The Crow That Wouldn't Go

Written and illustrated by Matea Drljepan

The Pictou Bee Press

978-0-920297-07-0

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

June 2025 

 

This may be a story of a crow but it's also the story of a Nova Scotian town, because the place the crow won't leave is Antigonish. So, as the other crows wonder why it won't leave—this partial migration whereby some crows migrate and others don't is quite real—the crow counts off, in rhyming verse, all the things he likes to do in the town of Antigonish.

There was a crow who wouldn't go

He hung around, through hail, rain, and snow.

He wouldn't leave, and he wouldn't fly,

Tied to home, he refused to say bye. (pg. 5)

From The Crow That Wouldn't Go, written and illustrated by Matea Drljepan

The other crows ask what makes this location so special that he'd want to stay, and, in rhyming verse, the crow that wouldn't go tells them. He mentions some places by name like Cape George, Spook Farm, and Keppoch Hill but it's Matea Drljepan's illustrations that give us more of the story. Her text speaks of pizza, ice cream, ghosts, a Cellidh, and a powwow, but her illustrations show us Koala Cone, the Keating Centre, and the Victorian Inn.  There are so many landmarks, historical and cultural, popular and personal, that it becomes evident why this crow doesn't want to leave. Antigonish is home. He is so convincing that Antigonish becomes a little more because of his travelogue.

From The Crow That Wouldn't Go, written and illustrated by Matea Drljepan

It's been many years since I've visited Antigonish, but for those who live in the Maritimes and those who have attended St. Francis Xavier University or the Highland Games, Antigonish offers a little bit of everything. Its character is one of community, history, and culture, and Matea Drljepan's picture book reflects her admiration for the town. But not only does she speak to the town's richness of place and people, she also speaks to the nature of crows in her text and appended note.  

From The Crow That Wouldn't Go, written and illustrated by Matea Drljepan

Beyond Matea Drljepan's depiction of Antigonish and the crows in her boldly-outlined and colourful artwork, young readers will be treated to some very clever references to everything beyond those worlds. For example, when the crow admits that he sometimes feels lonely when all his friends are gone, there is an art parody of Picasso's The Old Guitarist (1903, from his Blue Period). So, not only does she take us to Nova Scotia, she also makes us see beyond it. 

So whatever your family name may be

Whether Ross, Wong, Benoit, Hadhad, or Phee,

This special place was built with love and care,

To welcome all people from everywhere. (pg. 25)

Perhaps you won't be visiting Nova Scotia until we're through with winter, but The Crow That Wouldn't Go would be a delightful accompaniment to your travels with young children. If you've been fortunate enough to have visited before, you will be able to recount the sights you enjoyed then. And, if you're a teacher, I can imagine using this story as a template for children writing their own stories about the places they've visited or the special place they call home. After all, these crows have a lesson or two to teach us about appreciating places near and far.

Road Signs That Say West

Written by Sylvia Gunnery
Pajama Press
978-1-77278-023-9
216 pp.
Ages 12+
May 2017

Three sisters. One road trip.  No regrets?

When their parents go off on their European holiday, 19-year-old Hanna convinces her sisters Megan, 17, and Claire, 15, to head west on a summer road trip from Nova Scotia to Vancouver.  But the Three Sisters' Road Trip, with multiple stops at roadside attractions, camping and hostelling and the meeting of new friends, becomes more of an unloading of secret baggage and a clash of personalities than a sisterly bonding experience.

From their photo at the statue of Glooscap, to Montreal where their clubbing leads to Megan's hospital visit and her wrist in a sling, Hanna directs, Claire worries and Megan remonstrates her sisters.  Meeting a group travelling from PEI, Hanna accepts an invitation to a wedding they're attending in North Bay.  Onto Marathon and the Terry Fox memorial, the girls pick up the hitchhiking teen named Bear with his beagle Jake and end up driving them all the way to Pinawa, Manitoba to the home of his aunt and uncle where he intends to help out since his cousin Lenny joined the armed forces.  Bear and Megan make a connection but around that swirls unrest with a man sexually harassing Hanna and the fears Bear's uncle has about his son's safety.

