BOOK REVIEWS

Over the Shop

Sonata for Fish and Boy, the first solo picture book by Toronto-based illustrator Milan Pavlović, is a well-orchestrated, wordless appreciation of music and friendship. In a riverside park, a mop-haired child plays a violin with ... Read More »

June 10, 2021 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Poem in My Pocket

By Chris Tougas and Josée Bisaillon (ill.)

Research shows that verse and simple rhymes aid in early childhood development. Babies and toddlers respond to “Itsy Bitsy Spider” because their little brains and bodies are working to make sense of their worlds, to ... Read More »

June 7, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

The Son of the House

By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

The debut novel by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, who splits her time between Halifax and Lagos, is powerful and nuanced feminist fiction. The Son of the House begins when Nwabulu and Julie, two women from different classes ... Read More »

June 7, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Blood Like Magic

By Liselle Sambury

We’re taught to fear blood, maybe because it’s so often tied to death and gore. In Toronto author Liselle Sambury’s Blood Like Magic, blood signifies other things, too – notably our link to our ancestry ... Read More »

June 3, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Philip Roth: A Counterlife

By Ira Nadel

“That’s one of the biggest things that America gave to the Jews – gave them their anger,” says Murray Ringold in Philip Roth’s 1998 novel I Married a Communist. “America was paradise for angry Jews.” ... Read More »

June 3, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend

By Dawn Quigley and Tara Audibert (ill.)

Dawn Quigley, citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, North Dakota, delivers to young readers the clever and quirky story of Josephine Makoons Azure, otherwise known as Jo Jo Makoons (“Makoons” means bear cub ... Read More »

May 31, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Day for Night

By Jean McNeil

It’s never easy to examine why we love whom we love and what happens when that love changes – or is transferred. Nor is it easy to live with ghosts of any kind hooked over ... Read More »

May 31, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Peggy’s Impossible Tale

By Roy Miki and Slavia Miki and Mariko Ando (ill.)

Peggy’s Impossible Tale by husband-and-wife duo Roy Miki and Slavia Miki is based on the “exceptionally special” guinea pig their daughter, Elisse, had as a child. Guinea pig Peggy is a curious creature and so ... Read More »

May 27, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books