I Sang You Down from the Stars

📖 The Scoop

"Drawing on Indigenous creation stories as well as on traditional teachings tied to birth, I Sang You Down From the Stars is at once culturally specific and universal in its appeal. The story takes inspiration from Spillett's cultural heritage and the Inniniwak belief (also believed among other Indigenous peoples) that babies choose their parents before they are born. Following a child on its journey from sky to earth, this simple, welcoming story offers parent and child a moving reminder of just how loved, valued and important a baby is, both within an individual family and in the wider community, through the creation of a traditional medicine bundle, gifted to a baby upon their birth. It is a story of love, giving, and belonging. An Indigenous women describes the love she has for her child, even before the child has entered the world, through the gathering and making of culturally and personally significant items (sage and cedar as winter medicines, a quilted star blanket, a "fluffy white eagle plume" collected under a shooting star, and so on) into a medicine bundle, to welcome the baby when they arrive. As these items are collected together, the mother/narrator (and reader)'s anticipation grows. When the baby is born, the mother describes the significance of each item in the medicine bundle, and when family members also "gather" together to welcome and celebrate them, she sees that the baby has also arrived with gifts of their own to offer the family, like a sacred bundle--"a sacred baby bundle.""--

Genre: Juvenile Fiction / People & Places / United States / Native American (fancy, right?)