Kids’ Books

What Are You Doing, Benny?

By Cary Fagan and Kady MacDonald Denton (ill.)

So much of growing up is yearning for something that seems permanently out of reach. This batch of picture books attempts to show kids how to cope with the seemingly unsolvable predicament of wanting what ... Read More »

June 24, 2019 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Dog vs. Ultra Dog

By Troy Wilson and Clayton Hanmer (ill.)

June 24, 2019 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

★ Shout Out

By Andrew Wheeler

When you’re an LGBTQ2IA+ person, finding characters like you, written by people who are also like you, and in the kinds of stories you want to read can be tough. This is especially true for ... Read More »

June 20, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me

By Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (ill.)

It’s the colour scheme that grabs you first in Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me. The pages are predominantly black, white, and grey except for splashes of the most ... Read More »

June 19, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Beastly Puzzles: A Brain-Boggling Animal Guessing Game

By Rachel Poliquin and Byron Eggenschwiler (ill.)

Part of the fun of reviewing children’s books is encountering an author-illustrator team determined to craft a fresh take on one of the more traditional kidlit categories. When it works, as it does with Beastly ... Read More »

June 19, 2019 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

★ Over the Rooftops, Under the Moon

By JonArno Lawson; Nahid Kazemi (ill.)

“You can be far away inside, and far away outside. With others but still on your own.” So begins this haunting meditation on loneliness and the importance of community. Everything changes for a despondent bird ... Read More »

June 17, 2019 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Always Smile: Carley Allison’s Secrets for Laughing, Loving and Living

By Alice Kuipers

In her work of non-fiction, author Alice Kuipers shares the story of a determined and talented Toronto figure skater and singer-songwriter whose life was tragically cut short. When she was 17, Carley Allison was diagnosed ... Read More »

June 13, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books

★ The Absence of Sparrows

By Kurt Kirchmeier

From a brief description of The Absence of Sparrows – by Saskatchewan writer and wildlife photographer Kurt Kirchmeier – readers might assume that they’ve read this story before: a small-town setting, a summer vacation, an ... Read More »

June 10, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Girl of the Southern Sea

By Michelle Kadarusman

Toronto-based, Australian-Indonesian-Canadian author Michelle Kadarusman (The Theory of Hummingbirds) sets her moving and dramatic sophomore novel in the impoverished villages of Jakarta. Fourteen-year-old Nia’s mother has died in childbirth and her bapak (father) is drowning ... Read More »

June 6, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Love from A to Z

By S.K. Ali

In her second novel, S.K. Ali strikes a balance between charming love story and issue-driven narrative, in which Muslim teen characters confront and overcome Islamophobia, racism, and ignorance. Love from A to Z follows protagonists ... Read More »

June 3, 2019 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

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