July 3, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews
In her debut short story collection, Art of Camouflage, Sara Power explores what it means for women and girls to be at their lowest point, and how they can emerge from such depths. Through subtle ... Read More »
The Bee Mother is a beautifully illustrated picture book that focuses on Nox Ap, a bumblebee queen, and her relatives: the honeybee and the yellow jacket wasp. The bumblebee boasts shiny black eyes, a fluffy, ... Read More »
July 3, 2024 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books
“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse,” said the British-Mexican 20th-century surrealist painter and novelist Leonora Carrington. “I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” As a statement ... Read More »
June 26, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
Righting Canada’s Wrongs: The Sixties Scoop and the Stolen Lives of Indigenous Children is the latest in the long-running Righting Canada’s Wrongs series, which explores historical instances of discrimination by the Canadian government. In ... Read More »
June 26, 2024 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books
Like Italo Calvino’s groundbreaking novel If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler, Erica McKeen’s Cicada Summer (her second book, following on Tear, winner of the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction) embraces ... Read More »
June 19, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
Set in a rural village in India, this book transcends borders with its universal theme that celebrates the power of community and rejuvenation of the environment. Every day villagers would pass through the same weedy ... Read More »
June 19, 2024 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books
Bringing spoken word poetry to the page has historically been seen as controversial, since academia has tended to dictate the ways that poetry can be received and read, and spoken word consistently continues to challenge ... Read More »
Let’s Go! by Cree-Métis artist and author Julie Flett is a lovingly illustrated picture book about skateboarding and community. The book’s narrator is a Cree boy, enchanted by the older kids he sees skateboarding past ... Read More »
June 12, 2024 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books
In Zenia Wadhwani’s Once Upon a Sari, a sari is never just a sari. It is a keepsake that unravels a story, history, and cultural identity unique to its wearer. When I first read Once Upon ... Read More »
June 5, 2024 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books
“Trying to be normal can be penance too,” says Pru in Where Was Goodbye? by Janice Lynn Mather, a young adult novel set in Nassau, Bahamas. Karmen Wallace is a 17-year-old entering her final year ... Read More »
May 29, 2024 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books