Cocoa Magic

Written by Sandra Bradley

Illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-264-6

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

November 2022

There is much kindness in giving gifts in secret, in not expecting thanks or acknowledgement. It's giving for the sake of giving and not for reciprocity or reward. With the holiday season upon us, Sandra Bradley's book of Cocoa Magic, deliciously illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard, reminds us of the goodness of giving.

From Cocoa Magic by Sandra Bradley, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard

Daniel's Great Uncle Lewis is known as the Cocoa King of Charlottetown. From a very young child, Daniel learned the magic that came from a cocoa bean when vanilla, sugar and milk were added. By the time he is eight, he is spending an hour crafting chocolate into treasures at his uncle's shop before he is delivered to school.

From Cocoa Magic by Sandra Bradley, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard

When a new girl, Sarah, arrives at school, looking a little hesitant, Daniel comes up with a plan to make her feel more welcome. The day after her arrival, he slips a gold box with a single chocolate caramel into her desk. Like magic, when she opens the little box, Sarah smiles for the first time. He repeats this for several days, with a luscious vanilla fudge, a coconut cream and a piece of nougat. And each day Sarah seems less scared and more cheerful.

Then Daniel notices Ben watching Sarah enjoy her treat and decides to surprise the boy too with some magic. Was it the chocolate that made Ben a little kinder that day? Everywhere Daniel looks, it seems someone needs to be touched by a little cocoa magic. With a tearful classmate and an injured boy and more, Daniel enlists his uncle's help in delivering little boxes to the whole class.

From Cocoa Magic by Sandra Bradley, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard

Then his uncle goes away to the World's Chocolatiers' Conference in Switzerland and must close the shop for five days. Daniel is devastated. He misses his uncle, working in the shop and he worries that without their secret chocolate gifts, the joy would disappear from his classmates. He's wrong. In fact, his classmates bring the magic to Daniel when he needs it.

What a wonderful story of empathy! Daniel understands Sarah's nervousness at attending a new school, one which he himself finds cold and lonely, and then sees what his other classmates are feeling. He sees their distresses and finds a way, his way, to make them feel better. Sandra Bradley, a clinical social worker and therapist, makes the story of Cocoa Magic one of kindness without expectation of reciprocity. She shows the positive nature of giving both on the recipient and the giver. It is only when children feel safe and secure that they can appreciate the emotional needs of others and Daniel, embraced in the warmth of his uncle and his chocolate shop, has the capacity for that empathy. But by showing empathy for his classmates, Daniel gives them the capacity to feel for others. That is magic in itself.

From endpapers of Cocoa Magic by Sandra Bradley, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard

Gabrielle Grimard's illustrations, created with watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil and digital media, are filled with the sweetness of love, kindness, generosity and confections. (The endpapers are filled with an assortment of confectionary delectables too!) Though Gabrielle Grimard transports readers to the 1920s when boys wore knickerbockers, school desks had lift-tops and inkwell holes, and a special treat didn't need to be expensive or extravagant, she makes Sandra Bradley's story contemporary enough that young readers will see themselves in the diverse students who feel fear, sadness, pain and especially joy. 

There may be magic in the cocoa and the sugar but most of it comes from the empathy demonstrated through the gift giving. Perhaps at this time of year, that's the important message to cherish from Cocoa Magic.

Apartment 713

Written by Kevin Sylvester

HarperCollins

978-1-4434-6094-1

240 pp.

Ages 8-12

September 2022

 

That's what buildings do, Jake. They are like us, constrained by an arc. By time. They–and we–age and decay. They–and we–die. But how do we live while we live? That's the important question. (pg. 122) 

When Jake Simmons and his mom move into the Regency, it's because they've hit rock bottom. Mom has split from her partner Janice and lost her job as a legal secretary. To get back on their feet, the two move into the Regency, which Jake sees as a dump with its peeling paint, curling wallpaper, dust, grimy windows and worse. But, when he becomes acquainted with the original Regency, he recognizes that it is a true home.

