I Am Not a Number

by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

Second Story Press

978-1-927583-94-4

32 pp.

Ages 7+

September 2016

Reviewed from advance reading copy

Stories like I Am Not a Number should always be told.  They should always be told loudly and emphatically and with purpose, to tell of a wrongdoing that was perpetrated against First Nations families like the Couchie family of Nipissing First Nation.  Tales of children stolen from their homes, under the direction of government, to attend and live at residential schools.  Narratives of holding onto self when everything was done to annihilate that sense.  This is the account of author Jenny Kay Dupuis’ granny, Irene Couchie Dupuis.

In 1928, Irene was living with her father, Chief Ernest Couchie, and her mother and two brothers, George and Ephraim, on Nipissing Reserve Number 10 when the Indian agent of the day demanded the children be surrendered to him to deliver to St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School.  Though her parents protest–her mother especially vehement that eight-year-old Irene needed to be with her family–the children are essentially taken by force.

The children are going with me to the residential school.  They are wards of the government, now.  They belong to us. (pg. 2)

With final goodbyes, her mother telling them to “Never forget home or our ways.  Never forget your mother and father.  Never forget who you are.” (pg. 7), the three children are taken away and separated, boys from girls.  Still Irene tries to stay strong, even after she’s told that she will be known as 759, telling herself “I am not a number.  I am Irene Couchie, daughter of Ernest and Mary Ann Couchie.  I will never forget who I am.” (pg. 8).  And through the horrible showering to “scrub all the brown off” (pg. 9) and the cutting of her long hair–normally only cut when a loved one was lost– and burning of her hands as punishment for speaking her own language, Irene heeds her mother’s words to never forget who she is.

From I Am Not a Number 

by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer, 

illus. by Gillian Newland

After a full year of biting her tongue and dreaming of home, to and from which all letters were banned, Irene and her brothers are sent home for the summer.  As happy as she is to feel the love of her family again, to eat well and speak her own language, Irene is troubled by images of her time at school and her impending return in the fall.  But Irene’s father has other plans for his children and none of them include that horrible place.

Jenny Kay Dupuis does her granny Irene and her heritage honour by telling this story.  It’s a difficult one for all families involved in the residential school debacle, even for generations afterwards but one that Jenny Kay Dupuis tells, in collaboration with award-winning historical fiction and non-fiction writer Kathy Kacer, to inform and clarify for young readers.  It’s a shocking tragedy from our history but one from which we can only hope all learn valuable lessons.  I Am Not a Number is illustrated compassionately by Gillian Newland, who also illustrated Kathy Kacer’s The Magician of Auschwitz (Second Story Press, 2014) and A Boy Asked the Wind (Barbara Nickel, Red Deer Press, 2015). In the realistic style of Alex Colville and using the sombre tones of greys, blacks and browns for the residential school and a similar palette with splashes of gold and green away from that setting, Gillian Newland evokes the appropriate sentiment the book.  I Am Not a Number may be illustrated and classified as juvenile non-fiction but the extensive text and the account within is a mature one, yet one that can be told and taught and learned with empathy and as tribute.

From I Am Not a Number 

by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer, 

illus. by Gillian Newland

A Boy Asked the Wind

by Barbara Nickel

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

Red Deer Press

978-0-889-95480-9

40 pp.

Ages 5-10

November, 2015

It's hard to believe that A Boy Asked the Wind is Barbara Nickel’s first children’s story book, especially as I'd enjoyed her YA book Hannah Waters and the Daughter of Johann Sebastian Bach (Penguin Canada, 2005) and had no idea she is the poet she is. Fortunately Barbara Nickel has applied her skills in verse-writing  and created a story based lovingly on an innocent query asked by her son about where the wind lives.  Thus, A Boy Asked the Wind was born.

The boy may ask his question from the familiar front yard of his house, but the wind cannot answer him without taking him around the world.  A visit to the plains and prairies of the bison and the Blackfoot introduces the boy to the overwhelming Chinook.  But just as the boy is convinced that he now knows where the wind lives, he is taken to the Pacific Ocean and witnesses the Papagayo winds as they increase upwelling and impact marine life. Still the boy does not have the complete answer, though he naively believes he has. Next a visit to South Africa exposes the boy to the Cape Doctor, the strong southeasterly winds that shape the cape and clear town life of its atmospheric debris. And then the Shamal winds toss and storm the sands of Iraq and the Persian Gulf countries, as violent as the soldiers and the violence therein. Finally, as the Shamal dies down for the night, the wind returns the boy to his house and becomes the gentle west wind of his home.

As powerful and as immeasurable as the wind depicted within, A Boy Asked the Wind will take readers on a global journey while overwhelming them with its lyricism and grace.  Barbara Nickel's verse reaches beyond its basic words and traverses the world and careens through its landscapes and people to become unstoppable.

plunging with a mighty whoosh,
horns and hooves, a mighty swish
through dry grass and coulees, rushing
everywhere until the winter vanished. 

Then he and Chinook lingered to whistle
spring into the land, tussled
through shoots of silverweed, flew faster
than homecoming geese, ran past 

a herd of bison pounding, leaping
over the cliff. (pg. 9)

A Boy Asked the Wind, pg. 8, illustration by Gillian Newland

Imagine the complexity of illustrating a book about the wind.  Ask yourself, “What colours and textures, shape and line would best depict an entity so omnipotent?”  Using watercolour, ink and pencil, Gillian Newland easily makes the readers feel that entity, a character that is only line, by focusing on that which the wind touches: plains, bison, ocean, cliffs, deserts, plants and animals, communities.  What she is able to accomplish is both alluring and admirable, not unlike the wind itself.

A Boy Asked the Wind should be on every school and child’s bookshelf as a powerful read about nature’s airstreams but more as the supremacy of wind to shape our worlds and those of others.

The Magician of Auschwitz

Written by Kathy Kacer

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

Second Story Press

978-1-927583-46-3

32 pp.

Ages 7+

For release September 5, 2014

Yesterday, Second Story Press added a unique title to its auspicious collection of Holocaust remembrance books: The Magician of Auschwitz by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gillian Newland.  As befits a picture book recounting any event that would take place in one of World War II's most horrific concentration camps, The Magician of Auschwitz is dark and sombre in tone and atmosphere, both in its text and its graphics.

A young boy, Werner, is delivered to the Auschwitz concentration camp, alone, separated from his mother and sister.  In the cramped barracks and overcrowded bunks, Werner learns quickly enough that only the strong will survive. This makes him even more curious about Herr Levin, a gentle, soft-spoken, middle-aged man with whom Werner shares the uppermost bunk.

The physical and emotional hardships of the days at the concentration camp are only accentuated by the dark nights of fear-filled sleep.  When guards come in the night and demand that Herr Levin do his magic, Werner anxiously watches as his bunkmate performs card tricks for the guards' entertainment.  There are more nights when they are awoken and Herr Levin works his magic, with cards, string and coins.  And, though Werner believes Herr Levin will benefit from his entertaining acts for the soldiers, Herr Levin makes it clear that, "This is not a game, and it is not a show." (pg. 16) He was performing for his life.

Kathy Kacer's notes, titled How it Happened, explain the real story behind The Magician of Auschwitz.  In Auschwitz, Werner Reich, the young boy, met Herbert Levin, a man who had been the well-known magician Nivelli the Magician.  There the gentle man shared his tricks with Werner and his compassion and strength of spirit in a horrific situation.

"Someone had cared about him and given him some hope.  There was enough real magic in that for Werner to hold on to." (pg. 24)

Kathy Kacer emphasizes the connection between the boy and magician and their unique relationship based in respect and magic while in the camp.  But the details of their later lives, very separate but still connected, complete their stories so appropriately. And Gillian Newland touches upon the heart of their relationship, a sliver of brightness, among the dark grey-browns of the heartless concentration camp, where survival is everything. There are few splashes of colour in the camp, only the playing cards and a swastika armband.  The power of both is clear. Only in a final illustration of an older Werner Reich with his two sons do warmer tones of orange, olive and turquoise appear.  The message in the words and the illustrations are quite clear.  From the darkness with few lights of hope came brighter lives, though still muted by earlier events that stole much family, hope and life from so many. The Magician of Auschwitz is an important book of accepting hope wherever possible in the most hopeless of situations and from the most surprising of sources.

A touching book trailer for The Magician of Auschwitz may be viewed here.