Joy Harjo's new picture book Remember to come out in spring 2023
Remember to be published on March 21, 2023
Joy Harjo, who recently completed a three-year run as the U.S. poet laureate, will have a picture book out next spring.
Random House Children's Books announced this month that Harjo's Remember, adapted from her celebrated poem of the same name, is scheduled for March 21, 2023. The book will feature illustrations by the award-winning artist Michaela Goade.
"In simple and direct language, Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, urges readers to pay close attention to who they are, the world they were born into and how all inhabitants on earth are connected," the publisher's announcement reads in part.
The poem Remember, published nearly 40 years ago, is a tribute to the cosmos and our place in it. Admirers of Remember extend beyond the poetry community: NASA announced last year that some lines were included in a plaque/time capsule on a spacecraft headed for the Trojan asteroids orbiting Jupiter.
"'Remember is one of my earliest poems. It came together as I was first becoming a poet, and needed to remind myself about what mattered," Harjo said in a statement.
"Every one of us needs spiritual food for how to negotiate this life of struggles and beauty. The poem has a life of its own. This poem has accompanied me much of my life. It is on a spacecraft heading to Jupiter, it is a song, dances have been made of it, and it has been translated into my Mvskoke language."
Harjo is a Tulsa-based writer, musician and poet and a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections, several plays, children's books and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. She was named the first Native American poet laureate of the United States in 2019.
She was succeeded by the 24th U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón.
Listen | Joy Harjo on Writers & Company:
Michaela Goade is an American-born illustrator from the Tlingit and Haida tribes. Goade won the 2021 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in the book We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom. Goade's first self-authored book, Berry Song, was released in 2022 and her numerous illustrated works include I Sang You Down from the Stairs by Canadian author Tasha Spillett-Sumner.
— With files from CBC Books
