Cree-Metis author and illustrator Julie Flett’s tribute to her son, his friends, and their skateboarding community zings with energy and sings with the possibility of learning and enjoying the skill of skateboarding.
In an author’s note, Julie Flett writes, “When I was thinking about the story Let's Go! haw ekwa! I was inspired by the skateboard community we have been a part of for many years. For my son and his friends there was this beautiful need, a feeling of creative urgency—‘I have to go’—that skateboarding embodied and supported. Haw ekwa! is a Cree idiom meaning “okay then!’—the ekwa has multiple meanings including ‘now,’ in addition to the common ‘and.’”
Every day a young boy looks out of his window and hears, then sees an older boy—fast and confident—whizz past on a skateboard. Inspired, the young boy calls out to his mother, “haw ekwa! Let’s go!” At the city park, the boy imagines himself riding a skateboard “on the path that winds like a river,” though he doesn’t have one.
But everything changes for the boy when his mom brings her childhood skateboard home from her mother’s place. Now the boy has wheels of his own! “Haw ekwa! Let’s go!”
Though he imagines immediately soaring expertly on his mom’s skateboard, he discovers it’s not as easy as it looks. But he perseveres! When his mom finally takes him to a skatepark, the boy is intimidated by the proficient skateboarders and sits at the sidelines to watch. Soon he’s joined by two other children, also novices. The threesome become friends, sometimes skateboarding together down the street, sometimes going to a skatepark with an adult, and sometimes encouraging a new kid who wants to skateboard but is fearful to make the first move.
Flett’s lovely children’s picture book is more than a celebration of skateboarding. It honors the love between a parent and child, the power of community, and the joy of mastering a new skill.
(Greystone Kids)