Berani: Guest review

 This book was reviewed by Grade 9 student Bronte.

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-260-8

224 pp.

Ages 8-13

August 2022

Malia is a courageous girl who stands up for what she believes in, but activism can be a risky business. When she gets into some trouble with her school for circulating a petition against palm-oil, a product that many families in her town rely on for their income, she has to make a difficult decision that could result in lots of trouble for many people. Meanwhile she is trying to convince her Canadian-born mother not to move the family from Indonesia where Malia has lived all her life, and where her late father is buried.

Ari spends his days attending school, playing chess, and doing chores around his uncle’s restaurant in exchange for a chance to live with him, and get an education at the local public school. But the guilt of leaving behind his dear cousin, Suni, and the rest of his family has been gnawing on him. Furthermore, Ginger Juice, his uncle’s pet orangutan, has been suffering from her poor living conditions, and he’s worried her days are numbered. 

 

Berani alternates between the points of view of Ari and Malia as they help others and try to solve problems around their communities, as well as that of Ginger Juice, who longs for home. It is an inspiring story ideal for grades 4-6, written by Michelle Kadarusman, award-winning author of books such as Music for Tigers and The Theory of Hummingbirds. As someone who cares for the environment, I think Berani is a fantastic way to introduce some of our world’s problems to kids. This book touches on so many important issues: animal rights, climate change, preserving the environment, the loss of family members, and the struggles of moving. The main characters Ari, Malia, and of course Ginger Juice are brave, kind, and thoughtful. The book’s colourful descriptions and Indonesian words sprinkled throughout (a glossary is provided) really set the scene, and the way the chapters flip between the kids' and orangutan's perspectives is a nice touch as well. It’s a great way to start conversations about our world, and our responsibilities as inhabitants of it. (Michelle Kadarusman includes a section with information on orangutans and how we can help them.) Berani, which I would rate 9 out of 10 stars, is definitely worth a read!

~ Written by Bronte, Gr. 9

Room for More

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Illustrated by Maggie Zeng

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-252-3

32 pp.

Ages 5-8

June 2022

With fire season upon us, Room for More reminds us of the fragility of habitats and the vulnerability of animals to destruction too often wrought by humans, whether by carelessness or climate change. Fortunately, animal species such as the Australian ones Michelle Kadarusman has highlighted here do better than we do at showing compassion, generosity, flexibility and reciprocity.

From Room for More by Michelle Kadarusman, illus. by Maggie Zeng

Two wombats, Dig and Scratch, know that when they smell the smoke of a bushfire that they will be safe in their deep burrows. But when they hear other animals scurrying for safety outside, Dig offers them shelter, though Scratch keeps reiterating that, "There is no room." Still, Dig tells a wallaby with a joey in her pouch who was already succumbing to the smoke that, "We have plenty of room."

From Room for More by Michelle Kadarusman, illus. by Maggie Zeng

When Dig spots a koala clinging to a tree, he again helps a stranded animal, against Scratch's grumblings of limited space. When a tiger snake is spotted, there is much trepidation about a venomous snake that might bite but Dig is convinced the snake will behave.

From Room for More by Michelle Kadarusman, illus. by Maggie Zeng

Though very snug in the wombats' burrow, the motley group of animals survive until a rain comes and puts out the bushfire. But, with that rain, comes a new worry for the wombats whose home is in danger of flooding. However, their new friends find a way to reciprocate the relief provided, showing a generosity of spirit all around.

 

Australian-born author Michelle Kadarusman's "Author's Note" reveals that Room for More is based on the science that animals other than wombats would find safety in their deep burrows during the horrific bushfires of 2019-2020. Perhaps there weren't discussions between wombats about helping out or animals uniting to engineer an embankment, but Michelle Kadarusman reminds us that all animals, even unlikely allies, can cooperate for greater good and without compulsion for mutual benefit, though in this case that is exactly what happens.  Though the consequences of bushfires are often devastating, Michelle Kadarusman has emphasized a gentler story, that of animals surviving and by unusual means. And that's the good story. But Michelle Kadarusman also gives us the science of Room for More, providing a glossary of the species involved in the story as well as explaining important issues like climate change, environmental disasters and Australian Indigenous land practices.

From Room for More by Michelle Kadarusman, illus. by Maggie Zeng

That gentle touch to what is a heartbreaking and devastating circumstance is emulated in artist Maggie Zeng's digital illustrations. While there is an orange hue of fires and a pall of grey haze to the landscape, Maggie Zeng does not overwhelm the art with angry flames or blackened scenes of destruction. Instead, she takes us to a dry and warm setting that is softened with the kindness of benevolence. In her colours and shapes, Maggie Zeng offers generosity and compassion.

I know teachers will love to share this story with their students whether for STEM lessons regarding habitat, characteristics of living things, different world biomes or climate change or for character education centered on empathy and goodwill but at its heart it is a sweet story that goes beyond teaching by captivating readers and transporting them to other worlds. It would seem there's always room for another fabulous picture book on the youngCanLit shelves.

Music for Tigers: Guest review

Today's review was written by teacher-librarian Elizabeth Cook.

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-054-3

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2020

As an avid traveller, I love stories that help me relive fabulous trips I have taken in the past.  While I never made it all the way to Tasmania when adventuring around Australia, where Michelle Kadarusman’s Music For Tigers takes place, I felt as though I had.  Her description of the Tasmanian rainforest is breathtaking.  Michelle Kadarusman weaves her words in such a way that makes the world down under come alive.  The best way I can describe it is that she not only created a beautiful story, it felt like she created a melody with her words.  I could feel the rhythm and cadence of the eucalyptus trees and all of the animals contained on the island of Tasmania.

Music is all that the main character, Louisa, can think about when she arrives in Tasmania after a long flight from Toronto.  Clutching her violin, she would much rather be rehearsing for her upcoming audition for the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra than bushwhacking her way to a remote cabin with her Uncle Ruff that she has only just met.  At her cabin, Louisa finds solace in making her violin fill the emptiness around her with melodies to help her feel as though she were at home in Toronto.  Louisa can’t help but feel she is being watched from outside her window...and this time it isn’t the Huntsman spider that previously inhabited her cabin. 

When Louisa learns to live in the present and embrace her time in Tasmania she learns the true beauty of nature: the sound of cicadas among the gum trees, locating the Southern Cross in the dark night sky, and watching small wallabies bouncing along the forest floor.  Unfortunately, this is all under attack as Louisa learns that the camp of her great-grandmother, a safe haven for endangered animals in the wild, is soon to be bulldozed to make roads to the nearby mines.  Has Louisa learned the true value of what is important in life too late to make a difference?

Michelle Kadarusman’s Music For Tigers is a beautiful novel that is a captivating read.  It weaves in themes of animal stewardship, environmental protection, family, and friendship into one heartwarming book.  This novel would be an excellent read for adults as well as students in Grades 4 and up.  If you love protecting animals in their natural environment, you will love this book...just be sure to watch out for those bunyips!

~ Elizabeth Cook is a teacher-librarian in the Halton District School Board. She is an avid reader and fan of Canadian literature. 

Music for Tigers

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-054-3

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2020

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. (Cicero)

There is art within the pages of Music for Tigers. It's the art that comes from seeing and hearing and knowing a place and its people. Just as she did in her earlier books, The Theory of Hummingbirds (2017) and Girl of the Southern Sea (2019), Michelle Kadarusman delivers us with her art, this time to the island of Tasmania, a land rich with stories, of history, of landscape and of life.

This vacation is getting stranger by the day. Uninvited campers. Extinct bandicoots that aren't extinct after all. Scary-looking spiders that I'm not supposed to be scared of. Odd noises and stranger smells in the night. And what exactly is the real story with the Tasmanian tigers? (pg. 44)

Louisa just wants to play violin and rehearse for a spot with the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. Instead she is shipped off to a bush camp in the remote Tasmanian rainforest to spend six weeks of the Canadian summer with Uncle Ruff, her mother's brother. Everything is new and strange and Louisa fears the animals, the smells, and a place that offers her few comforts.

Because of the remoteness of the family camp, just an assortment of crumbling cabins beside a river, Uncle Ruff takes her to the nearby Eco Lodge for Wi-Fi. Here she meets proprietor Mel and her son, Colin. Colin, a boy whose ASD makes social interactions more challenging, is a superb bushwalking guide, knowing everything about the Tarkine, this remote area of northwest Tasmania. He tells her about the devils and the seemingly-extinct thylacine a.k.a. the Tasmanian tiger, which is not a tiger at all but a carnivorous marsupial that looks more dog-like with stripes on its back. He also shares stories of Tasmania's history as a convict colony, and rumours that Convict Rock, in the middle of their local river, is haunted. Coupled with readings of her great-grandmother Eleanor's journal from 1939 and 1942 and discussions with her Uncle Ruff, Louisa starts to learn what a special place the Tarkine is. Even more extraordinary is that her violin playing may be drawing a thylacine in to listen.

Michelle Kadarusman brings two worlds together in Music for Tigers and shows that they can work in unison. Louisa didn't want to leave the city for the bush, determined that she would not leave her dreams of playing the violin behind, and Uncle Ruff is happy enough to do without the amenities his sister left to enjoy in another country and in the city. Both change.

For once, I don't have my violin. I want to hear the music of the forest instead. I sit and listen to the currrawongs sing their Vivaldi chorus and the rhythmic swish and sway of the towering giants above me. I close my eyes, breathe in the lemon myrtle, and listen carefully. (pg. 168)

Together Ruff and Louisa, with a little help from their friends, work to do good, though sadly they have to do so because of the encroachment of human activities, such as mining and logging, on the natural environment. Music for Tigers is a statement, albeit a songful one, of our impact on the natural world for our own purposes, destroying critical habitats and species. It implores us to step up and put conservation and preservation measures in place before it's too late, when even the music of our efforts won't be enough to save ecosystems and their species.

With Music for Tigers, Michelle Kadarusman reminds us, again, that being human requires much of us but the dividends from benevolence to others, human and not, may be unforeseen but boundless.

Girl of the Southern Sea

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-081-9

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2019

This is the story of Nia, a girl who lives with her five-year-old brother Rudi and their father in a tin shack along the train tracks of Jakarta, Indonesia. Though at fourteen she has finished middle school, she craves to continue her education, but there is no extra money for the school fees needed for high school. Instead she works to tend to the family: getting her brother to and from school, making meals, cleaning, and preparing batter for their father's fried banana cart. Sadly, it also means bringing her father home from nights of drinking arak (an alcoholic drink) at Jango's hut and cleaning up after Bapak's poor choices. Still Nia tries to see a future, hopeful of saving money for school and writing stories about Dewi Kadita, the Queen of the Southern Sea, who offers life lessons and the promise of a better life from dire circumstances.

But, with any story, there are plot twists and conflicts that challenge characters and wrench the narrative from a smooth path to a satisfying terminus. For Nia, it's a minibus crash from which she alone survives essentially unscathed. In a culture rife with superstitions and a predilection for supernatural stories, Nia's survival is seen as a miracle and consequently their banana fritters attributed with being infused with good luck. But how fortunate is Nia truly?

This is the basis for Michelle Kadarusman's story of Nia, but I cannot convey the depth of the storytelling within Girl of the Southern Sea and it's message for girls to make their own opportunities. (A portion of the book's proceeds go to Plan International Canada's #BecauseIAmaGirl campaign.) Even dealing with her father's alcoholism and weakness of character, and inherent vulnerabilities because of poverty and alarming cultural and social attitudes, Nia is driven to continue her education and write her stories. She stands up for herself–"I am not your promise to give." (pg. 196)– and makes sure that her life becomes the story she wants told.

I am here to live a different story. I am here to write my own story. (pg. 202)

There are so many tragedies in Nia's story that come when others try to impose their lives on her circumstances. There are the corrupt police who assault her father; her best friend Yuli who may be involved in illicit activities as a way to improve her conditions; vigilantes who turn on Nia violently when the good luck they purported she peddled was proven to be lacking; and her father who is willing to choose his own needs over those of his children. Still Nia takes guidance from her mother, via dreams, and from Dewi Kadita, the princess cursed with disfiguring skin conditions relieved only in the Southern Sea, and begins to make a life for herself. Its origins may be saturated in misfortune and tragedy but it will become the story she wants to write for herself and make her the Girl of the Southern Sea.

The Theory of Hummingbirds

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-027-7

160 pp.

Ages 8-12

September 2017

Middle-grader Alba has always been defined by Cleo.  Cleo is her left foot, the foot with talipes equinovarus, a deformity formerly known as club foot.  She has endured multiple treatments and restrictions on what she can and cannot do but, with her most recent surgery, Alba is convinced the normalcy she has always craved is almost upon her.  She is sure that, once her cast is removed, she will be able to shed her timekeeper role and run in the year-end cross-country race.

The idea of being NORMAL hovered ahead of me like a glittering, shining new world–a place that I had never been allowed into.  Somehow I knew that if I could just run in the race like everyone else, it would prove that I deserved to be there–in magical Normal Land. (pg. 48)

Alba is adamant that she will run and so, when best friend Levi isn't an enthusiastic supporter of her plans–he's wrapped up in proving there's a wormhole in the librarian's office–she lashes out, calling him weird and his ideas stupid.  Even Coach and her doctor caution her about making plans before they see how the foot has healed and how the physiotherapy works.  Sadly, in her efforts to get that normal life, she twists the truth, manipulates her mother and almost loses a friend. She may see herself as fierce but, like the hummingbird of the title, she can be vicious. Alba's story may not turn out as she plans, in a blaze of running glory with new friends, but it's closer than you think, resolving  itself appropriately and ultimately better for Alba, Cleo, Levi and others than expected.  

Alba is like the hummingbirds of the title.  Most people would see them as delicate creatures, perhaps fragile and vulnerable. But Alba and Levi, hummingbird aficionados, know that the little birds are not always what they seen.  They can be intense, even ferocious, not unlike Alba herself.  While the birds' behaviour is driven by survival, Alba's may be the same, or as she feels it to be so, especially when she doesn't get the reactions she wants or the outcomes she desires.  Fortunately, she gets some valuable guidance from friends and family about appreciating herself and being the best person she can be, regardless of things which might hold her back.

The Theory of Hummingbirds is Michelle Kadarusman's first middle-grade novel (Her first book, Out of It (Lorimer, 2014), was written for young adults.) and she's made it reader friendly in more than just vocabulary and content.  Her characters are both sensitive and gritty, as the need requires, and neither goody-goody nor reprehensible.  In other words, they are real children with strengths and challenges.  Because she underwent a series of surgical procedures to correct her own congenital talipes equinovarus, Michelle Kadarusman writes from experience.  Hence Alba's determination and drive for normalcy is written with authenticity and reads the same.  If  there's a lesson to learn, it's that seeing the hummingbirds and Alba and Levi and others only one way does a disservice to them and anyone.  We are all far more than our greatest challenge or weakness or even strength.  For that, on this day, we should all be ever thankful.