SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2000 in 10 Minutes

Given the eruption of hype that usually accompanies Microsoft launches, the arrival of Office 2000 in June was a decidedly low-key event. There were no Rolling Stones tie-ins, no TV commercials, no magazine ad blitzes, ... Read More »

February 10, 2004 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Staging the North

By Sherrill Grace, Eve D’Aeth, and Lisa Chalykoff, eds.

The 12 plays in this collection present Canada’s North as a place of unresolvable tensions. The landscape is certainly harsh, but no less brutal is the “complex, crushed geography” of those who venture into this ... Read More »

February 10, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Smoke That Thunders

By P.J. Reece

This first novel by screenplay writer P. J. Reece is terse, racy, and full of action. Young David Livingstone, whose name gets him lots of reaction in post-colonial Africa, steals his mother’s credit card in ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Roid Rage

By Lesley Choyce

Young competitors in Canada began to become aware of steroids with Ben Johnson’s disqualification at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. And with home-run king Mark McGwire admitting last summer to using a performance-enhancing (but not illegal) ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Tiger by the Tail

By Eric Walters

Eric Walters’ new YA novel, Tiger by the Tail, unfortunately lacks the depth of his recent one, War of the Eagles. In this adventure story, Sarah and Nicholas, who have moved to their grandmother’s farm, ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Alone at Ninety Foot

By Katherine Holubitsky

Fourteen-year-old Pam, the narrator of this accomplished first novel, spends a lot of time alone in a local beauty spot called Ninety Foot Pool. Her friends think that’s weird, especially since it’s just downstream from ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Create Your Own Millennium Time Capsule

By Sheryl Shapiro and Tina Forrester

Here is an inexpensive New Year’s present: a do-it-yourself scrapbook project for pre-teens to amuse their future selves in 10 or 20 years. The scrapbook features 10 blank pages to fill in and 10 matching ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Sunwing

By Kenneth Oppel

Kenneth Oppel’s first bat fantasy, Silverwing, ends with an explicit sequel teaser: “Within two sunsets he’d be starting on another journey, and maybe the greatest of all.” The book ends there but not the story. ... Read More »

February 10, 2004

Nightgown Countdown

By Frank B. Edwards, John Bianchi, illus.

Part of a series of rhyming picture books, these are designed to help four- to six-year-olds learn to read. They certainly do not help them learn about scansion, as most of the rhymes are off ... Read More »

February 10, 2004 | Filed under: Picture Books