December 16, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Writer, broadcaster, and movie producer Anne Tait’s novel adaptation of her Gemini Award–winning TV mini-series Iron Road tells the story of teenager Li Jun, who travels from southern China to the mountains of B.C. in ... Read More »
Stay Strong: A Musician’s Journey from Congo is the true story of Gentil Misigaro, a young Congolese man who fled the constant violence and warfare of his country to settle as a refugee in Winnipeg. ... Read More »
December 16, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
“So, just how connected are you to your Indigenous roots if you live downtown?” This is the key question posed by editors Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale in Urban Tribes. Charleyboy and Leatherdale are ... Read More »
December 16, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
Veteran children’s author (and Q&Q contributing editor) Sarah Ellis adds another title to her Ben series of picture books (produced in collaboration with illustrator Kim La Fave). This touching, realistically told story of a little ... Read More »
December 15, 2015 | Filed under: Picture Books
Vancouver author Stacey Matson’s second instalment in the Genius trilogy (following A Year in the Life of a Total and Complete Genius) once again finds Arthur Bean, our excitable and ambitious hero, struggling with unpopularity, ... Read More »
December 7, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
The seventh YA novel from Ottawa writer Jeff Ross demonstrates that plots cannot live on twists alone. Set You Free attempts to amp up a fairly thin story with a big third-act switcheroo that makes ... Read More »
November 17, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
Themes of loss, historical trauma, and the subjectivity of memory are not exactly rare in Canadian fiction, even in books aimed at younger readers. However, the ambitious new novel by celebrated kidlit veteran Tim Wynne-Jones ... Read More »
November 16, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
“I was seven when the French prisoners of war arrived at our house.” From this opening sentence, Michelle Barker’s picture book introduces a challenging issue to its young audience. Based on the experiences of the ... Read More »
November 16, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
The latest novel from San Francisco–based Canadian author (and Amoeba Music co-founder) Yvonne Prinz starts out as a sad story about a disaffected teenager and slowly builds into a hold-on-to-your-seat thriller. Georgia is trying to ... Read More »
November 12, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction
The title of Bonnie Farmer’s easygoing, 1930s Montreal tale about a girl named Mildred whose musically gifted next-door playmate is a boy named Oscar Peterson is a clear nod to Beethoven Lives Upstairs, the audio-recording/book/movie ... Read More »
November 12, 2015 | Filed under: Picture Books