Moon of the Crusted Snow" by Waubgeshig Rice is a fictional novel that looks at how an Anishinaabe First Nation, in northern Ontario, deals with an unknown event that leaves the community isolated, without power or phone service, and limited food sources as winter sets in.
In 2018, Dr. Anna Rodrigues approached author Waubgeshig Rice with the idea of collaborating on an open educational guide for his novel when she discovered that OERs for books written by Indigenous authors were lacking. That collaboration resulted in an online educational guide launching in 2019 that was well received by educators across Canada. In early 2021, Waubgeshig and Anna decided to update the guide and, at that time, Dr. Kaitlyn Watson, from the Teaching and Learning Centre at Ontario Tech University, joined the project.
As part of this update, themes from the original resource have been expanded and a new theme which explores connections between the novel and the global COVID-19 pandemic have been added.
