Book - Kindred Spirits: Shilombish Ittibachuffa

Leslie Stall Widener, art: Johnson Yazzie

Poetic text and enchanting illustrations tell the pay-it-forward story of the centuries-long mutual aid between Choctaw and Irish people. Includes simple history sidebars.

1845. The Potato Famine devastated Ireland. An ocean away, Choctaw people heard and were moved by the similarities to the injustice they had suffered on the Trail of Tears. Though they had little, they gathered money to donate.

2017. Irish people built a statue to remember their connection to the Choctaw Nation--twenty-foot high feathers in the shape of a bowl.

2020. COVID-19 disproportionately ravished the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe. Irish people remembered the Choctaws' kindness and paid it forward by donating.

Empathy creates kindness that lives well beyond a single act and includes more people the bigger it grows.

♦ "A richly detailed, phenomenally told true story about paying it forward through history."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Ages 5-8, Hardcover, 11x9, 32 pp., 2024.