
Enjoy recommended reads for Native American Heritage Month-- or anytime!
Revised
October 23, 2025
Whether you're celebrating Native American Heritage Month or just looking for a great read, check out these staff-selected titles for little kids, big kids, tweens, teens and adults.
Little kids
Books
Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley
Boozhoo! = Hello!
2024
J 497.333 PAW
Written in both Anishinaabemowin and English, this colorful picture book introduces children to a variety of woodland and water animals as they go about their daily activities until the sun goes down and it's time for bed.
Picture books
Traci Sorell
Being Home
2024
PICTURE BOOK Sorell, Traci
On a day filled with anticipation, a young Cherokee girl bids farewell to her familiar city life and documents the changing landscape through drawings as her family moves to their ancestral land and embraces their new home.
Lexile level
450L
Board books
Traci Sorell
On Powwow Day
2024
BOARD BOOK Sorell, Traci
In this introduction to a traditional Native event, count one through ten as you make your way through the day of the powwow, looking for colors, family members, jingle dresses, musical instruments and tribal citizens.
Big kids
Books
Kelsey Borgford
What's in a Bead?
2024
PICTURE BOOK Borgford Kelsey
Tessa loves how her grandmother always smells of campfire stories. Mom says it's because Kohkom spends her days sewing beautiful beads onto smoked hides. Inspired, Tessa asks Kohkom to teach her beading, but first she must listen and learn about the many stories a bead holds.
Lexile level
730L
Anna Rose Johnson
The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry
2024
J FICTION Johnson Anna
Lucy, a spirited French-Ojibwe orphan, is sent to the stormy waters of Lake Superior to live with a mysterious family of lighthouse-keepers and, she hopes, to find the legendary necklace her father spent his life seeking.
Tasha Spillett
Raven's Ribbons
2025
Even someone who has lived a long time can see wonderful things that they've never seen before. In this case, it's Raven's grandmother watching her young grandson celebrating the traditional round dance with a ribbon skirt of his own.
Picture books
Patricia Morris Buckley
To Walk the Sky
2025
J 624.0889 BUC
Generation after generation, Native workers called skywalkers have sculpted city skylines, balancing on narrow beams and facing down terrifying heights and heartbreaking loss while building a legacy of landmarks across North America.
Andrea L. Rogers
Chooch Helped
2024
Sissy's younger brother Chooch isn't a baby anymore. They just celebrated his second birthday, after all. But no matter what Chooch does-- even if he's messing something up -- their parents say he's "helping." Sissy feels that Chooch can get away with anything!
Julie M loved this! Find out why »
Traci Sorell
Contenders
2023
J 796.357 SOR
The true story of John Meyers and Charles Bender who, in 1911, became the first two Native pro baseball players to face off in a World Series, teaches important lessons about resilience, doing what you love in the face of injustice and the fight for Native American representation in sports.
Graphic novels
Cameron Mukwa
The Ribbon Skirt: A Graphic Novel
2024
J GRAPHIC Mukwa, Cameron
A two-spirit, nonbinary 10-year-old, Anang sets out to make a ribbon skirt, a piece of clothing typically worn by girls in the Anishinaabe tradition, for an upcoming powwow, finding support, community and confidence along the way.
Chapter books
Dawn Quigley
Rule School
2024
J FICTION Quigley, Dawn
When the Elders' Tribal Center opens up their talent show to the entire community, Jo Jo puts her mind to helping her classmates identify their talents but has a hard time following the substitute teacher's new rules.
Tweens
Graphic novels
Emily Bowen Cohen
Two Tribes
2023
Feeling out of place at home with her mom and stepfather and at her Jewish day school, Mia makes a secret plan to use her bat mitzvah gifts to take a bus to Oklahoma to visit her dad and find the connection to her Muscogee side she knows is just as important as her Jewish side.
Books
Christine Day
We Still Belong
2023
J FICTION Day, Christine
Wesley's hopeful plans for Indigenous Peoples' Day (and asking her crush to the dance) go all wrong, until she finds herself surrounded by the love of her Indigenous family and community at the intertribal powwow.
Lexile level
770L
Anna Rose Johnson
The Blossoming Summer
2025
J FICTION Johnson, Anna
When 13-year-old Rosemary is evacuated from WWII London to her grandmother's home in America, she uncovers a hidden family truth-- that they are Anishinaabe-- leading her to embrace her heritage, forge new bonds and find beauty in unexpected places.
