At the beginning of time there was sweetgrass, fragrant and lovely, “the very first to grow on earth,” a tangible, abundant reminder of the creator called Skywoman.

So we learn in the pages of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, a book that metaphorically weaves the aromatic sweetgrass of the northern prairies in three strands: “indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.” And what matters most? Love, family, friendship—and Earth itself, which is very much in need of our help after being mistreated for so long.

Lyrical, elegant, and full of difficult but never obscure science, Braiding Sweetgrass took time to build an audience after being published in 2013 and reissued two years later. But then, in the last year of a tumultuous presidency and ever clearer signs that things were not well with the planet, it landed on the New York Times bestseller list, gaining many new readers.

Now, building on the success of the book, comes Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults (Zest Books, Nov. 1). To transform Kimmerer’s words into prose more accessible to that younger audience, the Minneapolis-based publisher commissioned a writer with wide experience in writing for all ages: Cree/Lakota novelist, memoirist, and activist Monique Gray Smith, who has won numerous awards in her native Canada for books such as Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience (2014) and Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation (2017).

“Cherokee writer Traci Sorell, who’s an incredibly gifted author of beautiful children’s books, put my name forward,” Smith tells Kirkus in a Zoom conversation from her home on Vancouver Island. “I was awed and honored at even being thought of as someone who could do that work. I think Braiding Sweetgrass is a sacred text. I first read it in 2015, and as I did, I had to put the book down and think about it to let everything find its proper place, there was so much wisdom and information in it.”

As she outlined Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults, Smith wrestled with a problem. “It’s a book for young readers, yes. But also, for some adult readers, there wasn’t an easy entry point, a way in. In some ways it was written for an academic readership, so I wanted to go for the young at heart, the young of mind and spirit. That’s how I approached the book—but only after writing to Robin to say that I wanted to meet with her, as two Indigenous women, to be sure that to her I was a fit to do this work.”

She was, and she had another challenge to face: She had only six months to deliver the text. “My office was full of flip charts, different colored stickies, notes to make sure that I was braiding the sweetgrass myself—that I kept the Indigenous wisdom, the science, the beauty. Robin had approval at every step, which was very important to me: It may be my adaptation, but it was her work.”

Without much background in science, Smith found her own entry into the book by bringing out its social and environmental justice components. “Robin writes science beautifully,” she says. “But what I brought to the project in part was my work in social and emotional learning, and I made that piece more visible. This is becoming more important in education, and I wanted to be sure that educators could use the book.”

One lesson that Smith emphasizes, as does Kimmerer, is that we have forgotten how to live properly in the world. Our economy, our society, has instead fallen prey to the monster that the Anishinaabe call Windigo, voracious and rapacious; as Kimmerer writes, “The more a Windigo eats, the more ravenous it becomes.” We need not be its meal, and we need not feed it. Writes Smith toward the end of the text, having visited this idea many times in many contexts, “We can wait for climate change to turn the world and the Windigo into a puddle of red-tinged meltwater, or we can strap on our snowshoes and track him down.”

“We know what’s important. Young people know what’s important,” says Smith. “I think that if someone were to read my adaptation and then read Robin’s original text, they would see that the two books share the same heart and spirit. It’s a time of hope and possibility. There’s work to do: We have to love ourselves to love the land, be in that reciprocal relationship. Young people see that. They’re more than our future: They’re the ones who will keep the world alive. We need to love and nourish them in the same way that we need to love and nourish the land and tend to it—to her.”

Smith has been doing much work herself. Her book Circle of Love, an Indigenous LGBTQ+ story that, she says, “tells us that love is love,” will be published in 2024, with a book called Dreaming Alongside to appear in 2025. “I’m working on a novel, too, that’s very different from anything I’ve ever written,” she says. Readers, then, have much to look forward to after Monique Gray Smith’s lovely rendering of Braiding Sweetgrass.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor.