Seeking Draven

Written by Michael F. Stewart

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-738-1

204 pp.

Ages 9–12

April 2024

 

The cover of Michael F. Stewart's latest novel, and his first in free verse, is subtle and deceivingly simple. It's not unlike the fungi that ten-year-old Teagan loves to study and draw. But, like the mushrooms and other fungi, what you see is just a fraction of what is there, most hidden and complex. Seeking Draven is a story of such depth of feeling and craft, masquerading as a short novel about a little girl who likes mushrooms and playing with her phone.

 

Teagan's 18-year-old brother Draven has always been there to support her: to find her when she gets lost in the woods, to defend her to their dad, to play basketball bump with her, and more. But when their dad accuses Draven of theft in front of his friends, Draven takes off and everything changes.

But when the smoke clears Dad falls silent,

Draven leaves us in his exhaust and everyone else goes

Home. (p. 13)

Devastated by Draven's absence and Dad's reluctance to tell her anything or to search for her brother, Teagan decides to look for him herself. It's almost impossible–though she breaks into Draven's bedroom to look for clues–until her dad gives her his old cell phone, hoping that it will make her less sad and quiet. (He doesn't realize that she's angry.) Now with a cell phone, which she calls Tab, Teagan goes on the hunt for Draven and tries to reconnect.

 

But that cell phone becomes something more for Teagan as she tries to find Draven, looking for him on social media. Now she sees herself through others' comments and she feels the pressure to share, and to be liked, and even laugh at others' misfortunes. She's taking selfies and listening to the comments. Like the zombie fungus which will alter the behaviour of ants which ingest it, Teagan's cell phone is taking over her life. As her father recognizes her addiction to it, Teagan has a revelation about Draven, piecing together clues from his computer searches and expensive stuff she found in his room, and suspects a gambling addiction.

Addictions make us lie.

     They make us falsify.

     If addiction made Draven a thief

     What is it doing to me? (p. 108)

So begins a new leg of Teagan's search for Draven, and a mission for understanding.

Michael F. Stewart has given us some compelling young adult novels, from his Assured Destruction tech trilogy or Counting Wolves and Heart Sister in which characters deal with mental health issues but, with Seeking Draven, he steps into a whole new genre of writing. The power of the writing is still there but, in its novel in verse form, Michael F. Stewart gives a story of addictions, both gambling and tech, a weightiness to which they are entitled. These are significant issues of chronic mental health, stealing relationships and lives from those afflicted. If they are fortunate enough to acknowledge their addictions, and accept help, and seek treatment, they may be able to break that dependence. The issue is important, and Michael F. Stewart treats it as such but, by juxtaposing Teagan's obsession with her cell and Draven's gambling, and enveloping it all in their close brother-sister relationship, he also manifests it as a family issue. Teagan's insight into what both she and her brother are experiencing is profound, especially for a ten-year-old child. But, if it shows us anything, there is no age limit on compassion and a willingness to help.

I've always been a huge fan of novels in verse and know that those who endeavour to write in this form are challenged with choices that limit text to words and phrases that have impact. Michael F. Stewart has just demonstrated his proficiency with this form, distilling important ideas into fewer words and phrasing that has intensity. 

If anyone's a thief, it's Dad,

Stealing

Hope. (p. 16)

I wish I could tell you how Teagan's story and that of Draven resolve but that will be the story you will need to read for yourselves. Fortunately, good or bad, Michael F. Stewart has the skill and heart to tell their stories from multiple perspectives and with sensitivity to their difficulties and to tell them with an eloquence of verse that makes us understand and empathize.

The Pig and the Dumpling

Written by Bonnie Johnstone

Illustrated by Veselina Tomova

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

978-1-998802081

40 pp.

Ages 4-8

March 2024 

 

In a tale from a Newfoundland outport, Bonnie Johnstone tells a story of a pig, a dumpling, and mayhem. It's a story that could only come from a small rural community in which everyone knows everyone else, and their actions are noted and intertwined for good and with misfortune.

From The Pig and the Dumpling, written by Bonnie Johnstone, illustrated by Veselina Tomova

After three fishermen tend to the garden belonging to the local convent, they are compensated with a hearty meal of stew with dumplings. As one of the men was not fond of dumplings, he tossed it towards the pig pen of Ignatius, Tulip, and their piglets. To his delight, Ignatius grabs that dumpling. To his horror, it scalds his throat and lodges there.

                                      The scalding hot lump

                                    of gluey dough

                                  plopped down

                                into his throat

                              like

                           a cork

                        in

                  a

            bottle.

In desperation, Ignatius makes a mad dash to the ocean, the ocean with icy cold water that would be sure to soothe his burning throat. But there is much activity in the outport, and it seems everyone is out and about and unknowingly in Ignatius's path. There's Tommy and Gussie who've gotten their kite stuck in Father McGettigan's rose bush. Then there's Father McGettigan and Reeni Puddicombe delivering pies for the church supper. Of course, Ignatius runs through and into Lizzie Carey's laundry hanging on the line, and, though he was able to miss the elderly Mrs. Maddigan and her cow Maude, the peddler Nellis was not as lucky. 

From The Pig and the Dumpling, written by Bonnie Johnstone, illustrated by Veselina Tomova

Ignatius's misfortune continues with more encounters with an accordion, drying fish, and a cart of kelp. And all for relief from a perilous dumpling.

Perhaps The Pig and the Dumpling is a cautionary tale about gluttony or perhaps about chewing one's food, but maybe it's just a story about a community in which everyone is an important part, from a pig at a convent's farm to the kelp farmers, children, the elderly, and everyone in between. It's a community of life and living, in which neighbours help each other, in which fish is dried and kelp is collected, and laundry is hung out to dry, and pies are made for a church supper. That little dumpling may have stoppered poor Ignatius's throat temporarily, but it gave him the opportunity to get out and interact with others in the community. His interactions may have been problematic for many, including poor Ignatius, but Bonnie Johnstone gives us a happy ending and a glimpse into a rural Newfoundland community as it may have been in the 1800s. (Bonnie Johnstone's "A Note About the Story" gives a little more background.)

From The Pig and the Dumpling, written by Bonnie Johnstone, illustrated by Veselina Tomova

Veselina Tomova's art is highly textured, not unlike the story, with acrylic brushstrokes on canvas giving movement to Ignatius's quest for cooling and chaos along that crusade. As she demonstrated in earlier books like Spirited Away: Fairy Tales of Old Newfoundland, PB's Comet and Daphne's Bees, Veselina Tomova knows how to get the atmosphere appropriate for the story, from light and airy, to dark and brooding, or silly and chaotic. With the colours, the shapes, the application of paint, Veselina Tomova gives The Pig and the Dumpling the realism with the nonsense and will have readers wondering whether there was an Ignatius to whom this really happened. With a quick visit to this outport of days gone by, they'll all know soon enough.

Strange Light Afar: Tales of the Supernatural from Old Japan

by Rui Umezawa

Illustrated by Mikiko Fujita

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-723-8

144 pp.

Ages 10+

September 2015

Because Rui Umezawa’s eight Japanese folk tales all include some element of the supernatural–ghosts, monsters, magical creatures, or spirits of the dead–these stories are a perfect read for the month of October and Halloween when all things creepy come to reside in the media and in classrooms.  But these tales have several additional key elements to which educators and readers in general will be drawn.  First the stories are firmly embedded in a Japan of fishing villages, cherry blossoms, Buddhists, and mountains, alongside samurai, kimonos and kawauso, lending opportunities to examine an ancient civilization and another culture with which most of us are unfamiliar.  Secondly, these eight stories focus on important life lessons and avoidance of the deadly vices including greed, envy, wrath and sloth.

The first story is called “Snow” and recounts a terrible night when a young boy and his mother are trapped in a snow storm and visited by a Snow Woman who spares the boy’s life on the promise he would never reveal what he’d seen.  It is his betrayal of this promise many years later and without malice that turns his world upside down.  Another supernatural creature appears in “Trickster”, a story in which a peddlar who attempts to cheat his customers with an elixir of questionable efficacy is himself tricked.  Similarly, a young man attempts to keep a beautiful immortal with him by stealthy kindness in “Captive.”

While “Honor” includes a samurai’s horrific death by chopstick, it is an ethical tale of two warriors who take mutual vows of brotherhood and honor each other even after death.  On the other hand, “Envy” examines sibling rivalry in which a jealous brother uses violence to deal with a brother whose goodness repeatedly provides him with wonderful surprises.

In the final three stories, the young men suffer the pains of their own vices, never acknowledging their own roles in their downfalls.  “Vanity” has a young man who feels he loves far too easily given the gift of returning to the time of Buddha to witness his teachings.  In “Paradise”, a lazy, drinking man is given a chance to live in an underwater paradise with a beautiful woman, and though he is wise and compassionate enough to help an abused turtle,

When an animal knows there is no hope, it smothers its own will to survive.  Otherwise, life becomes too painful to bear. (pg. 121)

he is not wise enough to help himself.  And, in “Betrayal”, a married man poisons his wife when he begins to see her as less than perfect.

Each story brings the reader to the fishing villages or festivals or town of a Japan of another time, and Mikiko Fujita’s black and white pencil drawings convey this same other-worldly atmosphere impeccably.  But it is Rui Umezawa’s emphasis on the lessons to be learned and the enlightenment to be had just for reading that will beguile the reader.  The scare factor is minimal–usually associated with the appearance of supernatural beings–but useful in teaching caution, suggestive of the dreadfulness that could arise for living lives of selfishness and wickedness.

Delve into another time and place with these eight stories in Strange Light Afar: Tales of the Supernatural from Old Japan, and teach and learn life lessons that are guided by other-worldly entities who may or may not wish to frighten.

Don't

by Lisa Trochatos

Illustrated by Virginia Johnson

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-355-1

22 pp.

Ages 0-3

October, 2014

Do read Don't. Enjoy that intimate one-on-one time with your child as you share unusual animal behaviours courtesy of Lisa Trochatos' succinct two-part declarations, and Virginia Johnson's quirky watercolours, from the cheetah driving a car with vanity plates "Faster" through a lush jungle to the closing illustration of all the animals' backsides.

Do let your youngest turn the heavy pages to discover how each humourous scenario will play out.  Do let your child discover why you shouldn't let the cheetah drive your car or the penguin fly the plane. Do let him laugh at the chameleon camouflaged in the brocade chair or at the child trying to wake the bear who is asleep in her bed. Then enjoy the pointing and the laughter and the quality chat you'll have discussing how bears hibernate or penguins can't fly or why pigs wallow. Wow, you've got lots to do.

So don't forget to read Don't. It's a charming read for the very young.