Songs for Ghosts

Written by Clara Kumagai

Penguin Teen Canada

978-1-774882825

399 pp.

Ages 14+

August 2025 

 

Reviewed from audiobook

Penguin Random House Canada Audio 

Narrated by Kenichiro Thomson and Susan Momoko-Hingley  

 

Each story from the past is one for the future. (p. 368)

There are two stories in Song for Ghosts. From different times and different places, these two stories run parallel until they converge. How they converge and why comes from the blending of music with family and the supernatural and Japanese culture. And in the end, a Japanese-American teen learns more about himself from a young Japanese woman from a century earlier. 

 

The story of seventeen-year-old Adam is a contemporary one. He hangs with friends—though he did just have a bad breakup with his boyfriend Evan—plays the cello, goes to Japanese school on Saturdays, and spends time with his family: stepmom Kate, baby half-brother Benny, and Dad when he's not away on military business which is often lately. The second story comes into play when Adam discovers an old book of letters in a wooden box with Japanese writing on it. Thinking it might be connected to his Japanese mom who passed when he was a baby, Adam begins to read the dated letters from a young woman who writes to her recently deceased Obasama (grandmother). And when a ghost begins to appear in his house, Adam is both terrified and intrigued. He wants answers, so he looks to the diary.

 

In this diary of letters, the young woman, who lives in Nagasaki, plays the biwa, a Japanese lute important in storytelling, and begins to take lessons from a blind biwa hōshi. Soon the diary writer is playing for ghosts in order to appease them. Meanwhile, her uncle decides it is time for her to marry, and, though not a man he has selected, she is courted by an American lieutenant. The connection she makes with him, and with his associate Mr. S–, changes the trajectory of her life. And when Adam is approved for a homestay in Nagasaki, he expands his search for information on the diary writer and her story. 

 

Songs for Ghosts, recently nominated for the White Pine award of the Forest of Reading, is a far more involved story than I can possibly recount here. First, Clara Kumagai immerses the reader, through both the diary writer's letters and Adam's visit to Japan, in the richness of Japanese stories and music, and of Japanese history, and of its culture from food to festivals. There is also romance, both for the diary writer and for Adam, though their relationships are complicated. Third, there is much to learn about Adam and his family, both in the U.S. and in Japan, and the bonds he has with them. Needing to learn more about his mother's family takes him to learn more about himself. Finally, I haven't even mentioned the correspondence of Adam's story and that of the diary writer to Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Even with all these distinct storylines and plot elements, Clara Kumagai is subtle and elegant in wrapping them together across time and place, and bringing Adam and the diary writer as well as other characters to merge in a satisfying and redemptive way. As such, readers as well as the ghosts who want to be remembered are appeased.

The Not-So-Simple Question (A Holly-Mei Book, #3)

Written by Christina Matula

Inkyard Press

978-1-335-00999-9

272 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2024 

 

Isn't it lovely that we get to visit with Holly-Mei and her friends and family once again? The twelve-year-old who Christina Matula introduced us to in The Not-So-Uniform Life of Holly-Mei and allowed us to join in her new life in Hong Kong is a little older, well-situated at Tai Tam Prep, and becoming familiar with her new home. But with all those important changes, Holly-Mei is now becoming a teen, and The Not-So-Simple Question is her coming-of-age story.

 

Holly-Mei and her family have now been in Hong Kong for nine months and she is in the last few months of her Grade 7 year. There are lots of important events still to come like Experience Week during which Upper Grade students travel to other Asian locations for a week of learning. It's a great opportunity for Holly-Mei to discover more about her Taiwanese heritage–her mother and Ah-ma, grandmother, are Taiwanese while her father is British–by visiting Taiwan. She's also hoping that it will help her clarify who she is, feeling less than others because of her mixed heritage. And then there's the problem with boys. Her friend Gemma is determined to have an end-of-year prom to which the girls must bring dates. Holly-Mei is obviously well liked by her friends, including Dev and Theo, but, unlike her younger sister Millie who is all about popularity and acting grown-up, Holly-Mei isn't ready for dating, and she doesn't know how to reconcile her feelings with the demands of her friends.

Holly-Mei has a lot on her plate but that is what it often feels like when you are entering your teen years. It's a balance of moving from childhood to adulthood and navigating when and how much you're wanting to change. But coupled with that is Holly-Mei's confusion about her heritage and feeling that others judge her by how she speaks Chinese, who her parents are, and if half of anything is enough for her to be her true self. It's no wonder the girl is feeling on edge and confused. And with Holly-Mei, that uncertainty often leads her to misunderstanding or saying the wrong thing. Thankfully, Holly-Mei's story is in Christina Matula's capable hands, and she ends it with understanding, acceptance, and accord. (And we get to take a wonderful trip to Taiwan to see the sights, the culture, and the food. Always the food!)

The first Holly-Mei book was just recommended by young readers of the Red Maple Forest Kid Committee for their summer reading list and it's nice to know that there are two more books in the series to reach for after you've enjoyed The Not-So-Uniform Life of Holly-Mei. With The Not-So-Simple Question, we get to see how Holly-Mei has ended her Grade 7 year, after a full year of learning to deal with new friends, with sports competition, with sibling interactions, with misunderstandings, and more. With that learning has come an appreciation for who she is and the kind of person she wants to be. She's still learning to be the best version of herself but she's on the right path, and Christina Matula lets us tag along on Holly-Mei's journey of self-realization and growing up, while enjoying the sights and cultures of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

From The Not-So-Simple Question, written by Christina Matula

• • • • • • •

Holly-Mei Books

The Not-So-Uniform Life of Holly-Mei (2022)

The Not-So-Perfect Plan (2023)

The Not-So-Simple Question (2024)

• • • • • • •

The Club

Written by Eric Walters

DCB

978-1-77086-734-5

264 pp

Ages 9–12

March 2, 2024

 

It's the start of their Grade 8 year, and Jaxson and best friend Logan are looking forward to making their final year in middle school an epic one. While Logan is all about basketball, Jaxson is driven by playing his trumpet. But then a new girl, Liv Parker, joins their school. Though Jaxson sort of kind of has a girlfriend, Samantha, Liv is an extraordinary trumpet player, and she and Jax are thrown together, in a good way.

