Healer of the Water Monster

by Brian Young

While spending the summer with his grandmother, Nali, on the Navajo Nation, Nathan encounters Pond, a sick Water Monster who needs his help. As Nathan undertakes a dangerous healing journey, he also confronts the limits of what he can do for his troubled uncle, Jet, in a story that brings together family responsibilities, Diné traditions, and environmental concerns.

Big Idea

Caring for others requires listening, courage, and an understanding that no one heals entirely alone. Brian Young’s novel also invites readers to consider how scientific curiosity and culturally grounded knowledge can inform a person’s relationship with the world.

Discussion Questions

1.Nathan begins the summer with plans for a science experiment. How does his understanding of knowledge change as he learns from Nali, Pond, and his experiences?
2.How are Nathan’s efforts to help Pond similar to—and different from—his wish to help Uncle Jet? What does the story suggest about the limits of one person’s responsibility?
3.When does Nathan show courage by acting, and when does he show courage by listening or asking for help?
4.How does the dry landscape shape Nathan’s everyday experiences and the larger problems in the story? Why is this setting more than a backdrop?
5.How does Young make Nathan’s family life and his encounters with Holy Beings feel connected? What might readers miss if they treated those encounters as merely an imaginary adventure?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of the novel or legally shared excerpts, paper, pencils, colored pencils or crayons, and a timer; sticky notes optional.

Learning Goals

Explain how Nathan’s responses to challenges reveal his character and develop a theme of care.
Use textual evidence to connect setting, conflict, and character decisions.
Distinguish between a scene that slows time through detail and a passage that moves quickly through action.
Revise an original passage using sentence length, dialogue, and paragraph breaks to create purposeful pacing.
Discuss Diné cultural representation respectfully, distinguishing this particular story from generalizations about Indigenous peoples.

Activity Steps

1.Read and notice—8 minutes: Revisit a teacher-selected passage involving Nathan and Pond. Identify what Nathan notices, what he wants, and what makes helping difficult. Briefly clarify that the novel presents a specifically Diné cultural context, not a universal Indigenous belief system.
2.Map the moment—7 minutes: Fold paper into four panels labeled Notice, Understand, Decide, and Act. Students sketch or describe Nathan’s changing responses, adding a page reference for at least one detail from the novel.
3.Plan the pace—5 minutes: Mark two panels SLOW and two FAST. In slow panels, plan observations, thoughts, or a pause; in fast panels, plan focused actions and concise dialogue.
4.Write—12 minutes: Turn the storyboard into a 150–250-word imagined scene consistent with Nathan’s characterization. Younger writers may produce 6–10 sentences or dictate their work. Avoid inventing sacred language, ceremonies, or new cultural teachings.
5.Read and revise—8 minutes: Partners read passages aloud and identify where the pace changes. Each writer revises at least two sentences or paragraph breaks to make the intended change clearer.
6.Reflect—5 minutes: Students explain one pacing choice and how it helps readers understand Nathan’s care for Pond. Connect that choice to the author’s craft in the source passage.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.3.3—Describe characters and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events; extend in grades 4–7 to analysis of character, setting, and plot interactions.
ELA: CCSS RL.5.2—Determine a theme using details, including how characters respond to challenges; adapt the complexity of evidence for grades 3–7.
ELA: CCSS W.3.3–W.7.3—Write narratives using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear event sequences at the appropriate grade level.
ELA: CCSS W.3.5–W.7.5—Strengthen writing through planning, revising, and editing with appropriate support.
SEL: Social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making—Consider others’ needs, seek support, and distinguish caring from taking sole responsibility for another person’s recovery.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