Exploring the shambles that is the Regency, Jake makes the acquaintance of Danny, the superintendent, who knows all the residents and what they need. He introduces Jake to the elderly Lily in Apartment 405 whose cats are fed by Danny. Then there's the brilliant Professor who is so focused on her work that Danny cleans up her garbage and the elusive, baseball-loving Gus who won't leave his home. Danny is good about delivering and picking up Gus's mail as well as that of others like the piano-playing Theo in 501 and the enigmatic Delaney who lives somewhere on the seventh floor. These are just some of the odd assortment of residents of the Regency and Jake is happy to agree to be Danny's assistant and help with all his clients' needs. But then Danny gets a letter from a lawyer indicating that the long-term lease between the Regency and the city is set to expire and the residents will need to find another place to live. 

 

Soon after, the purportedly-broken call light for Apartment 713 goes off and Jake heads to the apartment he'd been told was off limits. Sure that someone inside is calling for help, Jake plunges into the apartment and into another world, one in which the Regency is in its infancy, hosting musicians, artists and other famous people while being a home to others. Believing that he was sent back to the 1920s to help save the Regency, Jake and his new-found friend, Beth, explore the mysteries that are hidden in the exclusive building, revealing more about its secrets, its history, and even its future.

Kevin Sylvester can illustrate (e.g., Super-Duper Monster Viewer), tell us sports stories (e.g., Hockey Super Six), entice us with food (e.g., Neil Flambé series) and inform with non-fiction (e.g., Gold Medal for Weird and Follow Your Money with Michael Hlinka) so it's no wonder that he can also write speculative fiction with a time-slip element.  Still Kevin Sylvester includes all those elements in Apartment 713. His artwork peppers the story and there are elements of baseball, food, and history that build on the basic premise of a child dealing with upheaval and trying to find home where it would appear there is none. While there is a very cool time-slip element to Apartment 713, the story is really about looking a little deeper: into a new place, into new friends, and into one's self. It's finding the wonders within and recognizing them for what they are. It's being the solution rather than complaining about the problem. It's finding home by making a home.

While Kevin Sylvester will always give us a good story, well-written and illustrated, often with humour and a light touch, there will always be more. He gently manifests important issues like LGBTQ (e.g., The Fabulous Zed Watson co-authored with Basil Sylvester) and resource monopolization (e.g., Minrs) and, with Apartment 713, there's a message about superficiality.  Hopefully young readers will see beyond the obvious, that old buildings may look like dumps and eccentric people appear to be odd but both are built on histories that make them unique and enrich lives with their presence.

Aggie and Mudgy: The Journey of Two Kaska Dena Childen

 

Written by Wendy Proverbs

Wandering Fox (Heritage House)

978-1-77203-375-5

144 pp.

Ages 8-12

November 2021

They were lost in a void, 

not understanding where they would end up. (pg. 99)

While there are an increasing number of middle-grade books about residential schools, few discuss the journeys that Indigenous children were forced to take from their home to get to those residential schools. Aggie and Mudgy is one such story. But it's also a tale of loss: of family, of names, of culture. And it is as painful as their journey.

 

In contemporary Vancouver, eight-year-old Maddy has found an old photo in her Nan's desk and begs her grandmother to tell her the story of the two little girls. And so Nan does, recounting the story of two young sisters from Daylu, a Kasha Dena community on the BC-Yukon border. As history has shown us, the arrival of those of the Catholic church brought much change, as it did in Daylu, where the First Nations people were first forcibly assimilated by being renamed. 

When we name something, it gives us a kind of ownership, doesn't it? (pg. 96)

Sisters Mac-kinnay and Beep were renamed Agnes and Martha but they called themselves Aggie and Mudgy. Then two years later, the young sisters, only 6 and 8, were taken away by Father Allard to go to school far away. How far away they could not have known.

Though leaving their home would have been frightening, the beginning of their journey starts with some comfort and familiarity as the priest employs two Indigenous brothers to transport them down the Liard River. The landscape, the food and the language are still their own. But after 300 km, their journey after Dease Lake becomes one of newness. As the priest and the girls travel six weeks by mail truck, paddle wheeler boat, steamship and train to the Lejac Residential School at Fraser Lake in central BC, the girls soon realized that their old ways would not be tolerated. Not the language they spoke, not the way they looked, nor the joys they savoured in the outdoors. And if Priest Allard and the nuns who aided them in their journey were not pleased, the children were shamed and beaten.