When the music teacher, Ms. Hooper, auditions the students for the senior band, she knows that Liv and Jax are going to be the stars of the band and hopefully take them to the city championship, finally. In fact, she wants them to play a duet for the first school assembly just days away. To prepare, the two have to meet after hours at each other's homes. Though their households are very different, with Liv and her mom Jenn, a cybersecurity expert, living in an immaculate big house with a grand piano, Jax and his mom Ali, an artist and art history prof, live in a cluttered house filled with colour and stuff. Still, the two teens find they have a lot in common, including their music, love of sushi, and ways of thinking. Moreover, when asked about their dads, they both acknowledge that subject as "complicated." 

But soon things get even more complicated for both of them. When Samantha learns how much time Jax is spending with the new girl, she feels threatened and he can't convince her that they're only friends. Still, with all their rehearsing for assemblies and solos, Jax and Liv are spending more time at each other's houses, and by chance, their moms are becoming friends. But with that friendship, personal details are shared, and Jenn and Ali begin to wonder whether the kids share more than just a virtuosity with the trumpet.

 

The theme of family is a common one in contemporary stories, with families that were once deemed traditional now being seen as just one of a myriad of forms that families can take. Whether a family has a mom and dad like Logan's, or is a single-parent household like Jax's or Liv's, or like those reconfigured through divorce or loss, a family is a family is a family, and Eric Walters recognizes that families come in all shapes and sizes and are all natural. What makes them families is the love and respect that is given and received within that construct. And regardless of how that family was created, whether through sperm donation, a heterosexual marriage, adoption, or one of countless other ways people enter others' lives, it is valid and valuable if family members choose for it to be so. (Thankfully the kids' moms give them some choice about whether to explore their paternal heritage and never compel them to embrace DNA as the ultimate basis for family.) 

Blood makes you related but it doesn't make you family. (p. 176)

Fortunately for Jax and Liv they would probably always have become family, regardless of their DNA. Just as Logan and Jax always considered themselves brothers, Liv and Jax were already simpatico because of their love of the trumpet and music. The DNA just made their relationship official and genetically solid.

 

Eric Walters's Afterword tells the reader that the story of The Club was inspired by a true story of half-siblings discovering each other through their DNA. Their story, like that of Jax and Liv, was one of positive connection. For the kids in The Club, there is no conflict or expectation that they must embrace strangers as family. For those two kids, it happens organically. But without the support of their core family, related or not, neither teen would've been secure enough to welcome others in and put themselves out as they become part of a larger club.

The story of The Club could be happening anywhere in the world. The circumstances are not uncommon, and with access to DNA and ancestral records, it's becoming more frequent that genetic relatives are being linked. But Eric Walters makes this less about the process and more about the outcomes and what they mean for these kids. Their worlds have changed and in a good way. I do wonder about those circumstances for which "new" family connections may not be positive or welcome but that would be another story. In The Club, Eric Walters gives us a story of being a family, discovering family, and making family. For Jax and Liv, they are able to strengthen what is already there with those who were previously unrecognized and make for a new type of familial association.

Thanks A Lot, Universe

Written by Chad Lucas

Amulet Books (Abrams)

978-1-4197-5102-8

288 pp.

Ages 10-15

May 2021 

Thanks a Lot, Universe is the story of two boys, both coming to terms with new realities. While they are as different as they appear on the cover, the two are both looking for and finding their true selves, with or without the help of the universe.

Told in the alternating voices of thirteen-year-olds Brian Day and Ezra Komizarek, Thanks a Lot, Universe parallels the stories of the two Halifax boys as they become true friends, and maybe more, though the plot is very much driven by the shy and socially anxious Brian. On the day of his thirteenth birthday, Brian learns via letter that his father has left–the police are after him for his role in "cannabis production and distribution"–and his mother, distraught, attempts suicide, though Brian finds her in time to save her.

We'd thought everything was fine. We hadn't known the world was ending. (pg. 16)

Because the whereabouts of their father is unknown and their mother is hospitalized, Brian and his 9-year-old brother Richie are sent to the foster home of grandparents-like Gordon and Emma Wentzell. Still being questioned by Sergeant States of the police about his father, and now dealing with social worker Kate Evans and the incessant attempts at Mrs. Wentzell to engage him, as well as bullying by Victor MacLennan at school, Brian gets absolutely no respite from his social anxiety, dealing with strangers everywhere.

Meanwhile, Ezra is dealing with his changing relationship with his best friend Colby Newcombe who is in the throws of first love and hanging with a new group which includes Victor. Fortunately Ezra still has his older half-sister Natalie and friends Ty and Kevan with whom he can talk and help him sort out his feelings, including about girls or not.

There are people we hang around because it's comfortable or convenient or safe, then there are our people. When you find them, you'll know the difference. (pg. 48)

Though Ezra knows the quiet Brian from basketball, it's not until the two connect over music briefly on a bus ride, that Ezra begins to really notice him. So when Brian runs away with his brother, Ezra joins up with Brian's teacher's son, Gabe Clelland and his girlfriend Brittany, to find them.

Life is probably doing to kick you right in the junk someday, B-Man. This is all the fatherly wisdom I've got. Brace yourself and kick right back. (pg. 84)

Finding Brian and Ritchie is only half of the story. What happens after the boys are found is a new story, with Brian establishing new supports and the means to divert his Super Awkward Weirdo Syndrome–SAWS is his term for his social anxiety–and Ezra admitting his feelings about his new friend and acting on them with heart and gentleness.

 

In his debut novel, Chad Lucas has given young readers a new way of seeing. As readers, we see the anxiety of family trauma, coming out, and regular teenage angst but Chad Lucas has made us see beyond the surface and look a little deeper into what we think we know. Brian is seen as the quiet kid, perhaps a little weird, even by himself, but beneath that front is a complicated young man who is dealing with so much more: making sense of his own disorder, worrying about a mother with a mental illness, angry with a father involved in illegal activities, and agonizing over a broken family, which may or may not be repairable. But when you're only thirteen and you're left to repair that family without having the supports necessary to do so, it's overwhelming. Most of his peers only see him as different and, though there are adults who can see his need for help, Brian's anxiety doesn't allow him to ask for it. Ezra, on the other hand, is comfortable in his own skin, with his friends and family, but he too is dealing with something new. In his head, he ruminates about his attraction to boys and with whom he might be able to share that. But taking a chance on talking about it with someone else, whether family, friend or crush, is still a risk. 

 

Fortunately, sometimes the universe gives you what you need. Through an alignment of circumstances, Brian and Ezra find each other and give each other something they need, whether a push, a pull, or just a hand. It's all good, or at least better. Sometimes that's all the universe can give you.

 

• • • • • • •

 

Look for my interview with author Chad Lucas tomorrow.

 

• • • • • • •

Until Niagara Falls

Written by Jennifer Maruno

Dundurn

978-1-4597-4593-3

168 pp.

Ages 8-12

February 2020

Living in Niagara Falls, nine-year-old Brenda and her classmates have been given an end-of-year project to research an extraordinary person who made the Falls famous. Brenda chooses the Great Blondin, an acrobat who walked a tightrope across the Niagara Gorge in the mid-1800s, seeing his feat as courageous as well as amazing. But courage is not limited to the exceptional. Sometimes it’s standing up in the everyday for what is right against those who would have you think otherwise.

It's 1960 and Brenda meets new student Maureen Sullivan when asked to accompany her home. Because Brenda sees her own life as rather lacklustre, an only child who works hard at school and lives with her father and Gran who is very steadfast in the right way to do just about everything, she is intrigued by Maureen whose life is both unconventional and unruly, even if she gives Brenda the chicken pox. Though she recognizes that Maureen’s family has less money than her own, living in a small shabby house filled with kids, Brenda is fascinated by the girl who peels gum off the pavement to eat, and dares Brenda to break rules and take on some risky challenges. Brenda decides “Maureen had to be the most amazing girl I had ever met” (pg. 15) and is delighted that she'll be part of her summer.

While Brenda is impressed with Maureen’s liveliness and her clever ideas, she does recognize that Maureen does a lot of scheming: finagling invitations for lunch; grabbing beer empties stored outside a restaurant to cash in for popsicles; pinching most of the ballots for a pickle slogan contest; blackmailing her eldest sister; and even getting new clothes from Gran for church.  But when it becomes evident that Maureen is a thief who finds a way to blame others for her misdeeds and that her friendship with Brenda is contingent about what Brenda can do for Maureen, Brenda has to show the courage of the Great Blondin and walk a shaky path between friendship and enmity.

Until Niagara Falls was recently included on the recommended summer reading list of the Forest Teen Committee, surprising as the book is clearly written for middle-graders. Still a good story is a good story and by capturing the essence of a different time but with circumstances familiar to many–making a new friend with someone very different than yourself–Jennifer Maruno has captured the attention of teen readers. There's humour–Maureen has a nickname for just about everyone–and hardships, compassion and meanness. There is a summer of swimming at the pool, going to the CNE and the library, hanging with friends, new and old, and pickles. (You'll have to read the book to understand that one.) Until Niagara Falls is a true coming of age story, with Brenda learning more about what her family means to her, that friends are those dearer than just temporary excitement, and that she can accommodate many in her big heart.

Pulse Point: Book Launch (Winnipeg, MB)

Join sisters and now collaborative authors

From https://www.greatplains.mb.ca/product/pulse-point/

Colleen Nelson

and

Nancy Chappell-Pollack

for the launch of their debut collaboration

Pulse Point

Written by Colleen Nelson and Nancy Chappell-Pollack

Yellow Dog (Great Plains Publications)

978-1-927855-97-3

192 pp.

Ages 12-15

May 2018

on

Friday May 11, 2018

at

7:00 p.m.

McNally Robinson

Grant Park in the Atrium

Winnipeg, MB

In Kaia’s world, setting foot Outside can be deadly. The safety of the City has kept humans alive as climate change destroys the world. But the City has found a way to survive sustainably: it is run by the energy generated by its Citizens. The energy that citizens create is calculated and displayed on their pulse point, a transmitter embedded in their finger.

Kaia is a Citizen, one of the few deemed genetically perfect enough to live under the protective dome of the City with her grandmother and father. But when Kaia discovers her mother is alive and living Outside, she escapes the safety of the City and learns the truth about the sinister world she left behind.

From http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-16306/Colleen-Nelson-&-Nancy-Chappell-Pollack----Book-Launch#.WoXZ1Hgujdk

The Winnowing

Written by Vikki VanSickle

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-4886-3

312 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2017

“If powerful people believed in a theory, it became real.  It didn’t matter if it was crazy.” (pg. 292)

In Marivic Stone’s world, there are many beliefs that are accepted as real.  There’s the Infertility Crisis that was only resolved by SuperGen, a hormonal shot developed by the Barton Five scientists. There are the stigmatizing changes at puberty that include the Adolescent Physical Impairments a.k.a. imps which produce bizarre traits of superhuman eyesight or hearing or speed or strength, and the ACEs, Adolescent Chronosomniatic Episodes, which are vivid night terrors.  No wonder young people who begin to experience the imps and ACEs are eager to be winnowed at their local center for adolescent health to stop the progression of these horrors.

When the ACEs and imps arrive for Marivic, she is fully prepared to be checked into the Barton Center for Adolescent Health, the facility to which best friend Saren Silver had only gone the day before.  Though she doesn’t know what to expect, as those winnowed have memory impairment, and though she knows complications can lead to death, as they did for Saren’s older brother Lex, Marivic sees the winnowing as a rite of passage in which she is eager to engage.  But things seem less clear when a group of new intakes, including Marivic and Saren and classmates Kamal, Quin, and Tavi, are invited to a covert “Dis-orientation.”  There a young teen, Abbot, tells them that everything they’ve been told about the winnowing and Barton is untrue and that the organization called Winfree, the People for a Winnowing Free World, wants to help them escape before they come to harm. Most of the teens scoff at the idea of the authorities conspiring to hide the truth about the winnowing, ACEs, imps and more but, after learning the next day that Saren died during her winnowing, Marivic goes rogue–“Mrs. Silver could be sad for both of us.  I was going to be angry.” (pg. 121)–and joins Kamal in escaping the facility.

But getting out is just the beginning.  In addition to Abbot, who harbours a secret about his own origins, Marivic and Kamal are introduced to Dr. Lowry, one of the original Barton Five, who reveals the source of the SuperGen and her research on the ACEs; Ren, a young man with whom Marivic is able to communicate telepathically; and Daisy, the proprietor of the Starlight Diner and adopted mum of Abbot.  There are a lot of theories to sort through regarding the truth and lies about the winnowing and SuperGen but some answers will only come when Marivic breaks back into Barton.  She may be on a rescue mission, but she has no idea that she is the key to blowing open the whole conspiracy.

Reaching adolescence is never easy but not as problematic as in Vikki VanSickle’s first novel of speculative fiction for teens.  Just as the term winnowing suggests–cleaning of the chaff from the grain–the adolescents are sanitized from the effects of puberty.  But it’s the wholesale acceptance of the need for this process that is so alarming.  It’s easy to understand how a crisis, like infertility, can establish fear but it’s this fear that allows government and experts to make recommendations that are accepted as necessary.  There’s a type of internal terrorism to promote compliance.  Only when anomalies such as death at winnowing and the existence of those conceived without benefit of SuperGen–Abbot is one of these Naturals–contradict the accepted belief system that the faith and submission are shattered.  But it takes courage and conviction to see beyond the established way of doing things and Vikki VanSickle makes sure that readers see Marivic as someone who is enlightened enough to question these incongruities as important.

In fact, it’s Marivic who is astute enough recognize that it’s the fears of those who are different that are the source of the problems, leading to paranoia and violence.  Whether it’s seeing the Naturals like Abbot as a threat–“…if superhuman is the new normal, then where does that leave me?” (pg. 238)–or seeing danger from those only seeking refuge, fear distorts thinking and creates the very problems they hope to avoid.

Vikki VanSickle has lots to say about fear, distrust, manipulation, and blind submission but also about defiance, courage and winnowing the irrational to reveal the truth.  What The Winnowing teaches us is that there is a need for caution in construing meaning within the realm of fear, as well as for openness and respect for all.

Look for my Q & A with author Vikki VanSickle tomorrow as part of the blog tour celebrating the release of The Winnowing.  Vikki VanSickle reveals much about her path to writing speculative fiction and her enthusiasm for sci-fi and The X Files.

Everton Miles is Stranger Than Me

I'm delighted to be posting today and tomorrow as part of Dundurn's blog tour for Everton Miles is Stranger Than Me. Check in tomorrow for my interview with author Philippa Dowding.

by Philippa Dowding

Dundurn

978-1-4597-3527-9

228 pp.

Ages 8-12

October 2016

Reviewed from advance reading copy

Time to take flight again with Gwendolyn Golden, who first learned that she was a Night Flyer in Philippa Dowding’s The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden (Dundurn, 2014).  Having taken her first flight, she has been given “The Complete  & Unabridged Version (Newly Updated!)” of “Your First Flight: A Night Flyer’s Handbook” which explains the basics about Mentors (hers is Mrs. Forest of The Float Boat candy store) and Watchers (hers is Mr. McGillies, a local hermit) and Spirit Flyers and more.  But it doesn’t prepare her fully for the dark, winged figure with glowing eyes that she hears calling her name when flying near the cornfields at Mr. McGillies's cabin.

Starting high school brings its own anxieties, particularly from bully Shelley Norman and from Martin Evells, with whom Gwendolyn had shared an awkward kiss (called “The Worst Kiss Ever”) last spring and whose mother had started a rumour that she was a drug addict (you'll definitely want to read The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden).  Circumstances at home are similarly tenous with her twin siblings, Christopher and Christine a.k.a. C2, who have been directed by their school to take part in family therapy which Mom and Gwendolyn must also attend.  But things become even more messy when she learns that Everton Miles whom she’d met at the Midsummer Party of Night Flyers a few months earlier has moved to Bass Creek with his older brother Emerson.  More handsome and grown-up than she remembers him, Everton warns Gwendolyn not to fly out to Mr. McGillies's alone anymore.

