A new year invites new stories—and Read Your World Day 2026 is the perfect moment to add meaningful, multicultural titles to your reading list. This edition of Valerie’s Vignettes highlights Origin: An Illuminating Look at Indigenous Peoples and Their Connection to the Natural World, a visually stunning and deeply thoughtful book that explores identity, place, and belonging through art and storytelling.
Origin invites readers of all ages to see the world through the faces, lands, and cultures of Indigenous communities—reminding us how stories connect us to one another and to the natural world we share.
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Publisher: Red Comet Press Published: 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63655-155-5 Pages: 64
A visually striking and thoughtfully crafted celebration of Indigenous peoples, place, and identity.
Origin is a delight for the eyes. Through illustrations that feature children’s faces shaped by their Indigenous homelands, Franco-Uruguayan illustrator Nat Cardozo makes a clear and powerful statement about the beauty and humanity of Indigenous peoples, their lands, and the deep connections between them. Each portrait blends the faces of children with elements of land, water, plants, and sky, showing how place and identity are inseparable. Cardozo captures the spirit of each community through the eyes of its children, who become the living center of every composition.
Each spread presents a complete story, often including facts about population and location—an element that helps set Origin apart. Historical context, cultural knowledge, and environmental realities are woven smoothly into each page, adding meaning without disrupting the reading experience. Every spread feels like its own small universe, inviting readers to slow down, look closely, and reflect.
The structure of the book makes it especially useful in educational settings. Individual pages naturally invite discussion and comparison with other texts and stories from different communities. At the same time, the book as a whole establishes a tone of respect, curiosity, and connection. Readers of all ages will find themselves returning to it, noticing new details with each reading.
As its subtitle promises, Origin offers an illuminating look at Indigenous peoples and their relationship to the natural world. Beautiful, intentional, and deeply human, it succeeds as both an art book and a storytelling experience.
A striking, accessible tribute well suited for classrooms, libraries, and collections focused on culture, identity, and environmental understanding.