They couldn't respect different people and cultures, and if the children didn't obey, some priests and nuns could be very cruel. (pg. 47)

The girls' journey with Father Allard was just over 1600 km but it was just the beginning of the inevitable trauma that would be their residency at the Lejac school. Wendy Proverbs could have walked us into that school with Aggie and Mudgy but she knew that the journey of these two Kaska Dena children was important enough to be highlighted. Still, the story is told to enlighten and to acknowledge, not traumatize-it doesn't, though it could have– and by revealing her own personal connection (see "Author's Note" and "Acknowledgements" in Aggie and Mudgy), and giving Nan one as well, Wendy Proverbs has made the sisters' story both restrained and profound. Don't be surprised if a tear is shed.

Because Aggie and Mudgy tells a story within a story, with fiction embracing history, Wendy Proverbs, herself of Kaska Dena descent, has honoured her heritage and her ancestors. In fact, a nod of appreciation should be given to her as she does to others in her acknowledgements for sharing Aggie and Mudgy and purposefully shaking up the universe with truth.

Final appreciation to all of our ancestors who led the way for future generations to speak, dance, create, and indeed disturb the universe. (pg. 130)

Kate's Ring

Written by Donna Grassby

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-567-7

276 pp.

Ages 11-15

October 2018

Thirteen-year-old Kate might wish for a ring just as her best friend has–Grace has an heirloom opal ring from her grandmother–but Kate's Ring is bigger than a child's dream to possess something special. That's because Kate's ring is not one of gold or silver but rather one of people and place.

It's the 1920s and Kate lives with her five younger siblings–Michael, David, Lily, Colin and Sarah–and her parents in Whitney Pier on Cape Breton. Though her story begins on a happy note with Poppa taking her out of school on her birthday to join him on his bread deliveries, Kate's story is not one filled with childhood joys. Mamma has consumption and is weak and often resting, while Poppa has started drinking and rarely at home. Sadly, the responsibilities for children and house fall to Kate, who begins to fall behind in school.  While there is family around, including Mamma's mother and siblings, there is much strife especially from Aunt Flora who constantly berates Poppa about his drinking and Mamma who always forgives him his ways and despises her sister's interference.  With Poppa unable to keep a job, he decides to get one logging on the mountain in Margaree, where his parents, Aigneis and Hector, live on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. Mamma is thrilled to go, though Aunt Flora convinces her to allow Kate to stay with her and Uncle Will to finish her school year, as on the mountain only Lily and David would be going to school.

For about three months, Kate experiences what it is like to have guardians who take care of her. They feed her, clothe her, love her and worry about her safety. Though her family is never far from her thoughts, she enjoys a real Christmas of family warmth. Then Aigneis insists that Kate join the rest of her family on the mountain as they need her help and her mother misses her.

While her mother promises her that Kate will return to school and not end up in service, Kate wonders how her mother can make such a promise, especially with Mamma feeling worse and praying to never leave the mountain. Though Kate appreciates some aspects of her new life, like learning skills like carding and spinning fleece as well as participating in a céilidh, she is more than ready to return to Whitney Pier when Mamma starts coughing up blood and collapses.

Though Aunt Flora continues to pass along money and food to the family via Kate, things are not much better with Mamma in the hospital. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse and the family Kate has always known fractures with one tragedy after another. How the family will survive and in what configuration is only resolved through Donna Grassby's poignant storytelling, both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Kate's Ring is not a story of lightness and familial comfort. There are moments of joy, like when Kate's Aunt Flo and Uncle Will gift her with a pair of snowshoes or when she learns how to spin yarn, but Kate's life is more about responsibilities and chores and getting by. Sadly this probably has been the lot of many children whose families have had to deal with illness and financial woes, especially with parents who could not be there for their children because of their own troubles. Still Kate accepts her responsibilities for her siblings and her family without much fuss; instead she just does what is expected and necessary while holding onto a sliver of faith that things will right themselves. Even the  book's cover upholds the idea that sometimes, even when you feel like you're a long way out from the safety of shore, there's more rain to come.