Who is he to tell her what to do when he's been seen with his arm around Shelley Norman?! But then Martin is continuing to show an interest in Gwendolyn and demonstrating how caring he can be, especially when she sees him out at Mr. McGillies’s cabin.  Wait. What?  And then Gwendolyn learns Martin and Everton have been working together out at Mr. McGillies's. OK, that's all weird but stranger yet, and darker too, is the Rogue Spirit Flyer who is trying to beguile her away from everything and everyone.  Did I mention that Everton has been working with Celestine, a Spirit Flyer, “a starshot immortal of light and air” (pg. 74), to hunt down this Rogue?

Everton Miles is a teenage Rogue-hunter with terrible taste in girls and a shimmering, underage Spirit Flyer for a friend. 

If I didn’t think so before, I do now: it’s entirely possible that Everton Miles is stranger than me. (pg. 77)

So amidst the typical and dreadful teen angst of boy-girl crushes, rivalries and friendships, and family frailties, Gwendolyn Golden is worrying about a scary Rogue that has targeted her.  Fortunately for Gwendolyn, Philippa Dowding has given her an all-star cast of supporters in best friend Jez, potential boyfriend Martin and fellow Night Flyer Everton, as well as in her hilarious siblings (their repartee is worth the price of the book!).  The secondary characters of Mom, Mr. and Mrs. Forest, Dr. Parks, Celestine and Mr. McGillies help round out the sharp edges of a life in upheaval.  And I haven't even mentioned the shocking revelations regarding Gwendolyn’s family that come to light.

Beyond the fantastical night flying, the aspiration of many a dreamer, Everton Miles is Stranger Than Me is firmly grounded in a coming-of-age story, one in which self-acceptance and forgiveness come from the ordinary.  The extraordinary is just in the way you see things, allowing the conventional to be seen from a different perspective. Whether spatially–above or below– or temporally–from before or after–perspective is everything, isn't it? 

Watching Traffic

by Jane Ozkowski

Groundwood Books

978-1-55409-843-3

186 pp.

Ages 14-18

August 2016

Reviewed from ebook

“There are so many directions you can go, and no matter what you choose it’s going to have an effect on everything else.” (pg. 151)

It’s the end of summer after finishing high school and eighteen-year-old Emily Robinson is anticipating the departure of best friends, Lincoln and Melissa, for new adventures and locales, Australia for travel and Halifax for school, respectively.  And what of Emily, the girl whom everyone, and I mean everyone, in their small town of Cavanaugh only thinks of as the three-year-old girl whose mother committed suicide in her presence and has had to overcome so much?

Though they’ve been friends since Grade 7 when they both were attending weekly counselling sessions, one to deal with her mother’s suicide and the other with anger issues, Melissa and Emily seem to be at odds this summer.  Emily thinks it’s because of Melissa’s relationship with boyfriend Dan but Emily, burdened by her lack of direction, just doesn’t have the time or make the effort to deal with her messed-up friend, though she’s encouraged by Lincoln and Melissa’s older brother Robert to make an effort.

But meeting Tyler, a new guy whom she meets at the pawn shop where she goes to sell the gold teeth her grandmother has gifted her–Grandma is a wonderful story in herself!–gives Emily the chance to take her life in a different direction, one where she has divorced parents and is someone she wants to be seen as.

Watching traffic from the three overpasses that cross the highway that divides Cavanaugh in two parts is a common past-time for Emily and her friends, but it’s a metaphor for divisions and acceptance, and the movement of people into, through and out of our lives.  Emily’s life may seem tenous to her, not knowing where she’s going, but it’s not unlike her friends who, though they have direction, are apprehensive about moving on, and Jane Ozkowski gets the tone right for these young people who want to move on but only know that from which they come.  Their words of wisdom are both an anathema and a propellant.

"There’s a highway cutting through the whole town, and they think if they follow it they’ll find somewhere better.  Nothing’s better, though.  You can be unhappy here or you can be unhappy somewhere else.  Being happy is more about how you see things.” (pg. 50)

Watching Traffic is Jane Ozkowski’s debut novel but her skill in giving voice to Emily, Melissa, Lincoln, Tyler and others in their perplexity and discomfiture about going forward in life demonstrates a raw understanding and proficiency at telling their stories.  Less about plot and more about characters and their development, Watching Traffic suggests that Jane Ozkowski is the one to watch and continue to read.  I look forward to see and read what’s coming round the bend from Jane Ozkowski.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’m delighted to announce that author Jane Ozkowski is a last-minute addition to the impressive contingent of young adult authors reading at this weekend’s Eden Mills Writers’ Festival.  Come for the words!

Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

Dundurn 

978-1-459732025

268 pp.

Ages 12+

January 2016

When it’s just you and your mom, and your mom is the formerly-famous Micky Wayne, currently a solo singer but once lead of the band Dusty Moon, it’s not surprising that your lives are outrageously intertwined, even entangled, in a very public world.  Micky Wayne has a intense personality, both showering sixteen-year-old Victoria with love and embarrassment while putting it all into her music career.

That’s just who she is: transparent.  Her heart’s not so much on her sleeve as it is set out on a plate that she’s passing around the crowd for everyone to take a bite of. (pg. 10)

But Victoria, or the famous Vic of her mother’s songs, is coming to an age when she is torn between not wanting or needing her mother to always be there but still wanting her mother’s attention.  And with her mother learning at the onset of summer that she’d be going on tour to Japan, then returning to do the big annual end-of-summer concert on Toronto Island, before going to Europe for several months in the fall, Victoria feels shafted and disgruntled, and is almost cruel to her mother, telling her “Maybe if you were a real mother” (pg. 98) after Victoria is doored while cycling and ends up in a cast.

