Sem's Map

by Rebecca Thomas, Azby Whitecalf (Illustrator)

32 pages, Paperback

Published September 23, 2025

About the author

Rebecca Thomas enjoys a love-hate relationship with Alaska. She lives there with her husband and sons. When she isn’t reading, writing, or playing board games, she can be found taking long walks in the woods dreaming up her next story.

A reluctant reader as a child, she didn’t become interested in books until her teen years when she discovered historical romance. Now she loves all sub-genres of romance and can’t decide which one is her favorite.

Rebecca earned a bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Alaska and was employed in the airline industry for several years before working in her current position as a program manager in higher education.

Reviews

[Grandma Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting story. I loved the life lessons. Cheerful, colorful illustrations.

I was blessed with an ARC. Thank you NetGalley. The opinions expressed are my own and unbiased.

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This proved to be quite a fun and colourful look at a serious and important subject. Sem is in his primary school class, but cannot recognise anything on the map of Canada – the lines marking the territories and areas the country is split up into make no sense, and none of the place names are doing what they should, indicating who lives where and what goes on there, or what the environment in the place is like. He knows the stories from his grandmother, so much so that he seems to think he can read the map better than the teacher, but that only generates scornful laughs from his classmates. What is he to do to convince people the map is not representative of the true country?

The author's note shows this is in honour of the way places in America have reverted to, or regained, the names they once had, and that the Indigenous Natives gave them. Some places might go by the older name, some might allow either to be used, but the colonialism is being scrubbed from the map, and North America is once more becoming Turtle Island. It seems to me, even as an outsider many thousands of miles away, to be a key aspect of acknowledging and representing the native peoples, such as Sem and his folks.

And alright, "fun" is stretching it a bit, but this heavy topic is worn very lightly by these pages, and they certainly are colourful. It's a story that is there for the narrative just as much as it is for the lesson this book gives in the subject, and it's easy to see how other books could have covered such ground with much less entertainment value. For that, this is a healthy four stars – and were this to be a key part of your Indigenous community, then you would easily add a fifth to that reckoning. If you need this book, you need this book, while for the rest of us it remains something of great benefit.

[ATLANTIC BOOK REVIEWS · Rating 4 out of 5]

SEM'S MAP by Rebecca Thomas. Published by Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press

"Stories get told when they need to be told," Sem's Kiju explains.
Rebecca Thomas' story is a story we need to hear and this picture book is brilliant at telling it.

Sem is dismayed when his teacher shares a map with the class that doesn't fit with the map of our continent that he has come to know through the stories of the land that his Kiju tells him every night.

He brings this to the teacher's attention and Sem's Kiju is invited to come to the class to talk about the map, the places, as the Indigenous people know it to be. The map that may not be printed and recognized but the map that is printed on the hearts of Indigenous people.

Within the pages of this deeply affecting picture book we find another example of how much we still have to learn from Indigenous teachings.

The author speaks of her community of people and how those who have come after those first people and through centuries of hubris, have given names to places on our maps that don't reflect what the place is actually like.

Place names like Halifax have been named after one man, but the Indigenous place name, Kjipuktuk, means "great harbour" which is much more reflective of the place. Through reading this picture book this adult was once again reminded that settlers have usurped the land. No where do we find place names that mean "the place with all the rain and fog" or "the spot in the river where the fish run in the Spring."

My very favourite spread was the very last. The last two pages showing Turtle Island with the Indigenous place names for communities in their original languages. How I wish I could pronounce them all!

[Diane Rembert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of a young boy named Sem, who challenged his teacher about the map he used to teach geography and history. You, they didn’t match up with the stories or the map that his Kiju shares at night, while braiding his hair.

I loved everything about this book, because it not only emphasizes the importance of “it starts at home”, but also that it’s okay to speak up about something that you’re passionate about…respectfully of course. I’m looking forward to sharing this one with my unborn grandchildren one day soon.