Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever

Words by Naseem Hrab

Drawings by Kelly Collier

Owlkids Books

978-1-77147-497-9

80 pp.

Ages 6-8

April 2024 

 

Like the classic early readers about Frog and Toad, Otis and Peanut have many stories to tell. The unlikely friendship of the long-haired guinea pig (Otis) and the naked mole rat (Peanut) is fodder for three more stories in Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever that cover everything from cake to memories, gardening and absent sisters.

From Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever, written by Naseem Hrab, illustrated by Kelly Collier

In the story titled "The Cake," Peanut surprises Otis with a luscious three-layer strawberry cake based on his sister Pearl's recipe. Though Peanut wants to dig in, Otis wonders what they are celebrating. Apparently, Peanut's answer of "celebrating cake with cake" doesn't cut it and is determined to save it for a special occasion. But would there ever be a good enough reason to eat cake?

From Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever, written by Naseem Hrab, illustrated by Kelly Collier

The second story, "The Dream," has Peanut at home enjoying a breakfast of toast and jam when he discovers his last jar of strawberry jam made by Pearl. After eating, he is inspired to plant some strawberry seeds his sister had given him. After watching some kids play in the sprinkler and dreaming of when he and Pearl did the same, Peanut retrieves his own sprinkler to water his garden but to also reminisce and enjoy.

"The Collection" is Naseem Hrab's final story for Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever, and says more about memories than the earlier chapters. While Peanut grieves the loss of his sister Pearl and finds himself remembering her in everything from baking to eating and playing, it is Otis who helps him to see the value in keeping memories as tangible objects. Otis himself keeps scrapbooks of memories and demonstrates to Peanut that, no matter how important the memories are, sometimes you can forget them. So, Peanut finds a way to keep his own memories, both happy and sad, safe and make new memories with his friend.

From Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever, written by Naseem Hrab, illustrated by Kelly Collier

There is a gentleness to Naseem Hrab's stories of Otis and Peanut that invites young readers to see their own lives within the stories of the guinea pig and the mole rat. Children will be familiar with celebrating with cakes, planting a garden, playing in a sprinkler, and keeping bits and bobs of photos, ticket stubs, etc. as memories. They'll also know what it is to be a friend and have a friend. So, by nature of these stories, not only will they practise their reading and make connections between text and illustrations, they'll be making meaningful connections between the story and their own lives, learning about empathy, acceptance, cooperation and more.

Kelly Collier, who illustrated the first Otis & Peanut book, uses the same colour palette of turquoise and chartreuse with splashes of pink as she did in the first. It works to keep the overall effect uncomplicated but focused. Whether it's the cake or the jam and the garden or the keeping of memories, one emphasis is evident and not the background of detailed characters and settings or the jibber jabber of extraneous text. Together Kelly Collier and Naseem Hrab remember who their audience is and ensure that their reading and storytelling needs are met.

Because children have so much happening in their lives, whether it's a daily occurrence like picking clothes or reading books, or special events like a birthday party or performing at a recital, there are loads of stories that Naseem Hrab and Kelly Collier can share through Otis and Peanut. Whether it's to teach them about being a good friend, or to reflect the young lives of these readers, Otis and Peanut are there, as are we, to watch and learn. 

Otis & Peanut (2023)

Otis & Peanut: Forever and Ever (2024)

Hotel Fantastic

Written and illustrated by Thomas Gibault

Kids Can Press

978-1-77138-992-1

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

October 2018

Hotel Fantastic is truly exotic, in its clientele and its amenities. Reception is handled by a three-eyed amorphous blue creature, the bellhop is an octopus and there are underwater rooms for mermaids, rooms for robots to recharge, and sky rooms for those who fly.  Though there are occasional Wanted Posters for the Soror-horribilis with its giant claws, razor-sharp teeth and ugly dress, everyone seems to be enjoying the shopping at the gift shop, the eclectic cuisine of Raymundo and Georgio in the restaurant and the convenience of the gym and swimming pool. But wait! There's more. There's the valet parking, the ballroom and the infirmary for injuries and upgrades. But, will security be able to handle Soror-horribilis when she attacks?

From Hotel Fantastic by Thomas Gibault

Hotel Fantastic is built on and in the imagination of a young boy who (spoiler alert!) has created a new world with his own toys in the dollhouse of his sister. She is the Soror-horribilis depicted in the flyers posted throughout his imagined hotel. She may attack at any moment (but only at the end of the book with "I told you a million times not to put YOUR toys in MY dollhouse") but he revels in the incredible originality of his Hotel Fantastic, creating wonder with his imagination.

From Hotel Fantastic by Thomas Gibault

Montrealer Thomas Gibault's story, in words and artwork, brings the incredible to Hotel Fantastic. It's bigger than the dollhouse it actually encompasses. It's bold and colourful and as creative as the boy's imaginative play. Visit anytime with whomever you chose and indulge in any or all of its luxuries for a stay of fancy. Hotel Fantastic is sure to become a go-to destination for readers and dreamers of all ages, if you can get past Soror-horribilis.

Where's Bunny?

Written by Theo Heras
Illustrated by Renné Benoit
Pajama Press
978-1-77278-043-7
24 pp.
Ages 1-3
March 2018

Author Theo Heras and illustrator Renné Benoit's very young brother and sister from Hats On, Hats Off and Baby Cakes have returned in a story about getting ready for bed and the routines involved with that evening ritual.

The two never-named children (making it easy for any and every child to see themselves in the story and embrace the routines of healthy bedtime practices) know it is time for bed and begin to fulfil their rituals as listed in a "Bedtime Checklist" posted on the book's endpapers. First, they pick up their toys and put them away. Though the text includes the question "Where's Bunny?" young readers will be able to spot the rabbit nestled in a wagon. Next, it's bath time with play time in the warm water that "tickles toes" alongside a rubber ducky and a squirty sheep before washing hair, towelling off and ensuring Bunny is nearby. He is. Then bedecked in the softest of hooded plush robes, the two brush their teeth whilst Bunny watches on. (A second checklist on the back endpapers provides links to dental associations for proper techniques.)

From Where's Bunny? by Theo Heras, illus. by Renné Benoit

Then it's pajamas on, into bed, storytime and singing a song, all only with the big sister (who can't be more than 5) helping her little brother. A final hug and kiss and little brother is off to dreamland snuggling his own soft charge to his cheek.

Theo Heras makes her text simple and readable for those just learning to decipher books, and it is sweetly appropriate for a concept book about bedtime routines. Many concept books tend to be flat, emphasizing only the concept in the simplest of texts. Thankfully Theo Heras does more than just assert a concept. There is a story here, one of sibling affection and a young child's bond to his stuffed animal, that is elevated with Renné Benoit's artwork. The children are so beautiful and angelic with their bright faces and cowlicked hair, and their surroundings are as soft and inviting to the reader as to the children. From Bunny with his carrot-topped hat and the towels and robes and bedcovers, Renné Benoit draws readers into the warmth of the children's home and lives and asks them to stay for a bit.

From Where's Bunny? by Theo Heras, illus. by Renné Benoit

Another invitation that is extended to readers comes by way of Pajama Press's unique picture book format for the very young: a padded cover with rounded corners, and extra-heavy paper. It has been a winner since its first use. More embraceable than the board books typical for the very young, these softly padded books make for a sweet tactile experience to reading. If the affection so captivated in Renné Benoit's watercolour and digital artwork could extend beyond the siblings, it would be sure to include their books. Like the words and the art of Where's Bunny?, the book says, "Hug me" and the very young will be sure to oblige at least once before lights out.

From Where's Bunny? by Theo Heras, illus. by Renné Benoit

Waiting for Sophie

Written by Sarah Ellis

Illustrated by Carmen Mok

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-020-8

48 pp.

Ages 5-8

April 2017

Waiting can be so hard for little ones, especially when it's for a baby sister who is taking her time being born and growing up so you can play with her.  And this waiting is just about killing little Liam.

"Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I waited through half of kindergarten.  I waited through my birthday." Liam bounced on the bed. "Waiting is my worst thing. I want to jump on waiting and smash it to smithereens and flush it down the toilet." (pg. 8)

Fortunately Liam's Nana-Downstairs is adept at keeping him occupied with all kinds of "being bad" to pass the time: wearing pajamas all day, eating marshmallow sandwiches, painting Liam's bedroom door with purple polka dots and hurling playful insults at each other.  Finally Baby Sophie arrives in the world and is brought home and Liam thinks she is practically perfect.  

She had toes like peanuts and ears that the sun shone through.  The top of her head smelled especially nice.  (pg. 14)

From Waiting for Sophie 

by Sarah Ellis

illus. by Carmen Mok

For weeks, Sophie's big brother delights in making her laugh and stopping her from crying and getting her to burp.  But he wants more, hoping that the day when Sophie can walk and talk comes sooner than expected, since waiting can be so tiresome.  After months of more waiting, Nana-Downstairs, a handy person, has a new idea, and helps Liam create the G. O. F. (Get Older Faster) machine, an spectacular box of dials and screens and fancy pasta.  And though it doesn't seem to work on Sophie, it does seem to have an impact on Nana-Downstairs and on Liam's stuffie Lelefant and even on helping Liam grow up enough to help his father out. But will Sophie ever grow up?

From Waiting for Sophie

by Sarah Ellis 

illus. by Carmen Mok

I suspect Sarah Ellis is the indomitable Nana-Downstairs (who bears a striking resemblance to the author) who recognized the heartbreak of a child's waiting and possessed the unique imagination to create magic for her grandson to help ease that relentless waiting.  And even though it only appeased the waiting temporarily, Nana-Downstairs was able to provide him with skills that would serve him well for a long, long time.  

Sarah Ellis gives Liam a voice that is so filled with hope about his new sister and the promise of having a familial playmate that even his frustrations are natural and unfeigned.  He speaks with his heart, never with meanness or anger, though he acknowledges the annoyance of biding his time.  Sophie has a great big brother. And, although Waiting for Sophie is an early reader, rather than a picture book, the illustrations by Carmen Mok augment Sarah Ellis’ story with the innocence and family that the author’s words already convey.  

Young children being challenged to read their first chapter books will appreciate this early reader as it will undoubtedly speak to them.  So many know the anguish of waiting, whether for a new sibling to be born or some other significant life event, and will easily put themselves in Liam’s shoes.  Maybe they’ll undertake their own DIY project, with a little help from an adult, or maybe they’ll find their own coping strategies but you can be sure that they’ll appreciate Liam’s story of Waiting for Sophie and the fun that can be had with it.

All the Things We Leave Behind

Written by Riel Nason

Goose Lane Editions

978-0-864-920416

240 pp.

Ages 14+

September 2016

There are so many incidents that can stand out small and don’t seem like anything at the time but end up meaning so much.  There are so many tiny twists in a life that you can never know the ultimate significance of. (pg. 80)

As teen Violet Davis looks back through her copious memories of incidents with her older brother Bliss and their parents, she now seems to see the significance of them with respect to his disappearance from their lives after graduation from high school.  There were all the signs of a wanderlust for moving beyond their small town of Riverbend and Hawkshaw, New Brunswick, for travel, for adventure.  There was also the darkness in Bliss that may have been triggered when the two first discovered the Department of Transportation’s gruesome boneyard of deer and moose road kills, perhaps Bliss’s “first proof of unhappy endings” (pg. 116) but this melancholy could not be repressed.

It seemed that every bad memory, in fact only bad memories, bubbled up in his brain.  His entire perspective changed and every thought he had was permeated and tainted, shifted and reinterpreted in a negative way. (pg. 116)

Now it’s the summer of 1977 and Violet’s parents are ostensibly on vacation, but really in search of  any evidence of Bliss’s travels.  And Violet has been left in charge of the family business, officially known as Charles J. Davis & Son Antiques but known locally and by all travellers as The Purple Barn, a roadside attraction and store brimming with crafty twig furniture and quilts and antiques and collectibles.

For Violet, the summer is more than just working at The Purple Barn, and keeping the busybody employee Mrs. Quinn in check; it’s also a time of hanging with her boyfriend Dean and best friend Jill and her boyfriend Johnny.  While her brother’s disappearance is always foremost in her mind, as she rethinks what she should have and could have done to keep him from leaving them behind, Violet is forced to struggle with two unrelated issues.  First, she must negotiate the purchase of the contents of the renowned Vaughn cottage, a grand home deserted after the drowning of the owners' grandson. Secondly, Violet is haunted by a white buck that no one else seems to see.  Is it Speckles, a piebald deer Bliss befriended years earlier,  or an apparition that is part of the rumoured ghost herd of the boneyard?

Riel Nason’s first book, multi-award winning The Town That Drowned (Goose Lane Editions, 2011), was a deeply moving examination of a small town dealing with its impending demise by deliberate flooding.  That community, Haventon, is now a memory in All the Things We Leave Behind, both as place and experience, but only one of many things left behind when people move, or die, or disappear.  Those things can be like the goods that The Purple Barn sells from estates or deserted houses, or the mementoes set to be bequeathed to family upon a grandmother’s death.  Or they can be people, like Violet, left behind when a brother goes exploring, or when someone dies.  It can even be the bones of the dead or their ghosts remaining to haunt people’s thoughts and dreams and nightmares.  The concept of things, including people, being left behind is a monumental one but one that Riel Nason addresses with sensitivity and completeness, understanding the nature of memories and mementoes as powerful beyond reason.

Having a reminder, a souvenir, to help you remember is great, but I think the best memories are through a special door in your mind that you can open without a key. (pg. 105)

Riel Nason’s writing, both intricate and profound in addressing the nature of loss and memory, does not dwell on grief, though the boneyard and the tragic deaths of the animals and people in the book are disturbing.  But, All the Things We Leave Behind is bigger and better than just that, instead becoming a souvenir in itself, one of  weighty contemplation and yearning for a past remembered and a future unlocked.  Even with the tragedies that unfold in All the Things We Leave Behind, there is a lightness and brightness in the darkness, and acknowledgement by Riel Nason that all the things we leave behind, tangible and intangible, become powerful tributes in their own ways.

Jamie's Got a Gun

Text by Gail Sidonie Sobat

Illustrated by Spyder Yardley-Jones

Great Plains Teen Fiction

978-1-926531-88-5

224 pp.

Ages 12+

May 2014

Jamie's Got a Gun which he found during a dumpster dive and he's in a dangerous state of mind.  Jamie's got an abundance of anger and it's growing.  Dangerous combination.

His sources of rage? There's Hugh the Pugh (for pugilist i.e., boxer, former), stepdad and abusive drunk who regularly beats up seventeen-year-old Jamie and his hard-working mom, Molly, and never stops demanding that Jamie get a job, any job, though Mom is determined to keep Jamie in school and pursuing his drawing. There's Blade Attaman and his school thugs who torment Jamie physically and verbally, humiliating him on a regular basis.  There's his father who left when Jamie was 4 and now lives in Chicago with his new family and provides essentially no support so Mom has to work two jobs and settle for Hugh the Pugh who doesn't work because he's collecting a pittance for a WCB claim.  Even Molly's brother, their Uncle Mac, doesn't help her out much, though he spoils his sons rotten.  And, in their rough neighbourhood, Jamie watches as Tina, a classmate from elementary school, now works the street as a hooker, supporting a drug habit that her pimp Tony probably got her into. These injustices are overwhelming to Jamie.

Personally, Jamie's got his own issues, from his dyslexia to his lack of friends and no girlfriend (though he is crushing on Tatiana Oleshenko).

"Sometimes I wish the rain could come and wash away my pathetic life." (pg. 24)

Jamie's one bright light is Candy, his thirteen-year-old sister and his hero.  He'll do anything to protect her, and that gun might be just the thing he needs to accomplish that.

"But a gun has a loud voice. I'd finally be seen and heard with a gun.  People would take Jamie Kidding seriously.  At last." (pg. 63)

The coarse starkness of Jamie's world is reflected in his artwork, courtesy of Spyder Yardley-Jones, of jagged edges and bold angles. There is no softness in his world.  Yet, when he draws Candy as a Sailor Moon-like superhero, Candy Moon, his playful side can be seen.  And when he shares his drawings of Tatiana's shoes, eyes or lips, he's seeing more than what's on the surface.

Gail Sidonie Sobat's young adult books suggest that she's got the pulse of young people and knows how they think and feel.  Gravity Journal (Great Plains, 2008), Chance to Dance for You (Great Plains, 2011) and Not With a Bang (Magpie Books, 2012) are perfect examples of how she can get into their heads and voices.  By collaborating with Spyder Yardley-Jones, Gail Sidonie Sobat has added that graphic element that adds a thousand words but moderates the text length while enriching the story.  Words on a page are only powerful when read; words with accompanying black-and-white graphics are understood and endure.  In Jamie's Got a Gun, it couldn't have been anything but a graphic novel, with illustrations documenting his experiences and feelings, as Jamie decides what he's going to do with that gun.  But, as you'll understand when you read Jamie's Got a Gun, it's not all black and white.

Gift Days

by Kari-Lynn Winters

Illustrated by Stephen Taylor

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-192-7

32 pp.

Ages 7+

2012

On the heels of a holiday season which many treat as gift days, Kari-Lynn Winters' newest picture book, Gift Days, from Fitzhenry & Whiteside exemplifies the true nature of a gift.  It is not a present given on a statutory holiday or to commemorate the anniversary of one's birth.  It is a heartfelt sharing of something that is and will be cherished, freely and without expectation of reciprocity.

Gift Days takes the reader to Uganda where a young Nassali is expected, since the death of her mother, to prepare the meals, fetch the water and firewood, and look after her younger sisters, the weeding and the washing.  The expectation for Matovu, her older brother or baabawe, is to attend school and learn lots.  But Nassali dreams of learning to read and write and going to school.

"Maama always said an education is the path to a better life."

Knowing that "Maama would have wanted it this way", Matovu begins to complete Nassali's chores one morning a week so that they can spend time practising reading and writing.  These special days become her Gift Days.

By emphasizing Nassali's desire to read and write and become educated, rather than the custom that she take on the household responsibilities upon her mother's death from HIV/AIDS, Kari-Lynn Winters takes Gift Days from the hardship of a young girl's life in Uganda to the story of a young person determined to find the means to succeed, albeit with constraints.  Kari-Lynn Winters notes in her afterword that, although Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that every child has the right to a good quality education, many do not have access to it by virtue of geography, economics, health and traditional responsibilities.  Gift Days provides the hope that an education is within the realm of possibilities for everyone and anyone, even if that education is not provided in a traditional school setting.  Artist Stephen Taylor's rich illustrations evoke both the warmth and starkness of Nassali's life but his final illustration of an adult Nassali, so simple and encouraging, takes the story to a reassuring and bright resolution, just as her future appears to be.