As Victoria navigates her evolving relationship with her mother, she is also extending herself into new and changing relationships with her peers.  Though her friendship with BFF Lucy is solid, the two girls are going beyond their gaming obsession of Lore of Ages, LoA, and delving into an gaming group for women called She Shoots that supports girls in creating games.  But their collaboration becomes precarious when Victoria decides to ask a boy, Shaun, from last year’s drama class to hang out.  Lucy thinks he’s an idiot, but Victoria asks him out anyway.  After a disastrous first date at a nude beach on the Island and a lengthy period of avoidance due to embarrassment, Victoria becomes more and more involved with the young man, though she lies to him about her mother when she learns he’s a big Dusty Moon fan and doesn’t know Micky Wayne is her mother.  Sadly, this new romance puts a strain on her relationship with Lucy, who too feels neglected.

Change is inevitable especially when you’re a young adult and yearning for independence ("I mean I love her, but I can't share her life forever"; pg. 259) and new experiences while still wanting to hold onto that which is familiar and seemingly safe.  Suzanne Sutherland, whose earlier book Something Wiki (Dundurn, 2015) is also a coming-of-age story with overtones of digital experiences, delves deeper in Under the Dusty Moon with older protagonists, extreme mother-daughter relationships, and a more intense boy-girl romance.  But at its heart it’s still a story of a girl growing up, though Victoria's evolution is not an easy one–Is growing up ever easy?–and happens in fits and starts.  Just like the game that she and Lucy are creating, growing up is like walking into a big house of unopened rooms that need to be explored.  Some doors are scary to open, others welcoming. Some open into expansive rooms, and others are just portals to other doors.  And, like their game, the choices one makes decide where you end up.  But, if you’re choosing to read Under the Dusty Moon, you’ve made a great choice and will enjoy the experience of accompanying Victoria on her newest game of life. Beta, anyone?

Heart of a Champion: Book launch (Burnaby, BC)

Join

Ellen Schwartz

author of 

for the launch of her newest
middle-grade novel!

Join her and publisher

Tundra Books

an imprint of Penguin Random House

for the launch of

Heart of a Champion

by Ellen Schwartz

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-880-8

257 pp.

Ages 9-12

March, 2016

on

Sunday, March 13, 2016

2 p.m. (PST)

at

Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre

6688 Southoaks Crescent

Burnaby, BC

The book is described as follows on the Penguin Random House web page for the book:

Ten-year-old Kenny (Kenji in Japanese) worships his older brother, Mickey (Mitsuo), a baseball hero whose outstanding performance on the Asahi baseball team has given him fame and popularity. Despite Kenny's suspected heart condition, he is determined to practice secretly with Mickey so he, too, can one day try out for the Asahi. But world events soon overtake life in this quiet community. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in 1941, everything for Kenny and his family spirals out of control: schools are closed, businesses are confiscated, fathers are arrested and sent to work camps in the BC interior and mothers and children are relocated to internment camps. When Mickey is arrested for a small act of violence, Kenny manages to keep his family's spirits up, despite the deplorable conditions in camp. Coming across a "vacant" field covered with scrap wood, broken shakes and torn tar paper, Kenny gets permission to clear it and convert it into a baseball field. One by one, the boys in the camp pitch in, and the work gives purpose to their long days. Kenny's persistence, hard work and big dreams shape the teen he is to become in this story of happiness found despite all odds.

Retrieved from http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/250703/heart-champion#9781770498822 on February 20, 2016.

Something Wiki

by Suzanne Sutherland

Dundurn

978-1-45972-821-9

160 pp.

Ages 9-12

For release January 3, 2015

While the title Something Wiki may suggest that there's something wicked, there really isn't, unless, of course, you count going through puberty and all that it entails: skin breaking out, body image issues, first crushes, changing friendships, parent issues, etc.  Okay, so puberty is pretty wicked.  But the "wiki" in the title refers to twelve-year-old (almost 13!) Jo Waller's use of Wikipedia as a diary, allowing her to share her feelings by amending entries that relate to her situation.  She adds her personal touch to entries about acne, ambush, hairdresser, and friendship, among the many that kick off each new chapter in Something Wiki, always knowing that her edits will satisfyingly disappear almost as soon as she finishes them.

Too bad the problems of growing up can't disappear as easily as revised wiki entries because there's a lot going on for Jo, and much of it she cannot control.  Because Jo sees herself as a short, chunky, geeky girl with glasses and zits, she tends to compare herself to others, specifically her friends:  pretty, best friend Stacey, musical Trisha and the smart, ginger-haired Chloe.  But she's starting to feel out of sync with them, especially when she learns Stacey has lied to her in order to hang out with Chloe alone.  Those she used to rely on for support seem to be turning on her.  Add to that the domestic chaos brought about by the return home of her 24-year-old brother Zim with his girlfriend Jenevieve who is pregnant, and Jo's parents refusal to include their youngest in their home situation.  And then there's cutie Declan Walsh who intensifies the pandemonium.

Suzanne Sutherland has made Something Wiki into Jo's coming-of-age story, demonstrating that everything in the life of a pubescent girl may seem twisted and knotted but, with time and some effort at disentanglement, a new order can arise.  The wickedness of losing friends, unfair accusations, bad haircuts, bad skin, and feeling discounted can be endured when their absurdity in the big picture is realized.  Suzanne Sutherland gives Jo the ability to see the ridiculousness in her life.

