Birchbark Books and Native Arts

Annabelle

A Language Older Than Words (and everything else by Derrick Jensen). It's hard to use language to describe this book. If Annabelle could, she would just tell you to stop what you're doing and look out at the world. Pay attention! Listen to the birds! Watch the leaves forming on the trees in Minnesota even though it's only April! The book is about these things and much, much more. It's about observation and paying attention. Seems simple, yet....it is also about the enormous loss EVERYone and EVERYthing experiences when human beings fail these tasks. Annabelle thinks everyone should have a copy...being an elder dog, she has observed our human natures for quite some time now...

Annabelle travels - from ocean to ocean, from Redwood to Boreal forest, from Bernal Heights Park in San Francisco to the Blackhills. She likes best to look out the car window, marveling at the world. She wades in rivers, streams, lakes; when geese fly overhead she stops to take it in. As a Corgi, Annabelle doesn't need human words to describe the pure joy of land and water. She breaths in thankfulness, she breathes out thankfulness. She also understands the human need for words. Which is why she loves Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. Singing sand. Shrub carr. Riffle ("the little brother of a rapid"). Annabelle knows it's an intricate thing to get to know land and these words help, they point to the smallest relationships - sand sings when the geometry of individual grains, wind, humidity, a dune's crest, and a slough interact in a particular way, at a particular moment. Amazing: singing sand. This is the perfect book for those of us, like Annabelle, who can appreciate a stair-step canyon, but also want to know a little more about how it formed. The poetic descriptions let us know what brinks, trembling prairies, ganderbrush, and tree tip pits really are. Do what Annabelle does: take this book on your travels or stay home and read it on the couch - either way, let your appreciation of the world mingle with the new knowledge and definitions you find. It makes Annabelle breathe a little deeper (thankful again) and look forward to her next road trip.

Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer, L' Alfabet di Michif (Owls See Clearly at Night, A Michif Alphabet) is THE most beautiful book Annabelle has ever seen. B is for li bafloo (buffalo) and as li bafloo on the page looks at Annabelle, Annabelle notes the red bird singing atop its back and the birch trees in the distance nearly fading into the horizon. She remembers running into (ok, not quite into - thank the stars) a herd of buffalo in Canada a couple of years ago. Rolling down the window of the car, Annabelle ruffed a hello and the huge animals turned gentle eyes upon her (funny thing - to see a small Corgi and a large buffalo in conversation). Annabelle reminisces on her relationship with buffalo as Emily turns the page AND... C is for lii chiiraan (northern lights) and Annabelle remembers the awe she felt one night in the north when she saw lii chiiraan so bright red that they lit up la niizh (the snow)! The pages go on like this, sparking stories with their intensely inspiring illustrations. It's amazing when such a book enters your life! It makes Annabelle's heart leap for joy -- it makes her want to dance la jig! It's a bilingual book, obviously, written and illustrated by Julie Flett, a member of the Métis nation who is now one of Annabelle's favorite people, just for the fact that she made such a beautiful thing. The humans at Birchbark Books keep this book in the children's section - but really, it's a book for everyone: children, adults, Corgi's, and buffalo!

Annabelle loves things within things. Snacks in her Kong toy. Snuggly blankets in bed. A surprising game of fetch surfacing within a walk. Poems in songs. Fractals! Dharma's human recently taught her about fractals - a thing of beauty within a thing of beauty, over and over and over... Like Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. A book within a book. A story surfacing via the erasure of words. The words teased out of The Street of Crocodiles and into Tree of Codes, become sentences you want to read out loud. Beauty mounts because the words you read are influenced by the words you can't help but see as you turn the pages of this die-cut book. Words within words! Like lives influenced by the the lives of others - what remains and what does not? Oh! It gives her chills, even as she lays, curled up in a blanket, on a pillow, in a bed. She reaches one dew claw into the space of one of the pages, hooks it, and pulls it toward her nose, pushing in to the left with her other paw. Thank you Jonathan for making a book that will cause humans pause and for making a book that is physically equipped for a dog's clawed paw.

Annabelle's been on tour with Emily. And what to do with the long hours while Emily is dancing away in the theater? Sleep of course! But when Emily comes back and the romping reunion and the delicious dinner is done, Annabelle and Emily sprawl out to read. Tours are a great time to read!  Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams was in the suitcase this last time (along with some extra treats Annabelle packed). Annabelle appreciated the mix of ecosystem and community, beauty and violence and especially dug (ha ha!) the section on those Pleistocene mammals, prairie dogs; couldn't get enough of Madame Head Wide Apart, a prairie dog she'd like to meet (Annabelle is friend to all animals!).

And even though Emily is in the midst of a production, Annabelle can tell another dance is on its way...when Emily pulled The Way of the Human Being by Calvin Luther Martin out of her backpack, she knew the quiet hours of research and contemplation were beginning. This is a book of philosophy so pertinent to our every day. Annabelle does love the introspective time before starting a new dance and especially loves reading about Emily's ancestors but truly thinks someone should write a book called "The Way of the Corgi", after all, we all have our histories!

And speaking of history, once Annabelle got to tour with Emily up to Alaska! Wow! What a dream! The mountains and rivers and the beach! Annabelle absolutely adores running on a wet, sandy beach which is maybe why, during the recent holiday Annabelle received Alego under her doggie bed. This bilingual book by Ningeokuluk Teevee is a rich story of Alego's first time clam digging and the wonders she finds in tide pools and under rocks. Personally, Annabelle prefers rolling in seaweed to harvesting it, but she understands...different people have different tastes.

Independent but loyal, with pumpkin-brown eyebrows and a little pumpkin for a heart, Annabelle communicates with a vocabulary of "erfs" and irresistible stares. Annabelle recommends Arctic Adventures: Tales from the Lives of Inuit Artists by Raquel Rivera. She loves hearing about Arctic legends, artists' stories, and most of all, the pictures. Annabelle dances like a furry oblong super ball when Emily reads The People Have Never Stopped Dancing by Jacqueline Shea Murphy. She loves learning about Native American Dance histories. Annabelle is so proud of Emily's spirit and the extraordinary language of her dance movements. Emily is a profoundly beautiful dancer and choreographer, says Annabelle. Cuddly but proud, a furry muse, Annabelle does all she can to support the art of Emily.