Join the Irondequoit Public Library's online book group called The Hoopla Huddle. This month we'll be reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Writers & Books has chosen this title for their 2021 If All Rochester Reads books, and will be hosting a series of events in October around this book. More information can be found here on their website. 

The ebook is available to be downloaded for free from Hoopla with your library card.  The free audiobook can be downloaded here. 

This program will be held online using a communication app/website called Zoom. Registration required with an email address. Participants will receive an email with the log-in information for Zoom. 

Book Description: As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation. " As she explores these themes, she circles toward a central argument: The awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.