New children’s book emphasizes the importance of home

Like many kids, author Raeann Brown spent much of her childhood dreaming about exploring the world outside of home. In the small Labrador town of Postville, Brown said she was constantly wondering what outside her community was like.

“I grew up in one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Brown said in an interview with Windspeaker.com. “But I didn't realize that until I got older.”

Postville is part of Nunatsiavut, an autonomous region in northern Labrador claimed by the local Inuit population.

“Around age seven or eight is when I started really dreaming about leaving and just visiting somewhere, just getting away from home,” Brown said. “I just kind of put that all together, dreams as a child of wanting to leave and now knowing the beauty of Nunatsiavut.”

In Brown’s upcoming work Bedtime in Nunatsiavut, a little girl named N’ya questions her mother each night about a new ability or task that she is not capable of performing. N’ya envisions herself as having the abilities of animals living in her world, such as the goose, salmon, bear, and fox.

“I would always imagine like, well, if I was a fish, I could just swim away from here. If I was a bird, I could just fly,” Brown said. “So I think [the inspiration for the book is] from thinking about my hometown and then back to when I was little, how I couldn't wait to grow up and move away.”

Brown now lives in Wabush in Labrador with her husband and children, an adjacent community to Labrador City. Brown said she misses her hometown, which is only accessible by plane, boat, or snow machine.

Postville’s population hovered between 200 and 250 people when Brown lived there. It’s a similar size today.

“Nothing has changed. It's almost like looking back in time,” Brown said, adding that she still keeps in touch with three friends from her childhood that currently live there.

Brown said she “never really had a [specific] place in mind” of where she wanted to go. But originally born in Montreal, Brown thinks that could have inspired her desire of travelling.

“I haven't been to Montreal since I was a baby,” Brown said. Knowing that I came from a big city and I guess seeing the city put it in my mind that there are bigger things out there and then I wanted to explore that.”

Brown says that her four daughters also helped inspire her to write the book, her first.

“I really want them to have something when they open the book that they could really picture themselves in the pages. I hope that kids that open the book and are living in Nunatsiavut right now would be proud that they're in Nunatsiavut and are happy.”

The COVID-19 pandemic derailed a 2020 trip home to Postville for Brown and her family, which further influenced Brown’s desire to write the book.

“Now that I'm older, it's probably one of the places that I would love to go back to and I guess it's reflecting that you don't really know what you have until it's not there anymore,” Brown said. 

In addition to her writing career, Brown also works in glass art and engraving.

“I think that both my writing and my art are connected,” Brown said. “Even though sometimes it seems like two different worlds, they're both connected because it's all connected to my culture.”

The back pages of Bedtime in Nunatsiavut feature a glossary of Inuttut words, as well as a map of Nunatsiavut and its communities. For Brown, including this educational info was important to help raise the national profile of her home region.

“I would love to see ‘Nunatsiavut’ being a word that was recognized in Canada, not just on the north coast of Labrador,” Brown said.

Asked about a lesson she’d learned while writing the book, Brown said “The most beautiful place that you can be is home.”

Bedtime in Nunatsiavut is set to hit shelves on April 26.

Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.