words at the end, along with an Earth Steward and Water Protector Pledge ready for their signature.