Dawn Quigley
Red Bird Danced
2024
J FICTION Quigley, Dawn
Living in a large urban Native housing project, Ariel, whose auntie went missing, and Tomah, who has difficulty reading, find strength and hope in their connection and in their intertribal community as they learn to share the rhythms and stories they carry within themselves.
Chapter books
Deidre Havrelock
Indigenous Ingenuity
2023
J 500.89 HAV
This wide-ranging STEM book, filled with simple activities and experiments, celebrates the discoveries and technological inventions of Indigenous North Americans, showing readers how to embrace the mindset of reciprocity, environmental responsibility and the interconnectedness of life.
Teens
Books
Angeline Boulley
Sisters in the Wind
2025
T FICTION Boulley, Angeline
Lucy Smith, a foster teen on the run, is drawn into a complex mystery involving her stolen Ojibwe heritage. Lucy must uncover the truth about her past, while also trying to clear her name and protect her loved ones.
K. A. Cobell
Looking for Smoke
2024
T FICTION Cobell, K. A.
When a classmate is murdered during a traditional Blackfeet giveaway, Mara, Loren, Brody and Eli, the last people to see her alive, must take matters into their own hands and clear their names-- even though one of them may be the killer.
Byron Graves
Rez Ball
2023
T FICTION Graves, Byron
When the varsity basketball team members take him under their wing, Tre Brun, representing his Ojibwe reservation, steps into his late brother's shoes as star player but soon learns he can't mess up-- not on the court, not in school and not in love.
Alina Pete
Indiginerds
2024
T GRAPHIC Indiginerds
This collection of 11 stories celebrates Indigenous people balancing traditional ways of knowing with modern pop culture.
Andrea L. Rogers
The Art Thieves
2024
T FICTION Rogers, Andrea
In 2052, with the world in a constant cycle of drought and superstorm, ice and fire, Stevie, a Cherokee girl working at a Texas museum, discovers it's about to get a whole lot worse when a mysterious boy from the future arrives.
Cynthia Leitich Smith
Legendary Frybread Drive-In
2025
T FICTION Legendary
This collection of interconnected stories, edited by a Muscogee author and featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers, serves up laughter, love, Native pride and the world’s best frybread.
Anton Treuer
Where Wolves Don't Die
2024
T FICTION Treuer, Anton
After a terrible fight with bully Matt Schroeder, Ezra becomes the prime suspect when Matt's house burns down and, while the investigation is ongoing, is sent to stay with his grandfather in a remote part of Canada, but the Schroeders are looking for him.
Adults
Books
Jon Hickey
Big Chief
2025
FICTION Hickey, Jon
Inside a tight-knit Anishinaabe tribe in Wisconsin's Northwoods, members of a tribal community fight amongst themselves for political power in the days leading up to an especially tense election for tribal president.
Stephen Graham Jones
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
2025
FICTION Jones, Stephen
In 1912, a Lutheran pastor documents the chilling confessions of Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire seeking justice for a historical massacre, intertwining themes of revenge, survival and haunting truths on the Blackfeet reservation.
Eric N loved this! Find out why »
Patty Krawec and Omar El Akkad
Bad Indians Book Club
2025
810.9897 KRA
An exploration of Indigenous literature that challenges settler colonial narratives, highlights marginalized voices across genres and invites readers to imagine new worlds through stories that reclaim identity, history and ways of understanding.
Danica Nava
The Truth According to Ember
2024
FICTION Nava, Danica
A Chickasaw woman who can't catch a break serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more.
Julian Brave Noisecat
We Survived the Night
2025
Blends history, mythology, memoir, and reportage as it follows a man's journey to reclaim Indigenous identity and culture amid colonial erasure, exploring family, trauma and Indigenous political and environmental movements across North America.
Eliana Ramage
To the Moon and Back
2025
FICTION Ramage, Eliana
When Steph Harper was five, her mother fled an abusive husband-- with Steph and her younger sister in tow-- to Cherokee Nation.
Sean Sherman, Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnelly
Turtle Island
2025
Uncover the stories behind the foods that have linked the natural environments, traditions and histories of Indigenous peoples across North America for millennia through more than 100 ancestral and modern recipes. The author is an Oglala Lakota chef and three-time James Beard Award winner.
Deborah Jackson Taffa
Whiskey Tender
2024
B Taffa, Deborah
A memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance, assimilation and reverence for tradition.
Cora S loved this! Find out why »
Daniel H. Wilson
Hole in the Sky
2025
FICTION Wilson, Daniel
As a mysterious object hurtles toward Earth, a Cherokee father, a NASA astrophysicist and a shadowy government agent each uncover pieces of an impending first contact, forcing humanity to confront what it means to meet the unknown.