PART 2: PACE-WRITE-READ WORKSHOP In Healer of the Water Monster, Brian Young moves between Nathan’s everyday summer with Nali, his concerns about Uncle Jet, and his growing responsibility to Pond. These connected storylines let students study pacing as more than speed: a writer decides which moments readers should move through quickly and which deserve sustained attention. Nathan’s observations, conversations, discoveries, and decisions offer opportunities to examine how a scene’s emotional importance shapes its duration on the page. Use a Pace-Write-Read cycle: notice a craft choice in a short passage, try that choice in original writing, and read the result aloud to hear its effect. Students can investigate how action creates urgency, how description makes a dry landscape tangible, and how quieter family moments deepen the stakes of Nathan’s journey. Teach these techniques within the novel’s particular Diné context; discuss the author’s storytelling choices without asking students to reenact ceremonies, imitate sacred speech, or treat living traditions as interchangeable fantasy material.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a passage centered on Nathan’s observations with one centered on an urgent task for Pond. Ask how much story time each passage covers and which choices make the reader linger or hurry.
2. Plot	Map how Nathan’s intended summer science project gives way to the challenge of helping Pond. Track how discoveries and decisions create the next problem rather than simply listing events.
3. Prosody	Read a descriptive passage and a tense exchange aloud, attending to phrasing, stress, and pauses. Students should base their delivery on syntax and meaning, not imitate a presumed Diné accent.
4. Word	Select verbs and sensory words from passages about heat, water, or movement and test how substitutions change their energy. Respect Diné vocabulary as meaningful language, using available pronunciation resources rather than guessing.
5. Concept	Explore how the idea of healing connects Pond’s illness with Nathan’s concern for Jet without making the two situations identical. Ask how that connection gives the adventure emotional weight.
6. Voice & Worldview	Notice how Nathan’s scientific curiosity exists alongside knowledge he encounters through Nali and Holy Beings. Discuss how the novel complicates an either-or division between scientific and culturally grounded ways of understanding.
7. Point of View	Examine how the close third-person narration keeps readers near Nathan’s perceptions and uncertainties. Identify a moment when readers must wait for him to learn something rather than receiving an all-knowing explanation.
8. Setting & Place	Track how heat, dryness, distance, and access to water affect Nathan’s choices on the Navajo Nation. Ask how those pressures would change if the story took place somewhere else.
9. Original Characters	Study what makes Nathan distinctive: his curiosity, family relationships, and determination to help. Treat Pond and other culturally grounded beings as more than generic fantasy creatures or templates for students to copy.
10. Dialogue	Compare Nathan’s exchanges with Nali, Jet, and Pond, noticing differences in familiarity, uncertainty, and urgency. Mark where dialogue changes the direction of a scene rather than merely supplying information.
11. Details	Collect small details that reveal Nathan’s practical circumstances or his attention to the environment. Discuss which details help readers understand a problem before the narration explains it.
12. Descriptions	Examine how descriptions of the dry landscape influence the reader’s sense of discomfort or concern. Try expanding one observable detail to slow a moment without adding unrelated decoration.
13. Firsts	Study Nathan’s first encounter with Pond as a change in what he believes is possible. Identify how the author makes room for perception, uncertainty, and response during a first experience.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a passage that puts readers close to Nathan’s immediate problem. Identify the concrete want, obstacle, or unanswered question that makes the moment engaging.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Distinguish passages that dramatize a particular exchange from passages that compress time or background. Ask why a crucial encounter with Pond merits a scene while some transitions can be summarized.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Track what Nathan knows about Pond’s illness and what remains uncertain. Separate tension about possible harm, suspense about an outcome, and surprise when new information changes expectations.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Look for references to earlier family experiences and examine how they affect present concerns about Jet. Check selected chapter endings for unresolved questions; if a flash-forward is absent, teach it as an alternative technique rather than claiming the novel uses it.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine several chapter endings for a decision, discovery, or unanswered concern about Nathan’s next step. Distinguish deliberate chapter breaks from page turns that may differ between editions.
19. Pace & Creativity	Rewrite the same nonceremonial moment—Nathan noticing that something is wrong with Pond—at two speeds. Discuss how slowing down can create wonder or dread, while speeding up can emphasize reaction.
20. Play	Use movable sentence strips to experiment with the order of observation, thought, dialogue, and action. Keep the content focused on Nathan’s choices rather than turning sacred knowledge into a classroom game.
21. Performance	Perform a brief, appropriately selected dialogue as a readers’ theater exercise, using pauses to reveal uncertainty or concern. Do not stage ceremonies or imitate sacred songs or speech.