These days I just want to sleep. I'd be happy if I could sleep all day....
It won't work, though. I drool in my sleep. 

As if I needed to look any uglier. (pg. 127)

Yep, the regular fries of teen angst–bad enough for the skin–becomes poutine courtesy of Suzanne Sutherland: far richer and flavourful. 

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

Written by Teresa Toten

Doubleday Canada/Random House of Canada

978-0-385678346

255 pp.

Ages 14+

For release August 27, 2013

When 16-year-old Robyn Plummer joins Dr. Chuck Mutinda's young adult OCD group, fifteen-year-old Adam Ross finds his motivation to get better and even grow taller. He still has deal with his compulsion to clear those triggers that bother him, like thresholds and even numbers, but when the group members are encouraged to take on superhero alter egos, he links himself to her by choosing Batman to her Robin.  

In fact, Adam becomes Robyn's unofficial mentor in all things Catholic after following her to the cemetery where she visits her mom's grave.  Seems Robyn is interested in pursuing the ingrained rituals such as crossing oneself and kneeling, hoping it will help her deal with her mother's death and her own OCD.  But Adam and Robyn's relationship starts to include the other members of their OCD group when a field trip to his parish is undertaken.  Although Chuck is clear that religion is not a panacea for OCD, the other group members, including the intense Thor, accompany them and learn about the font, the lighting of candles and kneeling in prayer, even if they all fall to their knees when Father Rick introduces himself.

While he continues to do all he can to help Robyn, obviously falling in love with her, Adam is very reluctant to speak in group or even in his one-on-one sessions with Chuck of those issues which are overwhelming him.  His father had left to marry another woman, Brenda, with whom he now has another son, Wendell (affectionately known as Sweetie), a four-year-old whom Adam adores.  Likewise, Sweetie has a strong attachment to Adam who is regularly summoned to calm or reassure or put his little brother to sleep.  In fact, Adam wonders if he is making Sweetie crazy, although his mother claims that he is not.  A highly-competent nursing supervisor, Carmella Ross, has her own issues, particularly hoarding and, more recently, receiving nasty letters that call her vile names and instruct her to kill herself for Adam's sake. But his mom has declared that if he tells anyone that it will be a betrayal to her.

So he lies to Chuck and others about the letters and even the growing severity of his issues with thresholds. But, as Chuck tells him and he later tells Robyn, when she reveals her own secrets, "Everybody lies."(pg. 146)  However, as he and Robyn become closer, he confides in her about his mom and the letters, which lightens his burden, until he gets home again.

Bouncing back and forth between trying to get better and following Chuck's program and feeling that Robyn is getting better and he is not, Adam begins to feel like an impostor, hardly a superhero of Room 13B. But, revealing what he needs, exposing some lies, and accepting that leaving is a difficult but necessary step in growing up, Adam can finally see himself as the reluctant hero that his family, his friends and Robyn know him to be.

If you forget the OCD, temporarily, you see that Teresa Toten has created a good kid in Adam.  He tries to see the best in everyone and help where he can. He may vascillate between whether it is or isn't or whether he should or shouldn't, but don't we all when trying to make the best of decisions?  With his OCD, Adam would be justified in having great difficulty in determining the correct course of action.  But, he still goes when Sweetie needs him, even in the middle of the night or during the school day.  He respects his mother's wishes.  He even suggests that climbing the stairs to their meeting room in Room 13B would be excellent exercise when he realizes that one group member with claustrophobia was unable to enter the elevator.

While Adam tells himself and others that everybody lies, the lies are used to add layering to The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B.  Everyone has fears, issues, anxieties and sensitivities that sometimes need to be hidden.  But what transforms the lies into a story is the choices of from whom these lies are hidden–yourself or others–and for what purpose.  Teresa Toten uses her characters' lies to provide greater depth and unexpected twists to her storyline, as well as demonstrate that heroics are everyday occurrences, not the domain of superheroes.  Some days it's speaking aloud in a group, or taking a chance and going for it, or breaking your heart to do what's right that requires courage.  By that explanation, Adam Ross, 15, is truly The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B.

    ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~    

Teresa Toten will be a guest author at First Calgary Financial Book Rapport, part of Calgary's WordFest in October, and will be presenting at the Banff Centre on Saturday October 19. 

Smokescreen

Written by Nancy Hartry

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-405-3

202 pp.

Ages 12+

August 2013

I know that most coming-of-age stories involve protagonists in their early to mid-teens, but Kerry Williams is seventeen and definitely in need of growing into herself by Smokescreen's book end.  You see, at the story's onset, Kerry is thrown into a totally unfamiliar situation: a summer job for the Department of Forestry and Parks in the northern Ontario bush as a cottage development technician i.e., looking for potential sites to develop for cottages.  Kerry is convinced that her mother happily finagled this job for her after she'd disappointed her by losing a major Irish Dance competition due to a fall and subsequent injury ("My body betrayed me.  Correction, my mother overtrained me." pg. 8). Regardless how naive the Toronto teen might feel in her new circumstances, especially after she meets Yvette Bernier, her nineteen-year-old partner for the summer, she is determined to not fail.  Luckily, even though Yvette comes off the bus looking like a trendy urbanite, she knows everything about working in the bush, dealing with campfuls of men, negotiating with bosses who try to push summer students into unsafe conditions, and how to handle herself to ensure a profitable and worry-free summer, and she willingly shares this knowledge with Kerry.