Manitoba leads to Saskatchewan and Alberta where they meet a flutist-busker named Charley who encourages Hanna in her song-writing as healing for Claire's grief before the three head to BC where their road trip takes a sudden turn from which the three sisters may or may not find their way back.

It's evident from the onset that Hanna and Claire have back stories that affect their current interactions with others and between the sisters, though there's a lot more story to how the three became who they are than is ever told.  Hanna had gone to university but had left mid-term to take on an au pair position in Italy from which her parents had to involve lawyers to extricate her safely.  Though involved in scandalous circumstances beyond her control, Hanna parcels out little bits about it to her sisters, and still manages to keep mum about that of which she is most ashamed or embarrassed.  Claire is dealing with the recent suicide of her boyfriend Matt's best friend and still coming to terms with what Caleb had done.  Worried about leaving Matt behind and trying to resolve Caleb's death in her own mind leads Claire to contemplate depression and her own grief.  Megan is given no back story, except for having given up a summer job and anticipating starting university and continuing with her swimming.  Sadly, she is continuously vilified by her bossy and self-centred older sister and complacent younger sister for her cautious, more rational approach.  And, even though Sylvia Gunnery has written Road Signs That Say West from third-person omniscient point of view, critical commentary about Megan, the "grouchy complainer" (pg. 128) skews the narration for me.

The road trip scenario is an irresistible plot line, forcing the three sisters to interact (haven't we all been trapped in cars with those we may or may not like?) while they experience life and meet new people of all backgrounds and take in the diversity of places that make up Canada.  Roads Signs That Say West could be a travel commentary of places east to west (I found myself looking up information about Glooscap, Weyburn, and more) but it's really a story of family, a real family, of siblings with secrets, weaknesses, strengths and ambitions that they may or may not share.  The baggage that the girls take with them is far greater than their back stories and drives them to behave in complex and justifiable ways.  Though I would have preferred if Megan had been developed more as a character and not delivered as a scapegoat, especially since middle children are more often cooperative team players than embittered sulkers, young adult readers will appreciate the three different personalities Sylvia Gunnery has created as well as her story which takes the three to new places in their relationships within a colourful national landscape.

The Valiant

Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-628-0

372 pp.

Ages 13+

February 2017

It should have been an auspicious day for Fallon, youngest daughter of the Celtic king Virico, chief of the Cantii tribe of Prydain.  She was turning seventeen and becoming old enough to become a member of her father’s royal war band. Moreover, Maelgwyn Ironhand, her fighting partner and best friend, had pledged his love to her.  But some backroom dealings and a murder send Fallon in pursuit of vengeance and sadly captured by slave traders and on her way to Rome, the city of their enemy and the killers of her much-revered older sister Sorcha.

The slave master Charon takes a surprising interest in Fallon and, after the ship they take across the Mare Nostrum is beset by pirates and Fallon fights alongside the legionnaires sent to escort the cargo, she also becomes the interest of Decurion Caius Varro.  This is especially so after Fallon and Elka, a girl of the Vaini tribe of the north, are sold as a pair to the Ludus Achillea, an academy for female gladiators, lead by the Lady Achillea.  There she is advised to “Kill your past and bury it deep in the earth of your heart” (pg. 135).  But the past keeps rearing its ugly head, bringing those she thought long gone into her present, and demanding her attention if she is to surmount them and become valiant in the future.

