Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear (Orca Think)

Written by Erin Silver

Illustrated by Xulin Wang

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-4098-0

96 pp.

Ages 9–12

February 2026 

 

Reviewing Erin Silver's latest non-fiction book, Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear on Earth Day seems fitting. On a day on which we celebrate our Earth and how to protect it, we have much to learn from a book about global locations threatened by climate change.

From Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear, written by Erin Silver, illustrated by Xulin Wang

Erin Silver, who has written countless books of non-fiction including Good Food, Bad Waste (2023), Mighty Scared: The Amazing Ways Animals Defend Themselves (2024), and Plant Attack (2025), takes on the challenging topic of climate change. However, by taking the perspective of showcasing key locations, from the Arctic to the Pacific Islands and the Amazon rainforest, Erin Silver speaks less of generalities and more to familiar sites and places people live. 

From Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear, written by Erin Silver, illustrated by Xulin Wang

The book is organized into four major chapters:

1. Major Meltdown
2. Cue the Waterworks
3. Under Fire
4. Life on Earth

The first looks at the impacts of global warming on the ice caps in Antarctica and in the Arctic. The impacts examined go beyond the ice sheets and glaciers, and into the water, the krill, polar bears, and more. Insights from those who visit those locations are shared, as are suggestions about helping to combat climate change.

From Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear, written by Erin Silver, illustrated by Xulin Wang

The next chapter looks at changing weather patterns, which cause more rain and severe storms in some areas, resulting in places being flooded, and sinking and shrinking. Mitigation with mangroves and engineering are just two approaches. Other areas will get drier, which could lead to food insecurity. A Q & A with a climate architect reveals much about solutions to this aspect of global warming. 

From Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear, written by Erin Silver, illustrated by Xulin Wang

The next chapter examines the fires in California and in British Columbia, while the final chapter looks at the threat to biodiversity, focusing on the Amazon rainforest and the Galápagos Islands. As in the earlier chapters, there are interviews, including with a climate adventurer and a biologist, info boxes called "The Info Express" with interesting tidbits,  and always assurances that activism can help. Completing this book are a comprehensive glossary and lists of resources for young people to access.

 

Erin Silver delivers a thorough examination of how climate change is affecting our world. And, though she makes it a global discussion, her research brings it closer to home, even if it's not our home specifically. It's a personal look at how global warming is impacting everyone and everywhere. That means it's up to everyone to do something, anything. With numerous photographs and Toronto's Xulin Wang's bold and colourful digital art, Gone Forever?: Places to See (and Save) Before They Disappear takes the reader around the world to see evidence of climate change. But with text and art combined, the message is not one of hopelessness but rather one of expectancy and action. And on this Earth Day, Gone Forever?—note the question mark—has a productive message to share.

Keep Our World Green: Why Humans Need Gardens, Parks and Public Green Spaces

Written by Frieda Wishinsky

Illustrated by Sara Theuerkauf

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459838383

96 pp.

Ages 9-12

For release May 13, 2025

 

Tomorrow is Earth Day 2025 and, though Keep Our World Green will not be released for a few more weeks, it's appropriate to speak to the book's messaging about conservation and protection of green spaces and their importance for our physical health, mental health and community.

As long as you have a garden, you have a future, and as long as you have a future, you are alive. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frieda Wishinsky starts her book with a look at the history of green spaces, whether they be when our ancestors moved from hunting and gathering to growing their own food, or the establishment of gardens. She highlights particular historic ones like the ancient gardens of Egypt and Japan to the classic gardens of Padua and Versailles and gardens from the 20th century, and their value in protecting diversity and endangered species, and in the development of medicines and in celebrating religious beliefs.

From Keep Our World Green: Why Humans Need Gardens, Parks and Public Green Spaces, written by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Sara Theuerkauf

Next, Frieda Wishinsky delves into green spaces of parks that are known for their beauty, from Central Park in New York City to Vietnam's Cat Ba National Park in Vietnam.

