Heart Berry Bling
Heart Berry Bling
I try to do it just how Granny shows me, not pulling the thread too tight or leaving it too loose, so the beads lie flat and smooth and don’t pucker or curl.
Sometimes my beads are too far apart. Or I forget to count the beads when I’m loading them onto my needle. And the thread keeps getting all snagged and tangled.
“Ouch!” I shout. “My finger!”
“Let me see,” Granny says, checking the tiny pinprick on my skin.“It’s only a small poke. If you plan on doing beading, you need to get used to being nicked from time to time. It’s just part of the process.”
“I’m not good at this. I—I can’t do this!” I say, tossing the beadwork aside.
“You have to practise if you want to become a better beader. The more familiar your fingers are with the needle and thread, the more comfortable you’ll be. Even the most marvellous beaders had to start somewhere,” Granny says.
“I’ll never be able to figure this out.”
This attractive picture book features Maggie, a young Anishinaabe girl who is visiting her grandmother in the city. The pair sit quietly together enjoying each other’s company as Maggie learns the native art of beading. She is making earrings designed in the shape of strawberries that Grandma tells her are called heart berries in their culture. As they work, Grandma explains the intricacies of the art and its traditional value for her people. She highlights the comfort it brought her personally when she felt isolated from her culture, having lost her Indian status through marriage to a non First Nations man. Details of this injustice are explained both through Grandma’s dialogue and in a detailed author’s afterword.
Heart Berry Bling is a heartwarming book revealing the close and unspoken connection between generations, the significance of craft and artwork to indigenous communities as well as the injustices Indigenous women experienced under the Indian Act. The latter is a large focus of the book, extremely important in its own right but also especially dear to the author whose own grandmother suffered the same experience that had repercussions for her descendants.
This title stimulates the senses as the reader experiences impressions of colour, sound, touch, scent and taste through the keenly observed descriptive text and the accompanying illustrations. Text and illustrations meld together perfectly. The artist has created realistic and expressive pictures in rich colours that invite repeated perusals, never failing to provide satisfaction.
The story portrays the passing of cultural wisdom through generations as Grandma speaks gently of her people’s beliefs regarding the connection between nature and humans, and Heart Berry Bling provides lessons regarding patience and perseverance. It is a deceptively simple story of love that also draws attention to injustices of which most non-indigenous people are unaware. A great addition to all collections.
Aileen Wortley is a retired children’s librarian from Toronto, Ontario.