Setting Kate's Ring in 1920s Cape Breton, Donna Grassby makes sure young readers see that childhood was not always about play and school. Sometimes it was whatever was needed to help the family out. And by contrasting life in towns and in rural areas, where you might or might not have electricity and plumbing, where travel happened by horse, car and train, and not all children were fortunate enough to go to school, Donna Grassby embeds that story of loss and hardship in families of different shapes. It's family created, sustained and reconfigured that makes Kate's Ring real for the time and for now.

Sammy and the Headless Horseman

by Rona Arato

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

9781554552696

156 pp.

Ages 9-11

May/September 2016

Yes, I know summer is almost over but here's one last summer hurrah for readers to enjoy a 1920s Catskill Mountains resort and solve a mystery with 11-year-old Sammy Levin and his cohort of young sleuths.

Sammy has been invited by his Aunt Pearl to travel with her and his cousins, Joshua and Leah, to the Liebman’s summer resort to get him away from his gang in New York City and to give Sammy’s father some time with his new wife Martha.  But upon his arrival Sammy learns she has arranged for him to work at the resort while she and her family enjoy the benefits of being guests.  Although initially chagrined at this turn of events–as are his Uncle Milton and his father when they visit–Sammy realizes soon enough that he enjoys the work and palling around with other teens who work at the hotel, especially fourteen-year-olds Adam Van Dorn and the owner’s daughter Shayna Liebman, and even performing with the hotel’s entertainer, Moishe.

It was exhilirating and nerve-wracking, but Sammy never felt more like he belonged. (pg. 80)

But there seem to be ghostly forces at work creating havoc at the Liebman’s hotel and on the property of the nearby Hermit, a former slave, including broken dishware, a trampled vegetable garden, a ceiling light falling, and a fire at the Hermit’s chicken coop.  Mrs. Leibman is convinced it’s her dead grandmother expressing her annoyance at the hotel owner’s use of her recipes, but that doesn’t explain the headless horseman (“Some fool hidin’ his head in a black cape and ridin’ a horse”; pg. 44) whom the Hermit witnesses and who later makes appearances at the hotel.  Sammy, who recalls the terrorizing of his Polish village by soldiers, is determined to stop good people like the Hermit and the Liebmans from experiencing further distress and damage.  Together with Adam and Shayna and the annoying Joshua–who always makes sure to clarify to others that “I’m a guest” (pg. 43)–Sammy pursues the mystery of the headless horseman and does a little ghost-busting.

There’s a mystery to be solved and Rona Arato, award-winning writer of The Last Train (Owlkids, 2013), sets up all the clues for the kids to discover the solution and make things right.  Sammy and the Headless Horseman is a Jewish Hardy Boys for the middle-grade set.  But it’s the setting and atmosphere with which Rona Arato infuses her plot that makes the story all the better (and she provides historical notes and photographs to enhance her story).  Sammy and Headless Horseman takes you back to a time when a mountain resort and swimming in a pool and a lake and playing cards and hanging with your peers was summertime bliss.  But by saturating the story with the foods, vocabulary and culture of a Jewish community of the 1920s, many of whom recall their emigration from the old country to the States, Rona Arato has ensured that Sammy and the Headless Horseman is seasoned with a distinctive flavour and ambiance that leaves the reader and the characters feeling good.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If you're in the Toronto area, don't miss the opportunity to get a signed copy from Rona Arato this Sunday, August 28, 2016 at Indigo Yorkdale.  Details here. 

Flickers by Arthur Slade: Out today!

The long-awaited, new book from 

Arthur Slade

#youngCanLit author of 

The Hunchback Assignments series

Modo: Ember's End

Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules for Survival

Megiddo's Shadow

Tribes

Dust

and many more

is here!

Flickers

by Arthur Slade

HarperCollins Canada

978-1443416658

256 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 26, 2016

 * * * 

Described by the author himself:

The Great Gatsby meets The Twilight Zone in this chilling 1920's Hollywood page-turner...

From http://www.arthurslade.com/books/

A movie scream so chilling and powerful, it will open up another dimension ...

Orphaned twins Isabelle and Beatrice Thorn are living a glamorous 1920s Hollywood life as wards of Mr. Cecil, a mysterious and influential director. Isabelle is a silent film starlet, destined for greatness in the very first "talkie"--a horror flick. Beatrice spends her days hidden away on the Cecil estate with her books and her insect collection, scarves covering her birthmarks and baldness. But Beatrice’s curiosity about the death of her parents and the unsettling fate of a reporter is getting the better of her and she’s starting to realize Mr. Cecil has truly dark designs for this movie. 