From Keep Our World Green: Why Humans Need Gardens, Parks and Public Green Spaces, written by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Sara Theuerkauf

We may get solace and nourishment from these spaces but they also inspire creativity from visual artists, musicians, and writers. There is the famous art of Claude Monet, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keefe, and the words of poets and storytellers from Henry David Thoreau to E. B. White. Composers like Vivaldi found inspiration in nature as did contemporary musicians like Joni Mitchell and Michael Jackson.

From Keep Our World Green: Why Humans Need Gardens, Parks and Public Green Spaces, written by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Sara Theuerkauf

But our green spaces, both natural and created, are in danger. From our use of chemicals to land development and climate change, our green spaces and their elements, like the bees and birds, are challenged. Frieda Wishinsky has some suggestions for young people as to how they might help based on how others have heeded the call for conservation and environmental protection. Whether you start small with cuttings or planting your own or a community garden, there is always something that a young person, and the adults around them, can do to help keep our world green.

From Keep Our World Green: Why Humans Need Gardens, Parks and Public Green Spaces, written by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Sara Theuerkauf

Frieda Wishinsky presents a varied but comprehensive look at green spaces, whether created by landscape architects, humble home gardeners or the natural world. She celebrates their beauty and their virtues, recognizes their role in keeping us happy, enlightened and healthy, and inspires us to ensure their longevity and security. It's a big order to include all those aspects in a book on green spaces but Frieda Wishinsky, a lover of gardens and parks and natural spaces (see for example, A Flower is a Friend), gives readers enough to whet their interest and how to find more information. (A list of resources is provided.)

 

While many photographs of people and places are used to support the text, Vancouver's Sara Theuerkauf provides illustrations of people and places. She ensures that these green spaces are bustling with life, whether it be of the wild variety, of the humans enjoying the space, or of the green life that exudes its own spirit. 

Depending on where you live, spring may be budding out or imminent, and hopefully we'll all be thinking about what we can do to celebrate the green spaces at home and abroad, and to ensure they are with us for a long, long time. Frieda Wishinsky encourages readers to see the green spaces, to acknowledge their power and importance, and to take actions, even in humble and little steps, to make sure those much-needed gardens, parks and public green spaces continue to flourish and be lauded for what they offer.

 

Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles

Written and illustrated by Barbara Reid

North Winds Press (Scholastic Canada)

978-1-4431-7559-3

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

December 2019

This one may have been released just after Christmas but any picture book by Barbara Reid, the grande dame of plasticine art, could not be overlooked, especially one that will be a valuable teaching tool for young biologists.

From Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles by Barbara Reid

For four species, Barbara Reid illustrates their complete life cycles in three double-page spreads each. There is the monarch butterfly which transforms from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis and butterfly. There is the sunflower which grows from the recognizable hard-shelled seed through germination with root and stem and two cotyledons, to leaves and finally flower and seed again.

From Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles by Barbara Reid

The third species is the green frog which lays many eggs from which tadpoles hatch, and then develop into organisms with back legs and then front legs. The final species is the white oak growing from an acorn which will take root, produce a seedling which grows into a sapling and finally a mature tree. To summarize the cycles, Barbara Reid provides a one-page illustration of each at the end of her book.

From Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles by Barbara Reid

This may be the content of Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles and it is important content for teachers who will be helping young children investigate the relationships between different stages of the same organism.  But Watch It Grow is more than a child's picture book as teaching tool, and that's because the art is that of Barbara Reid.  Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles becomes a celebration of life and the seasons, as plant and animals grow and develop through their life stages. Into each life cycle's story, Barbara Reid brings in a landscape of pond or backyard, woods or meadow, all with the textural and accurately-coloured richness of her plasticine art. Young children will be reaching out, as they always do with Barbara Reid's art, to touch the leaves or the caterpillar or a flower, certain that its softness or fuzziness or crispiness will be palpable and maybe even sonorous.

I know teachers and parents will want to have this book in their library for the teaching of life cycles, which Watch It Grow: Backyard Life Cycles will do flawlessly, but don't ignore the artistry of its illustrations. Young readers will certainly be enamoured with Barbara Reid's art and this will only cultivate further learning.

