Following Sarah and the People of Sand River, and the Mr. Christie Award-winning Thor, this collection of eight short stories cements W.D. Valgardson’s successful expansion from adult fiction into children’s literature.

The stories are set in Manitoba, where Valgardson grew up, and Vancouver Island, where he now lives.They’re varied enough to maintain interest, yet all deal with kids coming to terms with similar kinds of problems: Erin persuades her uncommunicative father that an unproductive piece of farmland she loves is worth keeping; Sam, the computer freak, saves his father’s life on a canoe trip; Richard comes to terms with his loneliness through baby-sitting an orphaned Chinese girl; and Jim and Angie restore a salmon creek. In each case, the main characters take charge of their lives and learn to live with some aspect of a complex and not-always-fair surrounding world.

The stories are charming and simple but not simplistic. They’re easy to read without talking down to their audience and are filled with a cast, both adults and kids, that children will recognize. In fact, readers will laugh at many of the characters: at the ridiculously-named Solitario Adolphus Muggins (Sam for short) who appears in three stories, and at Sam’s dad who teaches at the local college and talks of “opening a dialogue” with his son.

The perspective in each story is consistently and believably that of a child, and the adults are minor players who are often the cause of the problem being addressed. Each tale has a lesson learned, but they are never heavy-handed and are always a natural outgrowth of the situation in the story.

The illustrations on the title page of each story add little. They are overly cartoonish and sometimes inconsistent, as when one character appears in two drawings looking completely different. However, that is a minor point and children will enjoy this book. It is particularly suited to kids who have built up all the necessary reading skills, but are not quite confident enough to tackle full-length novels.