Tegan and Sara: Junior High

Written by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin

Illustrated by Tillie Walden

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

978-0-374-31301-2

304 pp.

Ages 10-14

May 2023

The names Tegan and Sara are well known to many as the Canadian Indie-pop duo but also producers of the TV series High School, based on their own secondary school experiences. Their Wikipedia page is loaded with accomplishments, collaborations, awards, and activism. But, for Tegan Quin and Sara Quin to become who they are today, they had to navigate the ups-and-downs of the middle grade years and puberty, all while trying to maintain their most important relationship, that of identical twins. This is the story of those Junior High highs and lows.

From Tegan and Sara: Junior High, written by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin, illus. by Tillie Walden

It's the beginning of their Grade 7 year and everything is new for the twins. First, their mom Sonia and stepdad Bruce have moved houses to be closer to the girls' dad, Steve. That means leaving their old friend Faiza and making new friends. But the girls will now be in separate classes so there is an added element of anxiety that their lives are more separate than they're used to. And Tegan and Sara are very close. Still, though they may be identical in their appearance, they do differ in their personalities. (Illustrator Tillie Walden tries to keep the two different in the artwork, when she can, by drawing Sara in red and Tegan in blue, though most of the illustrations are in violet.) So, when they meet Noa, Chloe, Vincent, and Avery, it's Tegan who becomes fast friends with Noa, much to the annoyance of obnoxious Avery who claims Noa as her own best friend and to the disappointment of Sara who is less concerned with becoming popular and more with remaining friends with Faiza.

From Tegan and Sara: Junior High, written by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin, illus. by Tillie Walden

But then Sara meets Kaito from her science class and his friend Roshini and things take another turn. While the twins navigate puberty–and all the surprising changes that come with it–and friends and family, two significant developments arise. First, the girls discover a guitar and start delving into song writing and performing. Second, they both develop crushes, Tegan on Kaito and Sara, much to her surprise, on Roshini. While doing things differently is normal, the twins rely on each other for support, and when things start to go awry, whether it's one getting her period and not telling the other or one exposing secrets that should not have been shared, Tegan and Sara find themselves in conflict. Can they be there for each other to get through the bad times and celebrate the good or will people and other things come between them?

From Tegan and Sara: Junior High, written by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin, illus. by Tillie Walden

Junior high and middle school is always tough. There are so many changes happening for young people, both inside and outside of their bodies, and figuring them out is even tougher when they don't always know whom to trust for support. Tegan Quin and Sara Quin certainly represent what middle graders might be going through as they confront new circumstances at home, at school, with friends and with their own bodies. But what Tegan and Sara understand best is how it feels to be and live with an identical twin. It's that relationship that is key to them becoming the successful musical duo they have and getting through those middle grade years undefeated. Yet their story highlights the fact that Tegan and Sara are their own people with their unique likes, dislikes, insecurities, worries, skills, and more, and, in the context of middle grade angst, they show grit.

Tegan and Sara: Junior High will be a welcome graphic novel for middle grade readers who may or may not know the twins as the singer-songwriters they are, but they will know the uncertainty of figuring out themselves with the coming of age. Tegan Quin and Sara Quin may be telling their story, but it's a story that goes beyond the autobiography and becomes more about encouragement and illustration for getting through.

Little Juniper Makes It Big

Written and illustrated by Aidan Cassie
Farrar Straus Giroux
978-0-374-31045-5
40 pp.
Ages 4-8
July 2019

Juniper is a little raccoon and she's tired of being so little. She sees the disadvantages of being small in a world made by adults for adults. Everything seems to be too high for her to reach, whether it be the sink, the door knob or an elusive jar of cookies. Even when she puts her engineering skills to work, with springboards and stilts, hoppers and heighteners, and cranes and catapults and balloons, "Juniper's efforts fell short." 

From Little Juniper Makes It Big by Aidan Cassie

At school, Juniper realizes that she is actually of average size and even far larger than new student Clove whose size does not hinder her efforts at all. When Clove invites Juniper to her home, the raccoon anticipates lessons in "un-smallness" but she is pleasantly surprised to learn that, at "Clove's home, Juniper was adult-size."

From Little Juniper Makes It Big by Aidan Cassie

Still, it's that grass-is-always-greener scenario because Juniper soon recognizes that she can't enjoy fun activities like swinging, playing dress-up, bouncing on the bed and even playing hide-and-seek when she's far larger than Clove. Nevertheless, Juniper's sleepover at Clove's helps her recognize how her own home was "very, nearly, almost perfect!"

From Little Juniper Makes It Big by Aidan Cassie

Children are always in such a hurry to get bigger, older, taller and have more responsibilities, and the storytelling in Little Juniper Makes It Big suggests, without admonishing, that it's perfectly normal to see another world as more desirable. However, Juniper finally gets the message with the help of the even smaller Clove, whose optimism and determination abound, that her world is perfect for her right now.

Aidan Cassie, whose first picture book, Sterling, Best Dog Ever (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018) won the 2019 Joan Betty Stuchner–Oy Vey!–Funniest Children's Book Award in the picture book/board book category, again blends the humour of childhood innocence and the determination to be more, or at least our very best. Juniper sees her world as limiting because of her size but, with a change in perspective, courtesy of a tiny squirrel with a voluminous personality and oodles of spirit, Juniper is able to appreciate her home and life in new ways. That's a very positive message, heightened with the humour and charm of Aidan Cassie's illustrations. I was won over by her artwork in Sterling, Best Dog Ever and Little Juniper Makes It Big introduces us to a new gang of cartoon animals in engrossing settings. (Check out the cottage-like setting of the bathroom below.) Her characters have joy and frustration amidst the normalcy of family, home, and school and even little humans will be able to identify with them.  By creating empathy for cute animals who are experiencing what our own children may also be encountering, Aidan Cassie has found a way to teach, delight, reassure and entertain our youngest who just want to make it big too.

From Little Juniper Makes It Big by Aidan Cassie

A Girl Like That

Written by Tanaz Bhathena

Farrar Straus Giroux

978-0-374-30544-4

369 pp.

Ages 13-18

February 2018

Zarin Wadia, sixteen, is A Girl Like That. She's seen as provocative, rebellious, and clever but her story is one of tragedy from birth to her death.

Zarin's death, along with that of a young man, Porus Dumasia, in a car accident is not a surprise ending. It begins the book with Zarin's guardians, Masi (mother's sister) and Masa (maternal uncle), and Porus's mother wailing over the dead teens. How they got there which is essentially Zarin's back story is the story of A Girl Like That. Told in multiple voices of Zarin, Porus, a gossipy classmate Mishal, and a boy Farhan with whom Zarin becomes involved, Tanaz Bhathena's first young adult novel is a study in nature vs. nurture for a teen whose origins were considered shameful and whose upbringing was rife with physical and emotional abuse. 

Memories...can be like splinters, digging into you when you least expect them to, holding tight and sharp the way wood did when it slid under a fingernail. (pg. 27)

Zarin is never made to feel like she belongs. Not with her Masi and Masa who take her in after her unmarried mother's death or at Qala Academy, the school she attends after they move from India to Saudi Arabia. She is shamed at home by her abusive and mentally ill Masi–and infrequently defended by Masa–for her illegitimacy, her gangster father and issues related to her being a girl. At school, a place where rumours are currency, especially for Mishal the anonymous BlueNiqab blogger and gossip monger, Zarin's classmates look down their noses at her for her heritage and standoffish ways. Still, Zarin endures. She hides the abuses and thumbs her nose at those who shame her. She smokes and she goes riding in cars with boys, an offense according to Sharia law.

And then her childhood Parsi friend, Porus, moves to Jeddah with his mother after the death of his beloved father. Zarin and Porus resume their friendship though it is an unconventional one, with Porus completely smitten and Zarin dating other boys and not sure she is capable of loving anyone. When Zarin is the victim of an assault by Farhan, her world at home and school dissolves into a muddy mess of anger, gossip, shaming, and revenge, with Zarin's desperately searching for courage and safety, within and without.

A Girl Like That is garnering much attention because of Tanaz Bhathena's story about gender inequality and religion-based social restrictions in Saudi Arabia. By focusing on a world that is intimate to many but foreign to so many others, Tanaz Bhathena is both honouring those who live Zarin's life and educating those unfamiliar with the restrictions and distinctions of living with abuse, segregation, cultural discrimination, gender inequality and religious policing.  But beyond the cultural milieu, A Girl Like That is still a statement about the need for self-expression, to fight self and others, to become who you are. Zarin's story is still a tragedy for the abuses inflicted upon her by family, both young men and women, and her cultures but she finds a way to fly, even without wings.

Because a bird only learns to fly when its wings are broken. (pg. 318)

All That Was

Written by Karen Rivers

Farrar Straus Giroux

978-0-374-30246-7

384 pp.

Ages 12-18

January 2018

Seventeen-year-olds Piper and Sloane are friends. On the surface, they are very similar, or at least make themselves appear similar in hair style and colour and clothing, and spend all their time together or they did until the No-Boyfriend Rule is broken.  But Piper and Sloane's friendship is one of contradictions: love and hate, appreciation and disrespect, and camaraderie and rivalry. With that kind of a basis for a friendship, what happens when one of the friends is gone?

Though Sloane Whittaker thinks of herself as common compared to the more exotic Piper Sullivan, Piper is actually more like the flirty alpha in their friendship. If she wants something, she goes after it and is oblivious to the nuances in their friendship that might indicate Sloane may think differently.  So when they attend an art show that includes the work of Soup Sanchez, a boy Sloane has liked since fourth grade, Piper teases her shamelessly until Sloane denies liking him. The next day Piper reveals she and Soup connected after the show and are now going out. Now Sloane must endure Piper's personal divulgences about their kisses and sex while secretly yearning for the boy she has always liked and coincidentally seems to like her. But it's hard to say "No" to Piper. So when Piper decides that Sloane must experience sex, and she sets her up with a boy, James Robert Wilson, Sloane goes along.