But a raging forest fire has them moving base camps several times and conscripted to work in food prep and camp work for the fire crews.  In addition to their misogynistic boss, Buzz Harcourt, there's Didier, the handsome and friendly crew boss of a fire unit; Matt the pilot who must take them north regardless of Yvette's refusal to go; Rolf, the older, no-nonsense professional camp cook who is eventually brought in; Slash, the scary and scarred man brought in to help with heavy kitchen work; Aubrey, the intense Métis fire crew boss on whom Kerry crushes and Yvette does not trust; and Mr. Sirois, the violent and sexist boss man from New Brunswick.  

Over time, Yvette has learned to trust very few people, particularly ones that seem to have hidden agendas, and she warns Kerry repeatedly about watching her back.  But, with the discovery of Yvette's pink lighter at the source of the forest fire, the young women realize that there is someone who is setting Yvette up, and they must tread carefully to keep their jobs and protect themselves.  Problem is that Kerry and Yvette have very different perceptions about whom to trust, and the emotional baggage they each bring to their friendship has them repeatedly at odds.  It's only when the two get mixed up in a potentially deadly situation that Kerry can see Yvette's vulnerability and accept her own strengths as the basis for their survival.

Nancy Hartry, author of the 2010 Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for Children Award–Watching Jimmy (Tundra, 2009)–knows how to take a straightforward storyline, e.g., teens taking summer jobs in the bush, and enriching it with psychological intricacies and complex social situations that can take straightforward to dangerous.  And that's probably why her stories hit home for her readers.  There are no paranormal experiences or supernatural elements that take the story into the fantasy and improbable, if not impossible, realm.  The characters in her books could be our children, our neighbours, friends, family.  So, as we read and recognize that these circumstances could happen to anyone and that different elements could be derived directly from the news, we read a little more cautiously, hopeful that no one we know should ever have these experiences, and thoroughly, perhaps learning the means by which survival may be achieved.  Nancy Hartry shares a dramatic story that could be passed down from one summer student to another, or from parent to child, or from anyone to anyone who wants to tell a good story and teach a little something in the process.  Nancy Hartry does both in Smokescreen. 

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings

Written by Hélène Boudreau
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
978-1-4022-4412-4
208 pp.
Ages 9+
2010

With the third book, Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, in Hélène Boudreau's Real Mermaids series scheduled for release this month and after meeting the lovely Hélène Boudreau at the TD Canadian Children's Book Awards in November, I realized it was time to explore this series of books. Shamefully, I must confess to "mermaid" prejudices which, like all prejudices, were completely unfounded. As a teacher-librarian who has a multitude of little girls asking me for princess and mermaid books, I expected Hélène Boudreau's books to be weakly plotted stories with pretty covers in pink and purple, perfect for ages 3-5. Nah uh. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Instead what I discovered is a series of perfect middle-grade reads with complex plotting and lots of "Aha!" moments as connections and revelations twist and enhance storylines. The covers may have beautiful shimmering tones of turquoise, green and pink but these are hardly Disney's mermaid books. And Hélène Boudreau always ends her Real Mermaids books with a recipe courtesy of one of the characters. (The chocolately treat in Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings has become a regular after-dinner dessert in our household.)

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings introduces almost-fourteen-year-old Jade Baxter, a plus-size teen who lives with her engineer father in Port Toulouse, a town on the Atlantic Ocean. Jade's mother, Michaela, drowned at her Gran's cottage on Talisman Lake less than a year ago. Even though she has the support of her dad and her fashionista best friend, Cori, Jade is finding that going through puberty without a mom is awkward, if not farcical. Imagine getting your period (horrors) while trying on a bathing suit (least favourite shopping for most women) but being unable to tell your best friend because you'd lied about getting it two years earlier (peer pressure, you know) and having to meet your dad at the drug store to pick out an assortment of feminine hygiene products while the boy you've always crushed on, Luke Martin, is trying to chat you up. Oh wait, did I mention that when you get home to take a warm bath with some soothing Epsom salts, you fall asleep and have your legs morph into a tail? They may always tell tweenies that "it's wonderful being a girl" but let's face it: puberty sucks, and even more so for Jade.

      Rubbing my eyes, blinking away the sting, trying to get out, shocked by what I saw breaking through the surface of the water.
     Then, I was yelling for Dad, he was crashing through the door.
     And I had a tail. A shimmering, scale-covered, slimy, wet tail.
     Freak-of-nature suddenly took on a whole new meaning. (pg. 40)

Luckily Dad is working very hard to be both parents to Jade and is there for her, even having to share the startling news with her that Mom had been a mermaid too. The big question - how could her mom have drowned if she was a mermaid? - sadly has no answer. Sadder still is the fact that Jade cannot share any of this with Cori (who is currently very busy hanging out with snooty Lainey Chamberlain in the hopes of getting Mrs. Chamberlain to mentor her in fashion design) or Gran or Luke who surprisingly seems to be chattier to her than before he and his family had gone on a lengthy boating trip.

While taking a break by the canal and lock that link the lake with the ocean, a scuffle in the water has Jade connecting with her mother who tells Jade, in the strange language of sharp ringing sounds, that she is being held by Freshies, mer-people who have been jailed in freshwater Talisman Lake by the Mermish Council. Desperate to free her mother from the clutches of the Freshie leaders, Finalin and his wife Medora, Jade and her father learn everything and anything they can about mer-people in the hopes of bringing Michaela home.

I won't give too much away here, as I'll be reviewing Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath and this month's new release, Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, in the next few days. Suffice it to say, the humour, the storylines, Jade's pure 14-year-old voice and a startling ending to Book 1 will have you reading the second book asap, just as I did. So do yourself a favour and order Books 1, 2 and 3 at the same time. It'll be worth it.