Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

By Kathy Stinson

Penguin’s popular Our Canadian Girl series is made up of easy-to-read (perhaps too easy) dramatic adventure stories focusing on the life and times of spirited 10-year-old girls at key historical junctures. They’re aimed at stimulating ... Read More »

January 7, 2004

By Dianna Bonder

Dianna Bonder, illustrator of A Pacific Alphabet, has produced another abcedarium, this one chronicling the misadventures of 26 characters in rhyming verse. This is the first book that Bonder, an artist based near Vancouver, has ... Read More »

January 7, 2004 | Filed under: Picture Books

By Bruce Meyer

As a literary critic, lecturer, and author, Dr. Bruce Meyer is well known for his expertise on the “Great Books” in the Western literary canon. In many ways, The Spirit Bride, Meyer’s fifth collection of ... Read More »

January 7, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

By Kristen den Hartog

As any creative writing teacher knows, serious stories about broken homes are very difficult to carry off, demanding a near-religious abstinence from anything smacking of movie-of-the-week melodramatics. Kristen den Hartog’s unsatisfying follow-up to the well-received ... Read More »

January 7, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

By Peter Darbyshire

Please, Peter Darbyshire’s debut novel, belongs to a genre of urban slacker/existentialist fiction recently popularized by Jesus’ Son, the critically acclaimed collection of linked stories by American Denis Johnson. The appeal of Johnson’s protagonist lay ... Read More »

January 7, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels