April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry
UN, Dennis Lee’s previous collection of poetry for adults, represented a significant stylistic departure not only for Lee but for English Canadian poetry in general. Unlike the long, often prosy lines of Civil Elegies, a ... Read More »
This collection of (very) short stories and literary snapshots is billed as “an unsparing critique” of North American mall culture. It is unsparing. It’s also sometimes witty and clever. Unfortunately, it’s often so busy sneering ... Read More »
April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short
While writing about the victims of tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, and – worst of all – civil wars, frustration and discouragement must sometimes be close to the surface. But as hard as it must be to ... Read More »
April 2, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
Cape Breton and the windswept moors of England have more in common than you might imagine, besides rugged landscape and gorgeous vistas. Mitzi Dale’s new novel, about a young girl named Sarah working at a ... Read More »
April 2, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
Vancouver animator Sean Moore’s second picture book, Veggies Smeggies, revolves around a little boy who monotonously explains to the conniving, vegetable-wielding adults around him why he loathes the green stuff. Only his grandma, with the ... Read More »
April 2, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Picture Books
A common complaint about CanLit – one that Scott Gardiner addresses in the course of his new novel, King John of Canada – is that Canada’s fiction writers seem completely uninterested in dealing with the ... Read More »
March 22, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
Orwell wrote, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply ... Read More »
March 22, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography
Orwell wrote, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply ... Read More »
March 22, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography
This debut novel by Jen Sookfong Lee offers an eloquent yet predictable look at the multigenerational experiences of a Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver. While the prose is raw and the creative energy evident, Lee’s novel ... Read More »
March 22, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
The unnamed 13-year-old narrator of first-time author Maureen Fergus’s novel thinks he has it pretty rough. After he’s insulted one too many schoolteachers and other authority figures, his mother forces him to keep a tape-recorded ... Read More »
January 19, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction