Savor the Day

Written by Shari Green

Illustrated by Gabby Grant

Sleeping Bear Press

978-1-53411-353-4

32 pp.

Ages 5–8

April 2026 

 

Time can go very slowly or very quickly. It only seems to have two speeds. Either way, it will pass, and, when it has passed, it cannot be recovered. Savouring the day is the only way to hold onto it through the fullness of experiencing it and the memories created. Shari Green, eloquent writer of middle-grade novels like Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles (2016), Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess (2017), and Missing Mike (2018) as well as her award-winning YA novel Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams (2024), has given readers a debut picture book that reminds us to find and appreciate all the moments of a day.

From Savor the Day, written by Shari Green, illustrated by Gabby Grant

The day enjoyed by this child may look to an outside observer as quiet and uninteresting. She is woken up by her grandfather and taken to the beach. From all appearances, it is a simple day of playing, resting, walking, swimming, and eating. But there is more to her day, to their day, because they are mindful of each moment.

From Savor the Day, written by Shari Green, illustrated by Gabby Grant

In rhyming text that is as subtle as their day is understated, Shari Green takes us by the hand to walk alongside this grandparent and grandchild, from morning wake-up and breakfast, to evening car ride home and bed.

Savor the sun sinking down to the sea—

savor the finger-paint sky.

The peeking-out stars and getting in cars—

the pause as you're waving goodbye.

(pg. 27-29) 

From Savor the Day, written by Shari Green, illustrated by Gabby Grant

This child and her grandfather make it clear that everything can be enjoyed, whether it's a twinkle in the eye, the feel of the sand between your toes, the colours of sea stars, or the sound of a blackberry dropped into a pail. It's the sounds and feels, and sights and tastes of life that need to be appreciated, no matter how small or fleeting.

From Savor the Day, written by Shari Green, illustrated by Gabby Grant

Shari Green's words have always soothed through the uncertainty of life and the challenges that may be daily or rare. Without preaching about being mindful, Shari Green helps us see what mindfulness can bring. It's being in the moment for the sake of that moment. For this child and her grandfather, a simple, perhaps typical, day becomes a sensory experience that is exceptional and full.

 

The UK's Gabby Grant keeps that lightness of simplicity with her pencil crayon drawings enhanced with watercolours. Her scenes reflect the idea that you don't need lots of stuff or lots of people or busyness to make something grand. There is sand and water and sky. There are the two, grandfather and granddaughter, and occasional others, both human and animal. Otherwise, the focus is on what this child is enjoying in the way of sounds, tastes, sights, and feels. And by keeping her palette to one of softness, Gabby Grant makes us feel the calm of that day. She helps readers savor their own day of reading a book about a day at the beach.

 

Whether you're fortunate to have a beach near you to enjoy or to have the opportunity to spend time with a grandparent or someone who loves you, keep the moments of that day close. Feel every moment of quiet or turbulence, or warmth and sun or coolness and rain, of nothing special and something extraordinary. Every moment and every feeling is to be savoured as an important part of the whole. After all, the moments make the day, which add up to a life lived well.

Missing Mike

Written by Shari Green

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-045-1

248 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2018

With high summer temperatures and low precipitation predicted for the western provinces this year, there could be record wildfires again like the ones that imposed extensive evacuations on Fort McMurray in 2016. The circumstances of those forced evacuations and the tragedies and stories embedded within cannot be easily told or read but Shari Green has the voice, the words, and the heart to tell it in her newest middle grade novel Missing Mike.

It's summer in Pine Grove and, because of the weather, lightning strikes and human carelessness, the community is on alert to evacuate. Like everyone, ten-year-old Cara has been instructed to pack up a change of clothes "and a few treasures" (pg. 12), though what she treasures most is Mike, her one-eyed, rust-coloured dog whom they'd adopted two years earlier. But when the orders come out to evacuate, Mike is gone from the yard. Cara tries to go in search of him, sure he's headed to the nearby creek, but her father prevents her, telling Cara there is no time and they must leave.  

After a harrowing highway drive to shelter at a community centre in a neighbouring community, Cara, her older sister Sloane and their parents are billeted with Jasmeet and Bill Bains and their thirteen-year-old foster daughter, Jewel. But it's not home.

A truth zooms through me
squeezes my insides
settles
heavy as a brick:
this place
these strangers
this makeshift home that is anything
but home...
we're meant to stay here. (pg. 50)

Everything seems to be changing and that just adds to Cara's persistent worry about Mike.  She learns her best friend Heather and her family may not return to Pine Grove, as her dad might not have a job to which he should return. Sloane, who used to be Cara's protector, is spending lots of time with a young man evacuated with his baby daughter. Worse, the news coming out of Pine Grove is not good and worries about their home being destroyed are very real. It's all too much for Cara and, reassured by Jewel, she is determined to do all she can to find Mike.

"He got lost," she says again,
"which means he can get
found." (pg. 65)

I'm not going to tell you how Missing Mike ends but (spoiler alert!) I can reassure you that Mike does not die. That may have been my biggest concern but Missing Mike was still a heartbreaking story to read. Cara's love for Mike is so deep that her anguish at being separated from him is palpable. She envisions a multitude of scenarios that Mike might be enduring or anticipates where he might be, alternating that distress with reflections on the things she and he did together. But more than the story about a missing dog, Missing Mike is about home and the different configurations it might take. Cara who spends some time working on crosswords, realizes that the synonyms for home are not always structures. They can be feelings and people and more.

Shari Green, who has impressed all readers with her exceptional novels in verse (Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles, Pajama Press, 2016; Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess, Pajama Press,  2017) does not disappoint with this latest middle grade novel in free verse. The genre is a tough one to write but Shari Green has perfected it. She gets the voices dead on with a limited vocabulary and still tells an honest story about a family's response to disaster and specifically a young girl's determination to be reunited with the dog she loves and finding home whatever and wherever it may be.

I bet if you asked one hundred people
you'd probably find
there are one hundred words for home.
Turns out 
home isn't always with family
but often it is.
It isn't always a place
but sometimes it is.
It isn't always within your grasp
but when you find it
you know to
hold on. (pg. 230)

Missing Mike: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

Author 

Shari Green

is launching her newest middle grade novel

Missing Mike

 

Written by Shari Green

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-045-1

244 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2018

on

 Wednesday, May 16, 2018

4:00 - 5:30 pm

at

Queen Books

914 Queen St. E.

Toronto, ON 

From Pajama Press's website at http://pajamapress.ca/book/missing_mike/:

From the acclaimed author of Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess, a timely middle-grade story about the devastation of wildfires and the resilience of the human spirit.

He’s a rescue, a mutt. Maybe there’s a little golden retriever in him, although he’s not exactly pretty. He’s had a run-in with coyotes and he’s missing an eye. But Mike is eleven-year-old Caera Donovan’s dog, and they love each other absolutely. Usually her pet follows Caera everywhere, but on the day the family first smells smoke in the air, Mike becomes anxious. Pine Grove is in the path of a wildfire, and the family is ordered to evacuate. In the ensuing chaos, Mike runs off. And then the unthinkable happens; there is no time to search for Mike. They are forced to leave him behind.

Shocked and devastated, Caera watches helplessly as the family drives through a nightmare, with burning debris falling from the sky and wild animals fleeing for their lives. Once in the city far from the burn zone, the Donovans are housed with a volunteer host family. Jewel, the hosts’ daughter, is nice, but Caera can only think about what she may have lost. What will happen if nothing is left? But as she reflects on what “home” means to her, Caera knows only one thing. She is not going to lose Mike. She will do what it takes to find him, even if it means going back to Pine Grove on her own.

With her signature style combining simplicity and lyricism, Shari Green, the author of Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles and Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess tells an uplifting story of love and loss. And she shows how one girl’s stressful journey eventually leads her to an unexpected place, and a new definition of home.

Retrieved on May 2, 2018 from http://pajamapress.ca/book/missing_mike/. 

Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess

Written by Shari Green
Pajama Press
978-1-77278-033-8
240 pp.
Ages 8-12
May 2017

Why do we think
we can know anything about a person
by how they look
what they can do
what life is like for them now?
Because it turns out
we really can’t.
The only way to know that stuff
is if someone
tells you the story. (pg. 152)

Truer words were never spoken. And these from an 11-year-old Macy McMillan, a child who lost her hearing at age 4 and rarely enunciates words verbally but feels deeply, speaking volumes through signing and in her narration in Shari Green’s latest middle grade novel in verse.

Reluctantly, Macy is preparing for a new chapter in her life, leaving her garden and reading window seat at the pretty house she shares with Mom on Pemberton Street to the home of Mom’s fiancé Alan and six-year-old twin daughters Bethany and Kaitlin. Macy's elderly neighbour Ms. Iris Gillian is also moving, her to a seniors’ facility called Rosewood Manor, and Macy’s mom volunteers Macy for the task of packing Iris’ books and other bits and bobs. Though Macy is initially uninterested in helping, she needs someone with whom she can communicate, even if only by notes, since there are few persons available who can sign, after a falling out with her best friend Olivia and her mother far too busy with her wedding. With a school project based on students’ family trees, Macy is feeling even more untethered, never having known her father and uninterested in her future family.

…and I’m feeling more and more
like a dried-up
all-alone-on-my-branch
leaf. (pg. 26)

But Iris, named for the Goddess of the Rainbow, becomes the grounding that Macy needs to help her find her story. Though Iris, lover of books and baking cookies, is struggling with her memory and health, she is able to share with Macy, often through writing and with some signing, the story of her life, rife with adventures and tragedies, new chapters aplenty, some with endings more sad than happy, but always the right ending.

As Macy struggles with the upcoming wedding, even trying to stop it, and with completing her school project, she is beginning to see her world in terms of the connections she has and is making, all learned courtesy of the Rainbow Goddess next door.

Ever since Steven–the man in the bookshop–
I make a point of connecting with people
who come into my life
because even if only for a moment
their story connects with mine.
That should mean something…
even if there’s not chapter in a café next door. (pg.  67) 

Shari Green, author of Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles (Pajama Press, 2016), has found her story as a writer of extraordinary middle grade novels in verse. Though I suspect she can write just about anything–middle grade, young adult, speculative fiction, non-free verse–her talent is definitely in writing insightfully poignant tales in the impassioned and crisp free verse style. As in her earlier book, Shari Green uses few words, but the right ones, to grow a story of such sensitivity for and awareness of her characters and readers that all will leave the story fulfilled. Her characters’ stories connect with us in ways we cannot put into words. I was astounded that a little girl could gain so much wisdom, courtesy of Iris and Shari Green of course, about life’s stories that she has a middle-aged woman such as myself in tears and heeding her advice.

Hearts are waiting, worrying, hurting
–in need of a message
you can send. (pg. 226)

Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess is a message from the writing goddesses that everyone’s life is just a story or series of stories that need to be told to be fully appreciated but no worries here because one of their scribes, Shari Green, has taken on that task capably and, like Iris, with wholehearted extravagance.

Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles

by Shari Green

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-007-9

240 pp.

Ages 8-12

September 2016

I’m trying to have faith
trying to believe everything
will be okay.
But what if things don’t work out?
What if Jasper leaves,
Daniel can’t breathe,
my parents aren’t in love?
What if my family falls apart,
and I have to choose a parent
and not
the other?
Then what good
 is faith? (pg. 145)

It must feel like the weight of the world is upon Bailey’s small eleven-year-old shoulders.  Being sent with her 8-year-old brother to stay with their hitherto-unknown grandmother, Nana Marie, at Felicity Bay on Arbutus Island on the west coast seems trepidatious enough but this strangeness is compounded by her concerns for her parents who are attending Marriage Repair camp.

My parents should be here.
We should be together
the four of us–
diamonds, clubs, spades, hearts,
Crazy Eights on a Sunday afternoon,
four quarters making a whole
like we always used to be
but might never be
again. (pg. 13)

Still Bailey has the joie de vivre to find adventures in everything from the pancakes in which she searches for the face of God–Aunt Debbie saw Tom Hanks’ face in her pancakes once– to a piece of driftwood that becomes a mermaid she christens “Our Lady of the Bay.”  And when the prophecy-delivering ice-cream man Jasper, a former preacher, foresees a stranger coming who will change everything, Bailey is hopeful that it’s Our Lady of the Bay who will bring about some good fortune.  With her parents’ marriage in need of repair, her friend and neighbour Daniel suffering with cystic fibrosis, a community divided and occasionally hostile, the compassionate Jasper being disgraced and driven out of town, and the church’s chalice missing, Bailey and Felicity Bay need a miracle or two.

But, even with these uncertainties and burdens, don’t ever think of Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles as anything but a story, told magnificently in verse form, of hope and courage and trust in the universe.  Good and bad may ebb and flow like the tides but that’s just the nature of  things.  In the end, it is what it is, and Bailey accepts it to be so.  Nonetheless it doesn’t stop her from making an all-out effort to help, whether it be her parents, Jasper, or a beached dolphin, and try to turn the tides of adversity.

Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles is Shari Green’s debut novel but it is an accomplished story in form and content worthy of a seasoned writer.  If you’ve enjoyed reviews on CanLit for LittleCanadians, you know that I am fond of novels in verse, but I fully comprehend the titanic challenge of writing one well.  Balancing structure with plot is complicated.  Yet Shari Green dives right in, creating characters and circumstances that effortlessly carry the reader from beginning to end on waves of sentiments, some fearful, most benevolent, all heartfelt.  Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles is in itself a miracle of a free verse of

“…moments
of significance,
ordinary things
that turned out to be
extraordinary.” (pg. 232)