• Age: 6 to 8
• Grade: 1 to 3
• Reading age: 6 to 8

Key Selling Points

• Q'uleeq'e' the crow tries to make up for her mistake in this story about finding friendship and new beginnings through challenging experiences.
• The text includes names and words in Hul'q'umi'num', an Indigenous language spoken on and around Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
• The illustrations follow the Coast Salish art tradition of combining four basic shapes in both positive and negative spaces.
• The book also includes a glossary and pronunciation guide, an introduction to the Coast Salish traditional art style and a brief discussion of cultural appropriation.
• Author/illustrator Andrea Fritz studied with Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw artist and master carver Victor Newman. She shares Coast Salish stories, both traditional ones learned orally and new ones created from modern experience, with school children throughout British Columbia.

Andrea Fritz is a Coast Salish artist and storyteller from the Lyackson First Nation of the Hul’q'umi’num'-speaking Peoples on the West Coast of Canada. She studied West Coast Native art with Victor Newman, a Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw master artist. Andrea strives to express her People’s history and all our futures using her art and stories. She focuses on animals and places of the West Coast and our intricate relationships with them. Andrea works in the mediums of acrylic on canvas and wood, serigraph, vector art and multimedia. She has had numerous gallery shows of her work and participates in community-based art pieces. Andrea lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Andrea Fritz's profile page

“The tale is intentionally moralistic and repetitive; it would make a great read aloud…This book is especially suited for school libraries in the Pacific Northwest or any collection expanding its Indigenous collections.”

School Library Journal (SLJ)