BOOK REVIEWS

★ Tahira in Bloom

Tahira Janmohammad has a plan: build her social media brand, catch the eye of style influencers, get into New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and make her House of Tahira fashion line a reality. When ... Read More »

December 6, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Spílǝxm: A Weaving of Recovery,  Resilience, and Resurgence

By Nicola I. Campbell

Spílǝxm takes the painful threads of one Indigenous woman’s story and weaves them into a vibrant sash. Part poetry and part prose, this challenging and experimental work intimately describes the journey of Nicola I. Campbell ... Read More »

December 1, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Midnight Club

By Shane Goth; Yong Ling Kang (ill.)

The Midnight Club follows sisters Becca and Milly as they roam their family home late at night while their parents sleep. Led by Oliver, the family cat, the Midnight Club has its own hand signals ... Read More »

November 30, 2021 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life

By Sharon Butala

Sharon Butala bookends her new essay collection with ruminations on the plight of the elderly in contemporary society. Railing against ageism in the opening essay, Butala laments that in the industrialized West of the 21st ... Read More »

November 29, 2021 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

The Degrees of Barley Lick

By Susan Flanagan

Formerly a couple, Barley and Phyllis, expert teenage geocachers (individuals who search for hidden objects using GPS coordinates) now compete as bitter rivals in geocache competitions. To make matters worse, Barley continues to grieve the ... Read More »

November 24, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Stealing Home

By J. Torres; David Namisato (ill.)

Told from the perspective of Sandy, a young baseball fan whose family is uprooted and transported to an internment camp by the Canadian government after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Stealing Home shows young ... Read More »

November 22, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Caring for Critters: One Year at  a Wildlife Rescue Centre

By Nicholas Read

We are at a precarious crossroads in our relationships with the animals that surround us. Every week it seems there are news reports or viral videos catching “vicious” coyotes or bears hanging out in suburban ... Read More »

November 17, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books

C Is for Carnival

By Yolanda T. Marshall; Daria Lavrova (ill.)

C Is for Carnival is a joyful rumpus in the form of an alphabet book. From B is for bacchanal to C is for costumes to S is for soca, each letter of the alphabet ... Read More »

November 16, 2021 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books