November 23, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Sarah Withrow’s characters are would-be escape artists: caught in painfully binding realities, they box themselves in even more tightly in preparation for flight. In her first novel, Bat Summer (which won the Groundwood First Novel ... Read More »
Irene Morck’s Christmas stories are drawn from her father’s experiences as the child of a Danish immigrant family struggling to survive in the 1920s on their farm in Alberta’s central woodlands. Each of the six ... Read More »
November 23, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Fifteen-year-old Tara Mehta considers herself 100% Canadian and doesn’t want to be labelled by her skin colour or her Indian heritage. But when her paternal grandmother, Naniji, comes to Canada for a visit, Tara is ... Read More »
November 23, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
The celebration of Black History Month every February challenges teachers and librarians to find materials on a largely invisible part of Canada’s past. This new Kids Can title will be a boon for them and ... Read More »
November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
The cover illustration for The Waiting Dog issues a tongue-in-cheek caution: “Warning!” it says, “Do you have the guts to read this book?” The joke is that the book is awash in guts – specifically, ... Read More »
November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Picture Books
In a stunning debut picture book called Imagine a Night, Ontario artist Rob Gonsalves opens our eyes to his creative and highly original visions of the night. Rendered in acrylic, these exquisite paintings capture night ... Read More »
November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Picture Books
Shelley Tanaka has carved out a niche for herself writing strongly illustrated books about dramatic incidents in the past. Among other things, she has made Pearl Harbor, the Titanic, and Pompeii come alive for countless ... Read More »
November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
There’s a lot going on between this book’s attractive covers: the story of a father and daughter’s riverbank walk in autumn, a lesson in biology and ecology, an encounter with a native family who provide ... Read More »
November 19, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Who knew that the Fathers of Confederation considered calling the new nation Hochelaga before settling on Canada, or that Canada Post keeps a mailbox deep in Sudbury Mines? Such are among the Canadian facts that ... Read More »
November 19, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Suppose we took all the ingredients of the traditional young adult novel – divorce, bullies, frustrated romance, angst, personal introspection – and handed them to a little-known writer. Suppose the writer was a stay-at-home dad ... Read More »
November 14, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction