The Lady with the Books: A Story Inspired by the Remarkable Work of Jella Lepman

Written by Kathy Stinson

Illustrated by Marie Lafrance

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-0154-4 

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

October 2020

 

"Let us set this

upside-down

world right again

by starting with

the children.

They will show

the grown-ups

the way to go."

– Jella Lepman, 1943

 

So begins Kathy Stinson's homage to Jella Lepman, creator of the International Youth Library and a key player in the founding of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People). But while The Lady with the Books honours her efforts to bring books to children, Kathy Stinson's newest picture book is much more than a biography. It is a tome of hope that books have the promise to nurture during difficult times.

 

From The Lady with the Books by Kathy Stinson, illus. by Marie Lafrance

In the aftermath of World War II, a little girl, Anneliese, and her younger brother, Peter, wander the streets of Munich looking for food. What they do find, in addition to a bit of orange peel, is a line of people heading into a great hall filled with books. With memories of going to a library with their Papa, now both gone, the children are captivated and time flies until Anneliese and Peter are told by a kind lady that the exhibition was closing.

 

From The Lady with the Books by Kathy Stinson, illus. by Marie Lafrance

 

The next day they return to hear the same lady reading The Story of Ferdinand and are touched by the titular bull's pacifism, especially Peter who is drawn to flowers like Ferdinand. When this lady suggests that Anneliese might enjoy another book about a clever Pippi, Anneliese begins to imagine beyond the desolation of their daily lives, especially the struggle for food. The stories they hear at the exhibit and those that Anneliese weaves at night for her brother become a new source of sustenance, offering hope where there had been little.

Kathy Stinson's stories have always found ways to offer hope and comfort, easily getting into the heads of her characters and recognizing what is important to them. Whether it's colour (Red is Best) or music (The Man with the Violin) for children or a squirrel to The Dog Who Wanted to Fly, Kathy Stinson's picture books help children realize the importance of their dreams. At the onset of The Lady with the Books, Anneliese wonders why the women are clearing away rubble with their bare hands and sweeping the pavement when "Couldn't they see that the street would never be what it had been before the war?" However, by the story's end, she decides "she would join the women with their brooms. She would help clear the street around the damaged library. And maybe someday, the building would again be filled with books." There was hope again.

Marie Lafrance's illustrations, rendered in graphite pencil and coloured digitally, may reflect the devastating impacts of war, from bombed buildings to hunger, but the hope of Kathy Stinson's text and Jella Lepman's work–discussed in notes at the conclusion of the story–is there in the life peppering the scenes. From hardworking women with brooms, and men with wheelbarrows, trees and flowers growing out of rubble, markets of bright food, and books, books and more books, Marie Lafrance offers that buoyancy to the story, letting readers know that there is life and goodness out there.

Jella Lepman extended a hand to children after World War II, recognizing that more than food fed lives. Through book exhibitions, donations and ultimately the establishment of the International Youth Library, the largest international collection of children's books in the world, she nourished young lives, especially those disrupted by war and other disasters, to hope for better and more.

From The Lady with the Books by Kathy Stinson, illus. by Marie Lafrance

Family of Spies: Book launch (Winnipeg, MB)

Join author

Jodi Carmichael

for the launch of

her new middle-grade novel

Family of Spies

Written by Jodi Carmichael

Yellow Dog

978-1-927855-94-2

288 pp.

Ages 8-13

April 2018

on 

Sunday, April 29, 2018

2 p.m.

at

 McNally Robinson Booksellers

Grant Park Shopping Centre

1120 Grant Avenue

Winnipeg, MB

I'm pleased to share that I'll be participating in the blog tour for Family of Spies on May 10, 2018 with my review of this action-adventure with a touch of the fantastic inspired by the author's own grandfather's rumoured espionage activities during World War 2.  But, until then, here is the blurb from publisher Great Plains.

When cousins Ford, Ellie and Gavin, discover their great-grandfather was a rogue World War 2 spymaster, they must outrun MI6 and the CIA through the streets of Paris, relying on their wits and Ford’s newfound clairvoyant skills to unlock Great-Granddad’s spy secrets buried in the past. Great-Granddad hid something important to the war effort and these agencies want it back! 

Retrieved from 

https://www.greatplains.mb.ca/product/family-of-spies/ 

on April 25, 2018.

Fania's Heart

Written by Anne Renaud

Illustrated by Richard Rudnicki

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-057-5

32 pp.

Ages 7-10

March 2018

When a little girl finds an old heart-shaped book wrapped in a lace handkerchief hidden in her mother's dresser, she could not have imagined the horrors her mother would share and the joy and courage that decades old keepsake memorialized.

Words have power.

There are words that injure and words that heal.

Then there are words that can save your life. 

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

When a young Sorale discovers that small fabric-covered booklet of heart-shaped pages that open like wings, her mother finally tells the child the truth about the number tattooed on her arm and the origins of the keepsake.  Her mother, Fania Landau Fainer, reveals that she was a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp and that the heart was a birthday gift constructed by the young women who were like sisters to her.  Fania tells Sorale of the horrific life in the camp, including the near starvation, the grim living conditions, the forced labour and the mistreatment.  And she tells her what happened for her 20th birthday.

"...I told my friends I would soon be an old lady, since my twentieth birthday was fast approaching." 

"But twenty is not old," I said.

"Twenty can be a lifetime.  We were all so worn and rope-thin.  People did not live to be old in that place," said my mother.

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

In a small cake of scraps of bread rations, Fania's friends hide the special heart-shaped booklet in which they wrote messages of encouragement and wishes for freedom outside of the camp.

"Their words saved me."

Fania's Heart is a true story.  It is Sorale's story of learning at about age 9 (in 1955) about her mother's incarceration at Auschwitz and an act of defiance and love that gave Fania the courage and determination to survive.  That solitary memento is now an exhibit at the Musée Holocauste Montréal (Montreal Holocaust Museum) which will host the book launch for Fania's Heart this weekend.  Not since Second Story Press's publication of Hana's Suitcase (named the Ultimate Silver Birch Book in 2014) will a story of a historical artifact of the Holocaust touch readers with such sadness and humanity.  Author Anne Renaud who effortlessly weaves stories based on history (including the recently reviewed Mr. Crum's Potato Predicament) reveals so much about a mother's relationship with her child and her past, as well as about her own courage and fortitude that Fania's Heart could be envisioned as an illustrated documentary, not just a piece of creative non-fiction to inform and enlighten. Like the little heart that represents so much more than the few words inscribed on pages created out of sacrifice and secrecy, Fania's Heart is a token of appreciation, realistically but emotionally illustrated by Richard Rudnicki, from a time of war atrocities and a time of familial safety.

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

Don't Tell the Enemy

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2839-1

184 pp.

Ages 10-14

January 2018

The Soviets have oppressed the Ukrainian homeland of twelve-year-old Krystia Fediuk for centuries but their occupation since 1939 has been a reign of terror for the Ukrainians, Poles and Jews in the town of Viteretz with appropriation of homes, imposed hunger, deportation to slave camps and execution.  With the Germans marching into Ukraine in 1941 and the Soviets fleeing, there are initial hopes and even proclamations of Ukrainian independence.  But the good spirits that come with the egress of their oppressors and the bestowing of food, as well as the opening of the church, are soon suspended as the Nazis begin to show their true objectives.

Krystia, her younger sister Maria and their mother Kateryna live amongst a diverse neighbourhood of Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish families of both modest and wealthier means and a Catholic church with resident priest, surrounded by farms.  Some residents are already gone, whether deported to Siberian slave camps, executed by trigger-happy Soviets or in hiding from the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, like Krystia's Uncle Ivan.  Regardless of atrocities, life must go on, and that includes taking their cow Krasa to pasture daily, tending to the garden, feeding the chickens and fetching water, always keeping their heads down to avoid suffering the wrath of the Soviets.  But when the Germans roll in, their community begins to change in different ways.  In addition to the Nazis, refugees from Germany as well as Volksdeutsche–ethnic Germans from Slav countries–begin to flood the area and force the displacement of residents.  Then the summons from Commandant Hermann begin, first naming a hundred Jewish men and declaring them to be murderers of those imprisoned by Soviets. The community is stunned when the men are shot and amassed in a single grave. 

The terror of the Nazis escalates with their acceptance of Aryan, German and Volksdeutsche as The Master Race and all others as subhuman, with particular targetting of the Jewish people, both in mass executions and then segregation into a Jewish Ghetto.  After her Auntie Iryna goes to live with the insurgents in their forest encampment, Krystia takes on the role of courier of photos and falsified documentation.  With food rationed to starvation levels, fines imposed for random acts and their Jewish friends in danger of imminent death, Krystia and her mother take increasing risks to survive and help their friends and family. 

...that the way to honor our family and friends was to be strong and to live and to tell their stories. (pg. 177)

Based on the true story of Kateryna Sikorska and her daughter Krystia Korpan, Don't Tell the Enemy reveals the often overlooked position of Ukraine during World War II when the terrorism historically imposed by the Soviets escalated to horrors which many believed would be appeased by the Germans.  But invasion is invasion and oppression is still that.  The shift from the Soviets persecuting all in their community to the brutality levelled by the Nazis against the Jewish people and those who might help them is especially tragic.  A simple life of family and work now becomes an exercise in survival and even more perilous with the pitting of groups of people.  No one should have to choose.  While some appear to do so easily and heartlessly, there are others like Krystia and her family who demonstrate incredible courage and resilience in the face of death and fear.  Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch in her author's notes mentions that she almost wrote this as a piece of non-fiction but chose to tell it as a fictionalized account to do the story justice.  She chose well and admirably tells a story that needs to be read to appreciate the circumstances of those living in western Ukraine during World War II when enemies were plentiful, dangers ubiquitous, survival precarious and a few good people could make all the difference.

≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤≥≤

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch launches Don't Tell the Enemy next week in Brantford Ontario.  The author is a passionate speaker and sure to captivate attendees with her reading and sharing of writing this new book.  Details about the launch are provided here.

Don't Tell the Enemy: Book launch (Brantford, ON)

Author

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

who has dazzled middle grade readers
with her historical fiction and non-fiction books
including picture books,

is back with her newest

Don't Tell the Enemy

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2839-1

184 pp.

Ages 10-14

January 2018

on

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

at 

7 p.m.

at

Braemar House School

36 Baxter Street

Brantford, ON
(Map here)

⥐⥐⥐⥐⥐

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch 
will speak about the real mother and daughter 
who risked their lives to hide three Jewish friends 
during the Holocaust.

This is their story (from the blurb on Scholastic Canada website:

How much would you do for a friend? Krystia’s family hides Jews from the Nazis at immense risk to their own lives.

Life is becoming dangerous for Krystia. It’s 1941 and her town in Ukraine is now occupied by the Soviets. Some members of her family are harassed, while others are arrested and killed. When the Nazis liberate the town, they are welcomed with open arms. But Krystia’s best friend Dolik has doubts. His family is Jewish and rumours are that the Nazis are even more brutal than the Soviets.

When the Nazis discover a mass grave of Soviet prisoners, they use it as an excuse and blame the slaughter on the Jews. Soon after, the Nazis establish ghettoes and begin public execution of Jews. Krystia can’t bear to see her friends suffer, so she smuggles food in for them. When word gets out that the ghetto will be cleared and Jews will be exterminated, Krystia must make an impossible decision. Will she risk her own family’s safety to save her friends?

Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.ca/rights/titles/special/dont-tell-the-enemy/ 

on December 14, 2017.

Book sales and signing will follow the author's presentation.

(Proceeds will go to the Scholarship Fund of CFUW Brantford)

Light refreshments will be served.

The Pact

by Amanda West Lewis

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-544-8

352 pp.

Ages 10-15

September 2016

Remember there are always two sides to the same coin. (pg. 15)

The two-sides-to-the-same coin is a game ten-year-old Peter Gruber plays with his mother in order to see any set of circumstances from different perspectives but the reader would be well advised to heed this advice as well.  It’s very easy to sit back in the comfort of our lives today, wherever they may be, in the hindsight of World War II as a global entity.  It’s even easier to judge those involved in the war when we have countless sources of information about how it played out.  But we shouldn’t do so when reading The Pact by Amanda West Lewis because Peter Gruber’s story offers an opportunity to witness the then and there, starting in Hamburg Germany in 1939, when information was filtered and limited and reality was what you faced daily.

Although Peter is without a father and adept at black market trading of goods he scavenges at the port of Hamburg, he is probably a typical ten-year-old.  He goes to school (or he did until an accident that has him falling in the water leads to a case of diptheria and an extended hospital stay); he has his friends, Gunter and Eugene, who attend Hort, the youth organization, together; he has some family, notably his Tante Elsa and cousin Gerta who live in the country at Eutin; and he has hobbies like black-market trading and reading–his favourite is the western The Treasure of Nugget Mountain, though he gets into the Russian classics of Tolstoy, Chekhov and others after his hospital stay.  But Germany’s economy is in ruins after World War I and most Germans are happy to follow Chancellor Hitler’s directives to be dutiful and responsible to make Germany strong again.

In the fall of 1939, Peter begins Gymnasium, the elite school for privileged boys such as Hermann Weber, Peter’s trading nemesis and a bully, with friends Gunter Schmidt and Otto  Brandt, and participating in Jungvolk, the youth organization for boys of ages 10-14 that is all about training to fight.  But conflict with Poland and Great Britain’s declaration of war on Germany ramps up fears and patriotism, affecting work, food, education, and spirit.  Amidst lessons of ethnology of the German people and daily reminders that the boys are the future of Germany as well as celebrating the surrender of countries such as Denmark, Norway and Belgium, Peter is sometimes perplexed by what he previously thought or read in light of new and propagandist information (though he does not know it to be so).

With frequent air raids and bombings through 1940, Peter and his Gymnasium cohorts are evacuated as part of the Kinderlandverschickung south to Neumarkt where they are schooled and trained in all things Nazi, made to feel pride for the Party’s accomplishments, and reassured that the war would soon be over.

But the war is not soon over and Peter and his friends hear little news except that Britain is close to surrendering and on the brink of defeat. After returning to Hamburg in 1941, Peter is whisked away to his aunt’s for the summer.  Troops marching by share news of work camps where prisoners ("He wasn't sure where all of the prisoner were coming from, though."; pg. 136-7) work to support Germany’s economy and hears news of the conflict with the Soviet Union. Upon his return to Hamburg, though, pamphlets encouraging Germans to overthrow Hitler begin to surface and the BBC radio broadcasts his mother enjoys, illegally, have Peter revisiting what he hears and knows and fears.

Peter knew the British were lying.  But the broadcasts gave him this odd sense of huge events taking place somewhere else, things he wasn’t supposed to know about.  He tried not to think about it. (pg. 138)

The Pact is an involved and complex story, not unlike the war itself, and Peter’s experiences from 1939 through 1945 are no less so.  As a student of Gymnasium and a part of Jungvolk and then Hitlerjugend when he turns 14, Peter is shunted between home to safer evacuation locations in Neumarkt, Germany and Bistriz, Hungary and back to a demolished Hamburg, with forays to his aunt’s country home.  He begins to see that all he has lived through and experienced is “a life he now knew he didn’t want any part of.” (pg. 210)

“…we’re going to lose this damn war, and then it will be just like the last time, only worse.  They’ll take away our land; they’ll take away our food.  And this time, we’ll deserve it.  We’ll deserve to be punished.”  (pg. 218)

And even though he knows this, Peter is compelled to report to the Hitlerjugend office to avoid being deemed a deserter and begins apprenticing at an airplane engine factory in Klockner.  Still he is not free, ultimately commanded to attend a training camp in Denmark in November of 1944, a camp where the hundreds of young men are guarded by armed soldiers with dogs and forced to pledge allegiance to the Führer.  There is so much story to tell–hence my lengthy review–and yet Amanda West Lewis grips the reader with each scene, discussion, piece of propaganda, excursion, lesson, danger and thought that Peter faces and endures.  The Pact, which is based on a true story (the author's note and interview at the conclusion of the book reveal everything), will transfix readers with the story of war from a rare perspective, that of a child growing up in Germany, for whom home is everything, even if not everything is as it seems or should be.

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

Take advantage of upcoming book launches for The Pact in Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa and Amanda West Lewis' reading at this weekend's Eden Mills Writers' Festival to hear from the author herself about this extraordinary, extraordinary story of historical fiction that will both enlighten and engross.

The Pact: Book launches (Perth, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa)

It's going to be a whirlwind of book launches 

for

Red Deer Press 

and

the author of

September 17

by Amanda West Lewis

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-507-3

313 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Reviewed here

Amanda West Lewis

for the launch of her newest book of historical fiction

The Pact

by Amanda West Lewis

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-544-8

352 pp.

Ages 10-15

September 2016

Saturday, September 10, 2016

1-3 p.m.

The Book Nook 

80 Gore Street East

Perth, ON

A book signing with refreshments and conversation

Friday, September 16, 2016

7:30 p.m.

Mabel's Fables

662 Mt Pleasant Road

Toronto, ON 

A reading and discussion with refreshments

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

 7 p.m.

Novel Idea Bookstore

156 Princess Street

Kingston, ON

A reading and discussion with refreshments

Saturday, October 1, 2016

7 p.m.

The Avalon Studio

738A Bank Street

Ottawa, ON 

A reading and discussion with refreshments

From the publisher's website, the book is described as follows:

This vivid historical novel follows the life of young Peter Gruber — ten years old at the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 — and explores how an intelligent, sensitive youth responds to the propaganda and posturing of the Nazis. It also provides insights into the realities of living in a country at war, a country that suffers increasing waves of devastation, as the tide turns against the Nazis.

The story is told through the eyes of Peter as he is drawn into the Hitler Youth and at the same time comes to doubt what he is being told about his country and its destiny.

(Retrieved from http://www.reddeerpress.com/Detail/0889955441 on September 9, 2016.)

_____________________________

________________________

Look for my review of this middle grade historical fiction novel soon. I just wanted to get this post out before Amanda West Lewis' first event tomorrow. 

Small Bones

Written by Vicki Grant
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-45980-653-5
256 pp.
Ages 12+
September 29, 2015
Reviewed from audiobook
978-1-4598-1098-3

We’ve probably all wanted to reinvent ourselves but Dorothy (Dot) Blythe probably has more reasons than most.  With the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girl burned down and the eldest seven girls being sent away, with only a few scraps to help them determine their heritage, Dot doesn’t have that much to hold onto.  So it’s not surprising that when, dressed in a fine suit donated by the wealthy Mrs. Welsh, Dot does not reveal her orphan background to the young man, Eddie Nicholson, whom she meets on the train.  Eddie helps get her to the Dunbrae Arms, a lodge where she needs to get a job, after having been robbed of her money and finding her destination, a men’s clothing store named Howell’s of Buckminster, closed.  Seems the town of Buckminster is her go-to place for answers, being the name on the cashmere overcoat in which she had been swaddled when deposited at the Home.  Other than a few barely legible initials and a tiny silver spoon with a crest, Dot doesn’t have much to go on.  So with no money and Howell’s closed, she gets a job a a seamstress at the Dunbrae Arms.  And there she pursues her history, asking questions of the snarly Mrs. Smees, who runs the housekeeping for the lodge, and Bas Simmonds, the laundry man, as well as Eddie who seems to know everyone and begins to spend time with Dot.

But, it is evident that Dot’s small frame and face remind others of someone but the confusion  or even anger her presence evokes is never clear to her.   And then she is invited to a summer party to commemorate ByeBye Baby, the unexplained discovery of a tiny baby in the woods seventeen years earlier.  A baby that was seen but disappeared before help arrived.  Knowing she must have been that baby, Dot encourages Eddie to pursue the story–he is a summer reporter for the Buckminster Gleaner–so that she too might learn everything she can about that baby and the mystery surrounding it.  And I haven’t even mentioned the small bones that begin to appear around the seamstress’ cabin where Dot rooms.  Fragile, incomplete, and mysterious bones, probably those of birds.

Vicki Grant weaves a loaded story about a pregnancy that was kept hidden and a birth that was obscured from small-town gossip and yet so important as Dot’s seemingly insignificant origins.  The cover up about her birth may have been haphazard but it was effective in keeping the truth concealed.  And yet many individuals knew a little something about the event.  Some knew better than to talk about it, afraid of ruffling feathers, but others just didn’t realize that they knew anything important.  With astute questioning and biding her time, Dot is able to piece her story together from a patchwork of details, and though her story may have been a tad frayed around the edges–she does jump to a few incorrect assumptions–it is heart-warmingly trimmed with a happy ending or two.  In fact, Vicki Grant, with her light-touch and say-it-straight writing manner, makes sure that it’s “Better than any fantasy” (pg. 239) that Dot could ever have imagined.

Internment in Canada: A youngCanLit book list

On August 22, 2014, the 100th anniversary of Canada's first internment operations will be commemorated with the unveiling of 100 plaques across Canada.  These historical plaques will be unveiled at 11 a.m. at Ukrainian, Croatian, Serbian, German, and Hungarian churches and cultural centres, museums and other public venues.

While the internment of Canadians of different nationalities began with the enactment of the War Measures Act at the onset of World War I, there are too many individuals and families that were labeled as enemy aliens during both world wars that we should not forget this blemish in our history.  As such, I've prepared a list of youngCanLit and NFB films that either focus on the tragedy of internment or include characters that have been interned.  The majority of these resources involve the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, but please recognize that the commemorative plaques are specifically the work of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation to help everyone... Remember, Learn, Never Forget Them. (Further details are available at http://www.internmentcanada.ca/news-events.cfm)

As an aside, I'll be reviewing Marsha Skrypuch's newest book, Dance of the Banished, (listed below) in which a young Alevi Kurd from Anatolia is interned during World War I in a camp in Kapuskasing.  That review will be posted on August 22, and Marsha Skrypuch will answer some questions about her book in a post the following day.


PICTURE BOOKS

Flags

by Maxine Trottier

Illustrated by Paul Morin

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

27 pp.

Ages 8+

1999

Naomi's Tree
by Joy Kogawa
Illustrated by Ruth Ohi
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
32 pp.
Ages 8-11
2008

Silver Threads
by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Illustrated by Michael Martchenko
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
32 pp.
Ages 6-8
2004





FICTION

Beautiful Goodbye
by Nancy Runstedler
Dundurn
146 pp.
Ages 10-12
2013

Caged Eagles
by Eric Walters
Orca Book Publishers
256 pp.
Ages 12-15
2001
Sequel to War of the Eagles

Cherry Blossom Winter
by Jennifer Maruno
Dundurn
174 pp.
Ages 10-13
2012

Dance of the Banished
by Marsha Skrypuch
Pajama Press
288 pp.
Ages 12+
August, 2014

Lesia’s Dream
by Laura Langston
HarperCollins
208 pp.
Ages 11+
2003

My Anastasia
by Sharon Stewart
Scholastic Canada
249 pp.
Ages 11+
1999

Naomi's Road
by Joy Kogawa
Illustrated by Ruth Ohi
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
120 pp.
Ages 9-12
2005

Prisoners in the Promised Land: The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk, Spirit Lake, Quebec, 1914 (Dear Canada)
by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Scholastic Canada
243 pp.
Ages 11-14
2007

Sabotage
by Karen Autio
Sono Nis Press
293 pp.
Ages 11-13
2013

Stones for My Father
by Trilby Kent
Tundra Books
170 pp.
Ages 9-13
2011

Torn Apart: The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1941 (Dear Canada)
by Susan Aihoshi
Scholastic Canada
209 pp.
Ages 10-13
2012

War of the Eagles

by Eric Walters

Orca Book Publishers

224 pp.

Ages 12-15

1998

When the Cherry Blossoms Fell
by Jennifer Maruno
Napoleon
112 pp.
Ages 9-12
2009

The Whirlwind
by Carol Matas
Orca Book Publishers
128 pp.
Ages 12-14
2007

Winds Through Time: An Anthology of Canadian Historical Young Adult Fiction
Ann Walsh, ed.
Beach Holme Publishing
162 pp.
Ages 10+
1998






NON-FICTION

A Child in Prison Camp
by Shizuye Takashima
Tundra
102 pp.
Ages 10+
1976

A Curious Cage: Life in a Japanese Internment Camp 1943-1945
by Peggy Abkhazi
Sono Nis Press
167 pp.
Ages 14+
2002

Italian Canadian Internment in the Second World War (Righting Canada's Wrongs)
by Pamela Hickman and Jean Smith Cavalluzzo
Lorimer
111 pp.
Ages 14-17
2012

Japanese Canadian Internment in the Second World War (Righting Canada’s Wrongs)
by Pamela Hickman and Masako Fukawa
Lorimer 
160 pp.
Ages 14+
2011

The Kids Book of Canadian Immigration
by Deborah Hodge
Illustrated by John Mantha
Kids Can Press
64 pp.
Ages 8-12
2006

Kobzar’s Children: A Century of Untold Ukrainian Stories
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, ed.
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
199 pp.
Ages 13+
2006

This Land We Call Home
by Alison Lohans
Pearson Education
189 pp.
Ages 11-13
2007

On a Canadian Day: Nine Story Voyages Through History
by Rona Arato
Illustrated by Peter Ferguson
Maple Tree Press/Owlkids Books
96 pp.
Ages 9-13
2009






FILM

Barbed Wire and Mandolins
Directed by Nicola Zavaglia
Produced by Sam Grana
National Film Board of Canada
46 min., 45 sec.
Ages 14-17
1997

Freedom Had a Price
Directed and produced by Yurij Luhovy
National Film Board of Canada
55 min.
Ages 12+
1994

Obachan's Garden
Directed by Linda Ohama
Produced by Selwyn Jacob and Linda Ohama
National Film Board of Canada
94 min.
Ages 13+
2001



################################

Additional books more appropriate for adults, such as Blood and Salt by Barbara Sapergia (Coteau, 2011), are available but not listed here because of their unsuitability for youngCanLit readers.  But do seek them out for greater depth into the history of internment in Canada, sadly a less than proud part of our heritage.