From http://www.arthurslade.com/flickers

 * * * 

And reviewed by author/illustrator Debbie Ohi as:

So I was just going to read the first few pages of Arthur Slade's new middle grade novel FLICKERS this morning to get a taste of what the book was like but then I COULDN'T STOP READING AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. Finished it just now.

Wow. Such a good read.

SoOOoooOOoooOOooo deliciously creepy and dark (I'm a fan of horror MG). Love how the mystery gradually unfolds, and the plot twists along the way. Love the relationship between the sisters. I just loveloveLOVED this book.

If I have nightmares tonight, I am SO going to blame Arthur Slade. :-) I'm also looking forward to rereading the book when it officially comes out this April!

---Debbie Ohi, Author and Illustrator

 * * * 

If you haven't gotten the impression that Flickers is a delightfully scary read, watch the book trailer here.

Flickers by Arthur Slade

Uploaded by HarperCollins Canada to YouTube on April 25, 2016.

The Journal

by Lois Donovan
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-350-8
204 pp.
Ages 10+
February, 2015

In October, 2004, almost thirteen-year-old Kami is uprooted from Vancouver to Edmonton where the girl has inherited her grandfather’s home–or she will if she lives there until her 18th birthday–and where her mother has secured a “career opportunity” as an urban designer. But The Journal is not just a coming-of-age story of new experiences and adventures.  It’s a story about power, compassion, courage and family.  The control imposed on others purportedly for their own good, whether it be adults upon children, the authorities to those whom they serve, or men onto women, will give readers much upon which to reflect.  And I mean lots.

Kami is definitely thrust into a situation in which she has no control and there is no one to whom she can turn for support: her mom who accepted the position in Edmonton before talking to Kami about it is always too busy; Kami hasn’t seen her father in years; her mom’s parents remain in Vancouver; her father’s mother has passed and the grandfather who has left her his home in Edmonton has moved to PEI to live with his daughter; and her friends are as distant as all her plans for playing soccer and a joint 13th birthday party with friend Becca.  Not surprising that Kami is left alone to investigate her new home, discovering some memorabilia including photos and an old journal in the attic where she intends to make her loft bedroom.

But the journal of thirteen-year-old Helen Mitchell slips Kami into January 1929–though she remains in the same house–where she overhears talk of pilot Captain “Wot” May's plan to fly an anti-toxin up to Little Red River Settlement in northern Alberta where a diphtheria outbreak has occurred.  Though Kami returns promptly to her own time, a visit to the library and reading a newspaper clipping in the journal about the “Mission of Mercy” transports her back in time again, this time making the acquaintance of Helen Mitchell and her family as they head to the airfield to see pilots May and Horner off. But Kami cannot find the means to be transported back to 2004, and must deal with the repercussions of being a girl of Japanese heritage, seemingly without family, in a time when cowering to those in authority is deemed respectful and showing gratitude.

Kami does return to her own time, and back to 1929 again as well, but no matter what time period she is in, she must find ways to deal with issues of inequality–racial, gender and age–and learn from those who have charted pathways to making things right.

Lois Donovan does a commendable job of intertwining historical events such as the Mission of Mercy and the actions of the Famous Five with Kami’s life in 2004 Canada, and having Kami see her own dilemmas in relation to those of much more difficult times.  But I could not stop myself from despising Kami’s mother, and this probably prevented me from experiencing the fullness of the plot of The Journal.  In a book in which ordinary individuals show extraordinary courage and compassion to deliver medicine to a remote community, Kami’s mother shines as a self-absorbed parent who repeatedly fails to see how her decisions are solely beneficial for herself and disrespectful of her daughter.  The Journal's ending, however, is proof of Kami’s ability to forgive and her youthful resilience, because the theory of karma suggests that Mom should be the one tripping over herself to make things right.

I suspect that younger readers will not overemphasize Kami’s mom’s flaws as I have and instead will recognize the plotting as an opportunity to see into a different time and the bounty of their own lives relative to 1929.  By making Kami into a young teen whose strife-filled life is still manageable, Lois Donovan has provided hope for all and any, even those with me-first mothers.