BOOK REVIEWS

We the North: 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors

With a very unusual follow-up season now in the books, there is something even more nostalgic and moving about reliving the Toronto Raptors’ unlikely path to championship glory. In We the North, the Toronto Star’s ... Read More »

January 28, 2021 | Filed under: Reviews, Sports, Health & Self-help

My Best Friend Is Extinct

By Rebecca Wood Barrett and Cornelia Li (ill.)

In the new middle-grade novel My Best Friend Is Extinct, a lonely 10-year-old boy discovers a wounded, bear-like creature living in the snow and must nurse it back to health while facing bullies and sabre-toothed ... Read More »

January 28, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Wild Outside: Around the World with Survivorman

By Les Stroud and Andrew P. Barr (ill.)

A book about surviving on one’s own seems pretty relevant in the middle of a pandemic during which we’re constantly being told to socially distance from one another. Granted the middle-grade nonfiction book Wild Outside: ... Read More »

January 25, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books

Bittersweet

By Natasha Ramoutar

Indo-Guyanese Canadian Natasha Ramoutar’s debut collection of poems charts paths through diasporas and ends in a celebratory uplifting of Toronto suburb Scarborough, the final destination on this journey. With an especially skilled use of internal ... Read More »

January 25, 2021 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

Carmen and the House That Gaudí Built

By Susan Hughes and Marianne Ferrer (ill.)

Carmen and the House That Gaudí Built is inspired by author Susan Hughes’s visit to Casa Batlló, a residence architect Antoni Gaudí built in Barcelona, Spain, in the early 1900s. The gist of the story ... Read More »

January 21, 2021 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Who Was Doris Hedges?: The Search for Canada’s First Literary Agent

By Robert Lecker

Ask any historian of Canadian literature to name the country’s first literary agent and the response you’ll likely get is Matie Molinaro. Founder of the Canadian Speakers’ and Writers’ Service, the Toronto-based Molinaro was at ... Read More »

January 21, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

All That Glitters: A Climber’s Journey through Addiction and Depression

By Margo Talbot

As a child, Margot Talbot frequently got locked out of the house by her mother, ostensibly to “teach her to play outdoors.” This is far from the height of abuse and neglect the young girl ... Read More »

January 21, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Riley Can’t Stop Crying

By Stéphanie Boulay and Agathe Bray-Bourret (ill.); Charles Simard (trans.)

Last year, Stéphanie Boulay and Agathe Bray-Bourret won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for the French-language title Anatole qui ne séchait jamais, an incredibly moving picture book that introduces young readers to the complex ... Read More »

January 18, 2021 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Dearly

By Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood captures the tone of her latest collection in the title poem, when she writes, “Don’t think this is morbid. / It’s just reality.” “Dearly” best encapsulates the poet’s musings on time as an ... Read More »

January 18, 2021 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews