The 2024 Colorado Book Award in the Juvenile Literature category has been awarded to Brave Bird at Wounded Knee, with cover and interior art by Illustration and First Year Program faculty member Eric Freeberg. The book is the 10th in the I Am America series, all illustrated by Freeberg, which gives fictional retellings of real historical events from underrepresented voices in U.S. history—including Chinese-American pioneers, Black Americans at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and Japanese Americans imprisoned during World War II. The series is aimed at middle school readers.
Freeberg likened the series to A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Brave Bird at Wounded Knee by Rachel Bithell envisions a young girl in the Oglala Lakota Tribe during the 1973 protests at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
“I provided a cover painting showing [Brave Bird] and 10 interior black-and-white illustrations,” said Freeberg, who added that the book’s intended age range called for a more realistic style than fanciful illustrations for younger readers. “I enjoy a job where I get to do lots of drawings, probably because I’ve been doing so much color work lately.”
The Colorado Book Awards are presented annually by Colorado Humanities and The Center for the Book.