From a heart-pounding chariot manoeuvre to the murder of her beloved Mael to the arenas of the Rome and the appalling trafficking of humans as  chattel, The Valiant plunges readers into other worlds in time and space and mood.  The Valiant, like life for Fallon and her compatriots, is not for the faint of heart.  There is a brutality and ruthlessness necessary for their survival that must be balanced against the hedonism of those in power.  But Lesley Livingston focuses on the women as strong  and shrewd, with most finding a way to accept their fates and make them work for them.  There’s Elka who acknowledges to Fallon that with war and with life

“There is only forward. Only tomorrow. No yesterday, no going back.  And nothing of value is left behind, so nothing is truly lost.” (pg. 73)

And there’s Kassandra, a fellow slave girl, who gives Fallon her sandals when an accident permits potential escape.

“This was a girl who would choose to stay chained if it meant that her odds of survival were even so much as a hairsbreadth better.  And there was strength in that choice–the sheer, bloody-minded will to survive no matter how dreadful the circumstance.  Maybe honor wasn’t always something won by a blade, I thought.  And maybe it couldn’t be so easily stripped away, even in servitude.” (pg. 67)

Like all Lesley Livingston’s YA fantasy including her Wondrous Strange and Once Every Never series, The Valiant is an epic read of another world–here historically-based–offering a story of a gladiatrix that might or might not have been possible.  In fact, Lesley Livingston’s afterword discusses the known history of gladiatrices (plural of gladiatrix) and her own creation of “the realm of “what-if” where fantasy meets history.” (pg. 375)  With The Valiant, Lesley Livingston, in her impressively-evocative writing, gives readers a front seat in the arena, glory and guts and even a love story included in the price of admission.

Movers

Written by Meaghan McIsaac

Tundra Books

978-1-7049-818-1

288 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2016

Reviewed from Advance Reader's Copy

Forget today's world.  Meaghan McIsaac will take you into the new world of 2083 when people live in tiny apartments, use droidlets as keepers of all information, where schools are 64 floors high, water is scarce, powerful winds called Eventualies bombard everyone and everything, and there are Movers, people with the special ability to move others called their Shadows from the future of war, famine and disease to their own time.  And, because there are Movers, there is the Bureau of Movement Activity Control (BMAC) and the anti-Mover group, We Are Now, and Movers' Prison and Shelving–whereby Movers convicted of moving their Shadows are Shelved i.e., put into "An endless sleep. A living kind of deadness" (pg. 2).  It's a totally different world and it's the world of fourteen-year-old Patrick Mermick whose father Michael was Shelved after Moving his Shadow, Oscar Joji, from the future, killing him in the process and causing considerable damage.  Problem is that Michael Mermick was a Phase 2 Mover and incapable of Moving his Shadow.

Now Pat and little sister Maggie, both Phase 1 Movers, and Mom Izzy, a Non-Mover, must live in a world of monthly Mover renewal forms and much discrimination.  Not surprising Mom is known as a Mover symathizer, protesting Shelving, and helping Movers falsity their FIILES–digital accounts of their lives–to keep them from being treated as criminals.

Then everything goes from bad to worse.  Mom gets called into Maggie’s school, because of Mags' new behaviours suggesting the need for a Phase upgrade, and they are both being taken to BMAC headquarters when Mom tells Maggie to make a run for it.  Maggie heads to Pat’s school where a Movement creates destruction and chaos while bringing over the Shadow of Gabby, a classmate of Pat’s and a favourite target of the bullies. Together, Pat and Gabby and Maggie become fugitives and must delve into the underworld of Mover society in order to survive and avoid Shelving.

Movers is an earth-shattering, action-packed futuristic adventure of the heightest proportions.  Set in a future that appears to be of our own making–depletion of most resources, scarcity of others, continued discrimination for those who are different–with new technology and supernatural elements of time-travel, Movers is incessant in its fast pacing and rife with villains of all natures–bureaucratic, school bullies and future warlords–keeping the action steady and plot unravelling.