Hello Humpback! and One Eagle Soaring

Hello Humpback!

Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Text by Robert Budd
Harbour Publishing
978-1-55017-799-2
20 pp.
Ages 2-6
2017

One Eagle Soaring

Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Text by Robert Budd
Harbour Publishing
978-1-55017-828-9
20 pp.
Ages 2-6
2018

After my last review in which I applauded the recently published Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue, the third book in the A First West Coast Book series by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd, I thought it imperative that I give some attention to the first two books. Published in 2017 and 2018 respectively, Hello Humpback! and One Eagle Soaring focus on their own concepts–these are concept books after all–but still with a Pacific Northwest flavour and honouring First Nations.

From Hello Humpback!, illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Hello Humpback! celebrates a variety of West Coast features in Robert Budd's subtle rhyme and Roy Henry Vickers's illustrations. From animals such as the humpback whale, the salmon, the raven and a myriad of sea creatures such as the steelhead, ratfish and sea urchin, to plant life but also the land and the water, Hello Humpback! is a salute to the Pacific Northwest.

From Hello Humpback!, illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Counting in One Eagle Soaring also becomes an homage to the wildlife of the British Columbia coast. In rhyming text, children can count one eagle, two moose, three orcas, four bees, five sea lions, six bears, seven swans, eight robins, nine frogs, and ten owls. But the text is far more sophisticated, emphasizing the actions undertaken by the wildlife and the development of vocabulary with words like pollinate, wander and serenade.

From One Eagle Soaring, illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Robert Budd's text is as fluid as Roy Henry Vickers's art. One puts forth important ideas in understated rhyme and the other conveys it in rich colours and line that embed readers in a West Coast state of mind and heart. The effect is heartfelt but informative, with the stunning artwork both calming and still emotionally charged, incorporating both the traditional and the contemporary to full effect.

I urge all parents, grandparents and teachers of the very young to share the West Coast environs through Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd's trio of board books. There will be  learning about animals, numbers, colours and more but the discussions about place will teach even more.

The Snow Knows

by Jennifer McGrath

Illustrated by Josée Bisaillon

Nimbus Publishing

978-1-77108-441-3

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

September 2016

I know Jennifer McGrath as the award-winning author Jennifer Kent McGrath of novels Chocolate River Rescue (Nimbus, 2007) and White Cave Escape (Nimbus, 2009) which transported middle-grade readers to perilous situations on the Petitcodiac River and gypsum mines of New Brunswick.  But she’s also delved into children’s picture books, first with Gadzooks the Christmas Goose (Nimbus, 2011) and now with The Snow Knows.  The plotting may be very different between her children’s novels and illustrated books, but the quality of voice and literary momentum are always there.

The text of The Snow Knows is fairly simple, almost repetitive, prose based on what the snow knows about the various animals, both wild and domestic, as they live with, seek food in and move throughout the winter wonderland of a snowy landscape.  There’s a rabbit, an owl, a pheasant, deer, porcupine, weasel, mice, squirrel, fox, partridge, otter, lynx and coyotes who pepper the whiteness outside.  Jennifer McGrath’s words propel the reader through this winter wilderness, as if witness to a quiet and secretive world outside, one in which all is not said, but much is known.

The snow knows..
Where the rabbit goes.
It knows the hush-shush of the owl’s wing.

Josée Bisaillon’s artwork, which I’ve so admired in Eat, Leo! Eat! (Caroline Adderson, Kids Can Press, 2015) and Winter’s Coming (Jane Thornhill, Owlkids, 2014), is a combination of drawings and digital art, collages of richly treed landscapes and snow-covered fields peppered with stylized but easily recognizable animals and the ever present falling snow.  Moreover, Josée Bisaillon cleverly links the animals’ stories by providing an early peek of the each upcoming animal.  For example, on the double-spread of the deer, a porcupine hides in the tree and a small weasel glances out from behind a log, while the lynx slinks away from the hiding partridge and the sliding otter pages. The story comes full circle from the winter outside a red-tiled house, to the forest and fields, and back to the home from which two creatures exit to share in the snow too.

