February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry
The philosophy behind the by-now-familiar Gen X posture is that the only way to protect yourself from cliché and pretension is to refer frequently to the silliest pop-culture material you can get your mittens on. ... Read More »
As the title suggests, Vancouver writer Shani Mootoo’s first collection of poetry catalogues the many “in-betweens” formed by a world of either/or choices and definitions. As in her award-winning novel, Cereus Blooms at Night, Mootoo ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry
If it’s true that losers’ tales make for the best sports stories, Green Grit, Graham Kelly’s history of the floundering fortunes of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, ought to have provided readers with a very dramatic ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Sports, Health & Self-help
It is somewhat curious that Canada, a country very much aware of its natural heritage and with an abundance of nature writing (both in periodicals and books), lacks significant, contemporary anthologies of nature writing. Despite ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Anthologies, Children and YA Non-fiction
When Dylan is 11, he is seized by an unexplained passion to accompany his parents on a sea kayaking trip to Ireland’s Eye, an abandoned island in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Over the next year, Dylan ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
In The Nordlings, 15-year-old Peggy finds herself thrust out of her unhappy everyday life and into Notherland, the fantasy world she created as a child. The soul-stealing Nobodaddy now threatens Notherland’s existence, and it’s up ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
Stan Rogal’s fourth book of poems opens with an “introduction” by Andrew Marvell, who, as he explains, has been “summoned” to comment on Rogal’s manuscript. The 17th-century ghost offers a textbook definition of metaphysical verse ... Read More »
February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry
There are two questions to ask about this biography: does it contain the kind of information a young person needs to know about the life of William Shakespeare? And does the book’s pop-up format enhance ... Read More »
February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
He’s not my cat!” says the grumpy Mr. McGratt about the uninvited stray in this picture book by Marilyn Helmer (author of Fog Cat and The Boy, the Dollar and the Wonderful Hat).McGratt’s an old ... Read More »
February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Picture Books
Grant Innes’s illustrations for his first book, Flight of the Whirligigs, are bright, primitive, and childlike – he is like a folk-art Lucy Cousins. In the accompanying story, Grant, a painter, takes his dog to ... Read More »
February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Picture Books