Another blast sends tremors rippling through the building.  The cement begins to give way under my right foot and there’s nothing I can do.  My body is in freefall and I cry out.  My brain shuts down, and there’s only one thought–I’m so dead–but my hand still has a grip on the metal bar.
I dangle there, scream-crying with Gabby while the rough rusty bar cuts into my palm.  My vocal cords feel ready to snap while the rest of me is consumed by fear.  No Gabby, no Movement, just – falling.
My temples start buzzing, like the lightning has shot right through them, and I can feel him, my Shadow, suddenly aware of me.  He’s angry, overwhelmed by the emotion flooding out of my body and suddenly I’m furious too. (pg. 50-51)

It’s like Die Hard meets The Time Traveler’s Wife for teen readers except the threat is from within and a romance doesn’t drive the story.  But the threat is real and the time travel is real and the horrors of discrimination are real.  And, to cause even more discomfort for readers, the story of Movers isn’t over because Meaghan McIsaac leaves readers on the edge of time and place, literally, with an ending that can’t even begin to be resolved until Book 2 of this new series is announced.  Hang on.

The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley

by Jan Andrews

Great Plains Teen Fiction

978-1-926531-68-7

200 pp.

Ages 12-15

2013

This year in January I had the pleasure of introducing Jan Andrews at the Ontario Library Association's SuperConference as winner of the 2012 Silver Birch Express Award for her book When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew: the Tales of Ti-Jean (Groundwood, 2011), stories starring Quebec’s traditional folktale hero. I emphasized that Jan Andrews is foremost a storyteller, able to weave tales in text and spoken word for all audiences, sharing cultures and wisdom, entertaining and teaching. While her first foray into young adult fiction may not be what many would judge as a storyteller's story, The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley is very much a tale in that it teaches, it exposes, it shares, and it entertains. It opens one's eyes. Isn't that what every good story should do?

Kyle McGinley is a fifteen-year-old boy who, on the way to his latest foster home, makes a drastic decision that gives him a feeling of control, something he has lacked since his mother died and his abusive father abandoned him at age 8.

"I, Kyle McGinley, have given up on talk of any kind." (pg. 7)

The talk he gives up is the out-of-his-mouth kind, starting with his newest social worker and his new foster parents, Jill and Scott, consultants that work out of their rural home. But Kyle still does a lot of talking in his head with two significant voices that cohabit there: his father's bold and italicized abusive comments, and the helpful, encouraging italicized suggestions of a scientist he calls Ingen.

Strangely, on a large property with a barn, stream, trails, cattle, a deep pit, and a swamp of lifeless trees, Kyle admits to himself that he's "never been less frightened in my life." (pg. 66) That is, until Jill and Scott hear via the social worker that Kyle's dad has engaged a lawyer to help him reconnect with Kyle. That sends Kyle into a tailspin that has him twisting both with the memories of his father's abuse and with the chance to have a father in his life again. Jill and Scott seem to be pretty cool, letting him sleep out in the loft of the barn, making a space for himself, driving the tractor and then letting him care for a little crow that has been physically abused and abandoned too. But Kyle barely knows them and he's been been through enough types of parenting –abusive, negative, negligent, excessive– to anticipate their rejection of him. Sadly, Kyle doesn't recognize caring.

Like Kyle, the little crow whom he names Lady C is just an avian version of the teen: frightened, flightless by abuse, abandoned and speechless, though the thoughts are clearly there. His heart goes out to Lady C, bringing her into his loft and his life, engaging with her in ways that he cannot with others, yet. Jan Andrews draws on the parallels between Lady C and Kyle, and Kyle and Jill, using expressive dialogue (I know it seems strange considering Kyle doesn't speak aloud) to draw you into Kyle's head and heart. And the uncertainty about the issues with which Jill seems to be dealing and about Kyle's dad's potential for positive change will keep readers wondering and apprehensive and hopeful.

Jan Andrews gives Kyle a distinct voice that stirs and startles, never letting the reader completely understand how the boy thinks. Fortunately, without wrapping up the story with a predictably saccharine ending, Jan Andrews allows Kyle to find, in his own time, his voice, a home and himself.