Today’s blog is written by ASM’s Director of Education Lisa Falk, who was lead curator for ASM’s exhibit Through the Eyes of the Eagle: Illustrating Healthy Living, and is co-author of the It’s Up 2 You! comic book.

Last fall we displayed the exhibit Through the Eyes of the Eagle: Illustrating Healthy Living about diabetes awareness and prevention from a Native American perspective, offered diverse programming around the topic of health and culture, and created resource materials. One of those materials is a comic book, It’s Up 2 You!, aimed at youth (5^th grade and older). Ryan Huna Smith illustrated it and together we co-wrote the story with input from area teens and health professionals. An exhibit of the comic’s enlarged pages is currently on display at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, part of the Pima County Public Library system, through April 30, 2012. If you’re in Tucson, stop by to see it. While there, grab one of our bookmarks and scribble a healthy living pledge on it. Here are some that folks copied into our pledge book.

If you can’t get to the library or would like to share the comic book with others, it’s available online at healthypima.org and as a free app from iTunes (keyword: It’s Up 2 You!). The digital versions include a healthy challenge quiz game—Are you a: Couch Potato? Button Masher? Health Warrior? See if you can up your level to become a Health Leader! The digital comic also includes audio in Spanish, English and Tohono O’odham so you can hear the characters speaking. Meet our heroine Samantha and her buddies Tomás and Brandon. Look in on Brandon’s dream and discover a new enemy and how to combat him. It’s up 2 you, but we hope you’ll take a moment to look at the comic and think about how to live healthfully.

We weren’t the only ones making creative images related to the exhibit. In addition to writing a healthy living pledge, visitors to the Through the Eyes of the Eagle exhibit could create their own design for a skate deck or for a high top sneaker or skateboard shoe. Take a look at some of the drawings visitors left for others to see. Hopefully, these designs will inspire you to get out, get moving, and get active!