The Stories He Tells
This story is for grade 2 students, as part of an anthology of trade book selections. This story was written from scratch to hit certain standards and lesson skills.
This is a biography of Joseph Bruchac. We had a privilege to work with Bruchac's son, James, to use photos of Joseph. We wanted to represent these photos in a respectful and authentic way. I avoided going in a stereotypical, all-out Native American to be culturally sensitive. Our editor found an artist on Etsy who had the style that perfectly fit our needs. I requested we get backgrounds and animals separately. This way, I had full control of where and how we can add these animals in the background. I added several effects to these animals so they look like ethereal spirits. Overall, I achieved the main idea of Native American tradition of story telling in a printed form. However, the best reward was hearing that James Bruchac was extremely pleased with how we represented contents that he holds dear to him.