Recognition and Awards
“Baker’s earth-toned illustrations feature soft edges, subtle colors, and braided sweetgrass borders, while lyrical text renders experience in evocative sensory prose”
2021 Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
2021 Maine Humanities Council and Maine’s Center for the Book selected The First Blade of Sweetgrass to represent Maine in the Library of Congress’s annual National Book Festival.
2021 Bank Street Best Children’s Books of the Year
2022 Lupine Award
The Lupine Award is designed to honor a living author or illustrator who is a resident of Maine, or who has created a work whose focus is Maine, as shown through the work’s characterization, plot or setting. The award distinguishes one winner and one honoree in the categories of picture book and juvenile/young adult.
2022 Notable Social Studies Trade Books list selection
2022 Association for Library Services, The First Blade of Sweetgrass was named as one of 60 Notable Younger Children’s Books
Each year a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) identifies the best of the best in children's books. According to the Notables Criteria, "notable" is defined as: Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding. As applied to children's books, notable should be thought to include books of especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children's interests in exemplary ways.
Reviewed in Friends Journal by Phila Hoopes
“For Indigenous children, the book offers a deep affirmation of tradition and connection to ancestry. For non-Native children, the book offers a rare and sweet experience of the land and its gifts from a more mindful, respectful, relational perspective. It is an invaluable gift in these days of virtual reality and nature deficit disorder.” Read the complete review.