22. Personality	Identify how Nathan’s curiosity shapes what he notices and the questions he asks. Compare his response to a challenge with another character’s response, using evidence rather than personality labels alone.
23. Humor	Invite students to locate a moment of everyday awkwardness, surprise, or character-based humor, if one stands out in their reading. Discuss how a lighter beat changes the emotional pace without making Diné language or beliefs the joke.
24. Pause	Find a moment when Nathan observes, thinks, or listens before acting. Ask what readers understand because the author allows that pause.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Examine a landscape passage for imagery, sound patterns, or figurative comparisons that are actually present. Discuss how these choices shape mood without treating culturally significant language as material for imitation.
26. Repetition	Track recurring references to water, illness, and helping across several chapters. Ask how each return adds meaning or changes the reader’s sense of urgency.
27. Rhythm	Compare the sentence patterns in a reflective passage and an action-focused passage. Read both aloud to test whether their rhythm supports contemplation, movement, or a mixture of the two.
28. Punctuation	Mark how periods, commas, and dialogue punctuation organize a selected exchange involving Nathan. Experiment with revised sentence boundaries and explain how they change the pace without assuming short sentences always mean speed.
29. Questions	Keep a chart of Nathan’s questions about Pond and the new questions each answer creates. Discuss how curiosity can propel a plot as effectively as physical danger.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Nathan’s attempts to help Pond and Jet, focusing on what he understands, what he can do, and where he needs support. Avoid implying that Jet’s difficulties have the same cause or solution as Pond’s illness.
31. Objects	Track the seeds and materials connected to Nathan’s science experiment as concrete signs of his original summer plans. Discuss how ordinary objects can establish character interests before a larger adventure develops.
32. Threes	Choose three decisions Nathan makes and arrange them to show a change in his understanding of responsibility. Present this as a student-created analytical pattern, not a claim that the novel follows a universal rule of three.
33. Lists	Make a list of what Nathan initially expects from his summer and another of the responsibilities he encounters. Use the contrast to discuss how accumulating tasks can increase narrative pressure.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect paragraph and scene breaks in the class edition, noting where they separate actions, speakers, or shifts in attention. Discuss what the narration leaves unstated and distinguish a supported inference from speculation.
35. Art & Graphics	Analyze the edition’s cover as a visual interpretation of Nathan’s story, distinguishing cover imagery from evidence in the prose. Students can create a pacing map using lines and colors without copying sacred designs.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Although this is not a gamebook, students can build a decision map showing Nathan’s choices and their consequences. Reward evidence-based explanations, not collecting cultural teachings or scoring ceremonial knowledge.
37. Placement	Notice where Young reveals important information about Pond or Nathan’s family relative to moments of action. Ask how moving a revelation earlier or later would alter concern, understanding, or surprise.
38. Form	Discuss how the chaptered novel provides space for both an urgent healing journey and a developing family story. Compare what a brief plot summary preserves with the relationships and pauses it necessarily loses.
39. Dummy	Adapt a publishing dummy into a folded four-panel pacing prototype for one scene involving Nathan. Use it to test where readers encounter an observation, a problem, a decision, and an action before drafting prose.
40. Passion	Ask which concerns receive sustained narrative attention: family, water, responsibility, and relationships with place. Students can identify a concern they care about and practice giving it similar attention without claiming authority over another community’s traditions.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: A Decision Beside Pond. Minutes 0–4—PACE: Reread a short teacher-selected passage involving Nathan and Pond. Mark one place where observation slows the moment and one where action or dialogue moves it forward; discuss the actual effects of the language. Minutes 4–7—PLAN: Outline a brief imagined moment consistent with the novel in which Nathan notices Pond’s distress and decides on a next step. Use three beats: notice, hesitate, act. Do not invent a ceremony, healing instructions, or sacred speech. Minutes 7–13—WRITE: Draft 6–10 sentences. Slow the noticing beat with two concrete observations, then shift toward action through focused verbs, sentence variation, or a paragraph break. Students needing support may dictate or write three paired observation-and-action sentences. Minutes 13–18—READ AND REVISE: Partners read aloud and identify where they feel a change of pace. Writers revise two choices to make Nathan’s concern and decision clearer. Minutes 18–20—REFLECT: Each student completes: 'I slowed the moment when ___ so readers would ___. I changed the pace when ___ by ___.' Close by noting that caring may involve seeking help, not solving a problem alone.

Classroom Activities

Two Speeds, One Act of Care

Students create a four-panel pacing storyboard about Nathan deciding how to help Pond. They pair a quiet moment of observation with a faster moment of action, then write and revise an original scene to show how sentence length, detail, dialogue, and pauses influence a reader’s experience. Students use events and characterization from the novel without inventing ceremonies or presenting Diné teachings as their own.

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