Discovering People

One of a quartet of trilingual books by Neepin Auger, a Cree artist, educator, and mother, Discovering People was originally published as a board book in 2019 and has now been reissued in a paperback format with new cover art. Beginning with the “role” names of family members and then spreading out to identify community members/helpers, Auger introducers her young readers to 22 terms that are used to identify the various roles people can play in her young readers’ lives. Auger starts with the reader’s family: “Baby”, “Me”, “Mother”, “Father”, “Grandmother”, “Grandfather”, “Sister”, “Brother”, “Auntie” and “Uncle”. Oddly, one of the family relationships that children often have difficulty understanding, that of “cousin”, is not included. Auger then moves beyond the family to some of the “role” people that children might encounter in their daily lives: “Teacher”, “Student”, “Doctor”, “Nurse”, “Police Officer”, “Firefighter”, “Paramedic”, “Veterinarian”, “Dancer” and “Drummer”. Auger acknowledges her own cultural background by concluding with “Medicine woman” and “Medicine man”.

Each of the book’s people is treated on a single page. In Auger’s other three books, the English word was presented first, and it was then followed by its (bolded) French and (italicized) Cree equivalents. Discovering People begins with that pattern, but Auger scrambles the order part way through, and readers must pay closer attention to the font to identify the language of the word.

As the book’s cover art indicates, Auger uses cartoon-like illustrations with spare backgrounds in portraying the people. Because many of Auger’s people are shown as having braided hair and wearing non-gender specific clothing, readers can choose, for example, to see the doctor or paramedic as being male or female. In illustrating the dancer and the drummer, Auger draws upon her cultural heritage with a hoop dancer and a man drumming on a traditional hand drum.

The book’s final four pages are given over to a “Pronunciation Guide” in which a thumbnail of the original illustration is followed by the English word and the French and Cree translations. Auger appears to assume that the book’s readers’ first language is English as the pronunciation assistance is only provided for the French and Cree words.

Auntie tante nikâwis
tont nikaawees

The polyglot aspect of Discovering People would make it a useful home purchase in those situations in which more than one of the book’s languages is being spoken. The book obviously has formal schooling applications as well.