Eagle Book Mystery Offers Health and Fun

Newest Addition to Popular Eagle Books Series Engages Youth Readers As It Encourages Healthy Choices

Coyote and the Turtle's Dream, the first of three books in the new Eagle Book series developed by the Native Diabetes Wellness Program (NDWP), entertains and encourages healthy choices among middle school children, their families and communities.¹ This exciting new mystery created for Native youth and others is based on the original Eagle Books series that is very popular with younger readers. Like the original series, the NDWP expects the new book to appeal to a wider audience as well. Coyote and the Turtle's Dream will be accompanied by a four-volume graphic novel based on the same story.
To order your free copies of Coyote and the Turtle's Dream, click on the web link or call 1-800-CDC-INFO.
Readers will see some of their favorite characters from the original series return. In addition, this new book also adds some new friends that include family members, teachers, store owners, other residents of a small reservation town, and an aging box turtle. Coyote and the Turtle's Dream also introduces the character of Arianna, a young girl with type 1 diabetes, to help readers understand more about different types of diabetes.

About the Book

Rain, now a 12-year-old, is visited once again by the eagle, but this time in a dream. As Rain sleeps, Sky Heart, the eagle, sings a song to him that ends with the refrain, "a boy must help us…" In the song, Sky Heart provides clues about strange vanishings on the Medicine Cave Indian Reservation. Thistle, the rabbit, has suspicions that Coyote is behind the disappearance of fossils from an ancient turtle, the sudden evaporation of water from the reservation's rivers, and the ominous absence of a 7th grader from Thunder Rock Middle School.
Searching for the meaning of the dream, Rain seeks the help of Boomer (Thunder Cloud), Simon, and Hummingbird. Unknowingly, the four friends are drawn into the coyote's game and the criminal activities of a dangerous fossil poaching ring. Deep within the gullies of Shell Ridge, an escarpment that borders the bed of an ancient sea, Rain follows Coyote to a mysterious cave where he discovers the origins of the reservation's water and confronts the notorious fossil thief, Vernon Smeed—risking everything to save one that he loves.
Illustration from Eagle Book Mystery

With his pranks and deceptions, Coyote puts Rain through many tests. The trickster teaches the boy lessons that will last a lifetime, but he, too, learns an important truth—Sky Heart has chosen well. The great bird has entrusted his messages about health and the wisdom of Native knowledge to a remarkable boy whose strength is founded in the steadfastness of friends and love of family.
Learn more about the book

Information for Public Health Professionals: About Type 2 Diabetes and Tribal Consultation

Diabetes has doubled in both American Indian (AIs) and Alaska Native (ANs) populations under the age of 35, increasing from 8.5 in 1994 to 17.1 in 2004.² Research studies have shown that type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed with lifestyle changes that promote weight loss and physical activity in adults at high risk.
Illustration from Eagle Book Mystery

Guided by the Tribal Leaders Diabetes Committee and in partnership with the Indian Health Service (IHS) Division of Diabetes Treatment and Prevention, CDC's Native Diabetes Wellness Program (NDWP) developed a series of four Eagle Books for elementary school children about traditional ways of being healthy and preventing type 2 diabetes. The first Eagle Book to bring these prevention messages to middle school youth, Coyote and the Turtle's Dream, was released in November 2011.
Additional information about the NDWP and Coyote and the Turtle's Dream is located at: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/diabetes-wellness.htm and http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/coyote_turtledream.htm.

CDC Features - Eagle Book Mystery Offers Health and Fun