By Traci Sorell
A Cherokee family walks through one full year saying one word — otsaliheliga, we are grateful — at the good parts and the hard parts both.
The year starts in fall, because the Cherokee year does, and it turns from there. There's the Great New Moon Ceremony and stomp dancing. There's a cousin leaving with the army and the family standing there watching. There's basket weaving and corn-husk dolls and a stickball game that gets rough. There are strawberries going into the ground in spring. And at every stop, the same Cherokee word: otsaliheliga. We are grateful. The word does not only land on the happy pages. It lands when the family remembers the ancestors who were driven along the Trail of Tears, and that is the point the book is built around.
It shows Cherokee people alive today, doing this now, which is the fact most children are missing. And it teaches gratitude without the sugar. The usual gratitude book asks a child to be thankful for nice things, which is easy and teaches nothing. This one says the word over a deployment and over the Trail of Tears too, so gratitude comes out looking like something you practice on purpose, in the cold months, rather than a mood you're in when things go well. That's a harder idea and it goes down easily here because the family is just getting on with the year.