BOOK REVIEWS

★ Property

Set on a “splendid” June day in 1923, the apparent placidity of Mrs. Dalloway – in which a well-heeled Londoner runs errands in preparation for a dinner party – confounds expectations, thanks to Virginia Woolf’s ... Read More »

September 3, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

My Street Remembers

By Karen Krossing and Cathie Jamieson (ill.)

As a treaty person, have you ever wondered about the history of your street? My Street Remembers, written by Karen Krossing and illustrated by Cathie Jamieson, tells part of the story of one particular place, ... Read More »

September 3, 2025 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

You’ve Changed

By Ian Williams

“You’ve Changed,” a 1942 song recorded by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Marvin Gaye, and dozens of others, ends with the miserable, if resigned, lines: “No need to tell me that we’re through / It’s all ... Read More »

August 27, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ True Colors: Growing Up Weird in the 90s

By Elise Gravel and Montana Kane (trans.)

In this artfully crafted and ultra-relatable fictionalized graphic memoir, Governor General’s Award–winning author-illustrator Elise Gravel takes readers back to her formative tween years filled with colourful hobbies, true-blue friends, and undiagnosed ADHD. On the pages ... Read More »

August 27, 2025 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Rufous and Calliope

By Sarah Louise Butler

Rufous and Calliope, the stunning new novel by West Kootenay, B.C., writer Sarah Louise Butler, begins with a glimpse of the past. On Halloween night, 1979, five siblings in costume are trick-or-treating in a small ... Read More »

August 20, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ This Place Kills Me

By Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux (ill.)

Being the new kid at school is hard, especially at all-girls boarding school Wilberton, where Abby Kita has been sent in the wake of a personal indiscretion. And though the rumours about her past have ... Read More »

August 20, 2025 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

The Longest Night

By Lauren Carter

On a frigid night in December 2020 in rural Minnesota, 18-year-old Ash sneaks out of the house, needing a break from the tension of her parents’ constant fighting. Her grandmother Goma has recently died of ... Read More »

August 13, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Aggie and the Ghost

By Matthew Forsythe

This might be a perfect picture book. I love everything about Matthew Forsythe’s Aggie and the Ghost. I love Aggie. I love the ghost. I love the writing, the themes, the illustrations, and the close ... Read More »

August 13, 2025 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Never Silent: A Hiroshima Survivor’s Story

By Setsuko Thurlow and Kathy Lowinger; Michelle Theodore (ill.)

When Japan entered the Second World War on Dec. 8, 1941, Setsuko Thurlow’s childhood abruptly ended. By eighth grade, she was selected – along with some of her schoolmates – to help her country decode ... Read More »

August 6, 2025 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books

★ In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times

By James Cairns

In an age of doomscrolling clickbait, atrocity porn, and the three Ts – Trump, tariffs, terror – anyone could be forgiven for concluding the world is in a state of perpetual crisis. Responses to such ... Read More »

July 23, 2025 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, History, Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews, Science, Technology & Environment, Social Sciences