From The Snow Knows 

by Jennifer McGrath,

 illus. by Josée Bisaillon

We may not have snow now but we will soon enough, and all these creatures will be finding a way to survive and perhaps enjoy its abundance.  Take a slow, lyrical walk through it with The Snow Knows’ Canadian menagerie to appreciate its complex interrelationships and to enjoy Jennifer McGrath and Josée Bisaillon’s delightful frolic through the snow.

From The Snow Know

 by Jennifer McGrath,

 illus. by Josée Bisaillon

Deviants (The Dust Chronicles, Book One)

by Maureen McGowan

Amazon Children's Publishing

978-1-6121-83671

312 pp.

Ages 12+

2012

Trust is a big issue in any relationship: bosses and employees, husbands and wives, friends, parents and children, leaders and citizens, and even in ourselves.  So much of our society requires some element of trust in order function without stumbling into anarchy.  But how trust is earned or given is not necessarily obvious.  For that matter, what does it take for trust to be lost or questioned? 

In the dystopian world in which sixteen-year-old Glory currently resides with her thirteen-year-old brother Drake, her trust lies in the rhetoric (e.g., Haven Equals Safety) of Management who rule over Haven, the domed community protected from the outside world of dust and cannibalistic Shredders.  Glory also trusts in her knowledge that her father was a Deviant who killed her mother three years ago and injured Drake, leaving him a paraplegic.  Her father may have been taken by the Comps (Compliance Officers) and publicly expunged to the outside but Glory has been left to protect Drake, who would be considered a Parasite if Management knew of his existence.  With only her best friend Jayma knowing about her brother, Glory is constantly vigilant about keeping him a secret, especially now that he is displaying his own Deviance, a scale-like armour that covers his torso when stressed.  For that matter, Glory realizes that she too is a Deviant, able to focus her strong emotions to inflict pain.  Luckily she is able to use this "curse" to kill the rats she needs to supplement her rations to feed Drake.

But two developments occur that have Glory questioning who and what to trust.  Eighteen-year-old Cal, who graduated from GT (General Training) at the top of his class and is recruited to join the Jecs (Junior Ethics Committee) for the opportunity to become a Compliance Officer in Training, asks Glory to apply for an official dating license with him.  Luckily, Glory really likes Cal, although she does worry that the strong feelings she has for him could pose a threat to him.  And when he shares with her that he knows of Drake's existence, she is especially concerned for Drake's safety.  Secondly, a young man named Burn, whose strong healthy physique is in contrast to that of most inhabitants of Haven, tells her that her father is alive and that Burn has been instructed to get her and Drake to safety.

What follows is an anxiety-wrought, perilous venture that has Glory questioning her firmly-entrenched beliefs and emotions, while continuing to focus on protecting her younger brother.  Sadly, in their dystopian world of overcrowding, rationed food, televised expungings, violent Shredders and a gun-toting military-like community, it's hard to believe Glory can find anything worthy to motivate survival.  But Maureen McGowan ensures that there is some brightness amidst the worlds of Deviants.

Most readers will find similarities between popular dystopian novels such as Blood Red Road (Moira Young, Doubleday Canada, 2011) and The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins, Scholastic, 2008) but all fictional dystopian societies, including those of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World emphasize totalitarian governments and the dehumanization of the masses.  But Glory and Drake's beliefs about the murder of their mother takes Deviants from an exposé of an undesirable society to a story about a family with a secret lodged in destruction, love and redemption.  A story in which trust can be superfluous and imperative, depending on ... everything and anything.  But isn't that how trust works?  

And it's with this trust issue that Maureen McGowan ends Deviants, the first book of The Dust Chronicles, leaving the reader questioning Glory's shift in allegiances, both real and virtual, and apprehensive about her newest venture.  As with any great novel, Deviants has trapped the reader in a world in which gratification is only as near as the sequel.  Let's hope dust isn't allowed to settle before Maureen McGowan offers up Book Two of The Dust Chronicles.