But trouble is brewing as Soup and Sloane are regularly thrown together and Piper, oblivious until one fateful night, continues to direct their lives and her story to her best advantage.  That all changes when Piper dies.

All That Was is told in the voices of Sloane and Soup in terms of "Before" and "Now" relative to Piper's death. Most of the story is the "Before" in which we learn about the basis for Sloane and Piper's friendship; their revealing discussions which are both friendly and hostile; Sloane's aspirations to be a documentary filmmaker; and Soup and Piper's relationship. The "Now" brings to light the police investigation and arrest of a murderer, the guilt Sloane and Soup harbour, and the necessity of perspective and forgiveness, even of oneself.

Although many would consider Piper and Sloane frenemies and their friendship essentially doomed, I think it goes far deeper than that. The two girls sincerely love one another as friends but there is an inherent meanness to their interactions.  Theirs is a dance of sarcasm and one-upmanship, trying to be individuals but scared to be separated.  It's a very real relationship though not one to which anyone would aspire. Although I like some aspects of Sloane, probably identifying her as the underdog of the two, neither Piper nor Sloane are very likable. Karen Rivers made them very real–I suspect most teens know a Piper and a Sloane at their high schools–and their connectedness authentic though strained. Whether there is a message here about forgiveness or getting past tragedy, I don't know.  I do know that Karen Rivers makes it clear that not all friendships are rainbows and unicorns, just as she did in her earlier book Finding Ruby Starling (2014).  Some relationships are darker and deeper like crows and tumultuous waters, but they still build our life experiences, good or bad. Sloane and Soup, and yes, even Piper, can take from this chapter and move forward. Sometimes it is what it is. And All That Was just was.

Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever: Book launch (Salt Spring Island, BC)

Join author-illustrator

Aidan Cassie 

for the launch of her first picture book

Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever

 Written and illustrated by Aidan Cassie
Farrar Straus Giroux
978-0-374-30614-4
40 pp.
Ages 3-6
July 2018 

Reviewed here

on

Saturday, July 28, 2018

1-2 p.m.

at

Salt Spring Island Public Library

129 McPhillips Ave.

Salt Spring Island

There will be:

• an author reading

• a book giveaway

• crafts for children

• Sterling bookmarks and stickers

and

• cupcakes!

If you're fortunate enough to live in the vicinity of Salt Spring Island, 

do take in this book launch.  

Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever

is a special picture book that is sure to be enjoyed by children, parents and teachers.

Read my review here.

 

Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever

Written and illustrated by Aidan Cassie

Farrar Straus Giroux

978-0-374-30614-4

40 pp.

Ages 3-6

July 2018

If ever there was a picture book that promoted the idea that you can be anything you want to be but being yourself is probably best, it's Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever. 

Sterling is a silver dachshund who lives in a box outside of the Butlery Cutlery Company which purports to be "Now Shipping to All the Best Homes." Home sounds like a nice promise to Sterling whose box was  "... like a house. But not much like a home. No home had wanted to keep Sterling, not for long." So Sterling slips into the factory and into a box of forks ready for shipping.

From Sterling, Best Dog Ever by Aidan Cassie

Determined that "This time will be different, he thought. I'll be different", Sterling makes sure that he is the best fork he can be. He stays as straight and as quiet and as silver as the other forks so that he can stay with the Gilbert family who see that he is different but quiet, small and "the most adorable thing ever!" But when the young girl wants to take him for  a walk or get him to sleep on her bed, Sterling remains fork-like. Then, when he's worried the family might not need him to be a fork, he reinvents himself as a whisk, a rolling pin, and more. It's not until he realizes the little girl is unhappy, and he finally sees all her puppy posters on the wall, that Sterling recognizes that "she just wanted him to be himself."

From Sterling, Best Dog Ever by Aidan Cassie

This picture book is darling! The angst of poor Sterling trying to be whatever is needed so that he could have a forever home is both heart-breaking and humourous.  He really thinks he can be a fork, a golf club and a paper towel holder. He's always been under the impression that being himself, a dog, just wasn't good enough. Shame on those who ever made him feel less for being himself.  And kudos to the little girl who saw him as "the huggable, snuggable, perfectly lovable dog" that he was.  To all the Sterlings and dogs and children and people who think they're not enough just being whom they are, you're wrong.  You are enough and you're perfect as you are.

From Sterling, Best Dog Ever by Aidan Cassie

Aidan Cassie is a new name in the youngCanLit world for me. Though this is her first published picture book, she was trained as an illustrator and animator and has been creating stories for many years, including the hand-drawn short film Sitting Next to Bernie (which also has an adorable puppy). If Sterling, Best Fork Dog Ever is any indication of the storytelling and artwork that Aidan Cassie can conceive, then I anticipate much positivity and more teachable moments in her future books.