Annie and the Old One

Annie and the Old One by Miska Miles, illustrated by Peter Parnall, 1971. Annie is a Navajo girl who lives with her family in a traditional hogan. Her family keeps sheep, and Annie helps to tend them when she’s not at school. She also likes to listen to her grandmother’s stories. One evening Annie’s grandmother tells the family that, by the time the new rug that Annie’s mother is weaving is finished, she will “go to Mother Earth”, meaning that the grandmother knows she is going to die. She asks each member of the family what they would like as a gift from her. When Annie looks at her grandmother’s weaving stick, her grandmother gives the weaving stick to Annie as a gift. Annie asks her mother how her grandmother can know when she is going to die, and her mother says that many Old Ones like her grandmother can tell. Annie doesn’t want her mother to finish weaving the rug she is weaving, wanting to put off the rug being finished so her grandmother will live longer, but her mother knows…

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