Most picture books are thirty-two pages in length but packing a story that includes escape from war, near starvation, separation from family, life in a refugee camp, and troubles with gangs into those few pages is an accomplishment. The Banana-Leaf Ball’s story has all of that and even reconciliation and hope for the future.
From The Banana-Leaf Ball
by Katie Smith Milway
illus. by Shane W. Evans
When Deo Rukundo and his family are driven from their farm by war in Burundi, the child becomes separated from them. Rescued by a fisherman, Deo is taken to Lukole, a refugee camp in Tanzania. The camp which is not dissimilar from a village with a marketplace and school also has limited resources like water and food and the presence of gangs. Deo tries to avoid Remy, a gang leader, who steals and bullies but especially after Remy steals some of Deo’s carefully worked banana twine for the banana-leaf ball he makes and hides away. When a man arrives with a coveted leather soccer ball and puts the teams into Shirts and Skins to encourage a game, Deo is made a captain and Remy is on his team. With a little teamwork and a lot of encouragement, all the boys, Deo and Remy included, are able to put away their differences and learn a bit about playing soccer, making banana-leaf balls, and becoming friends.
From The Banana-Leaf Ball
by Katie Smith Milway
illus. by Shane W. Evans
The Banana-Leaf Ball is Kid Can Press’ newest addition to its CitizenKid series of books and Katie Smith Milway’s fourth book in the series. Like its predecessors, it’s a story of empowerment that comes from dire circumstances but told in terms of the children who rise above. Though most young readers will have no first-hand knowledge of being driven out of their homes by war and separated from family, as well as living in a refugee camp, many will understand the conflict with a peer that pervades daily existence. The message that play and sport can override that conflict and provide the basis for inclusiveness is a positive one that children the world over need to know. To further that message, The Banana-Leaf Ball includes notes about the real Deo and an amazing section called “How Kids are Learning to Trust and Include Others” which includes links to relevant organizations and descriptions of games to foster working together.
From The Banana-Leaf Ball
by Katie Smith Milway
illus. by Shane W. Evans
Award-winning American illustrator Shane W. Evans (Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom, We March, and The Way a Door Closes) who primarily works in pen and ink and oils with computer lends a simple power to the story. The illustrations are weighty but energetic with the strife of escape and bustle of life in a refugee camp. Colour and shape and even size help convey Deo’s situation, dark and shadowy when escaping and isolated, while bright and larger, coming to life when playing soccer.
Through words and art, The Banana-Leaf Ball continues to fulfil CitizenKid’s mandate of inspiring global citizenship but, by basing it on a true story, it also demonstrates the potential for good to come from bad and the importance of empathy, teamwork and resilience to further that good.
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Check out Kids Can Press' book trailer for this new book:
"...just cuz we share blood, doesn't make us brothers." (pg. 208)
Brothers are born and brothers are made through commonalities in purpose and temperament. But does one kind of brotherhood surpass the other? How do you weigh what one brother means to you against another? These are the questions being asked throughout Colleen Nelson's new work of young adult fiction as two fifteen-year-old boys steer through life, amidst the poverty and violence of a tenuous world and one of apparent opportunity for better.
Jakub Kaminsky admits that he has a sad little life. His parents emigrated from Poland for a better life before his mother died giving birth to him. An injury at work left his devout father with a mangled leg and unable to work. Now the two live in a rooming house on the West Side and attend and volunteer at St. Mary's, the parish of Father Dominic. Jakub works hard at school and gets good grades, but he's truly alive when he's tagging as Morf.
Lincoln Bear may live with his mother and father and younger brother Dustin, for whom he tries to be an attentive big brother, but his home life is hardly comfortable, emotionally or financially. When 21-year-old brother Henry returns from eighteen months in prison and promptly reestablishes his connection to the Red Bloodz gang, Lincoln is pulled in, hopeful of reconnecting with his brother and making a better life for himself. But restoring that relationship entails Lincoln becoming involved in jacking cars for a chop shop the gang runs which leads to more dangerous and illegal activities.
Jakub knows Henry is using Lincoln but he has no defence when he himself is involved in illegal tagging, especially after Lincoln takes the fall when they are almost caught by the police. With Jakub starting as a bursary student at the prestigious St. Bart's school, and Lincoln falling deeper under the thumb of his violent brother, it becomes evident that the friendship between the two teens is at risk.
The survival of their friendship ends up being the least of their worries, though it is a driving force, when Lincoln becomes involved in a murder, and Jakub finds a very public but dangerous way of revealing the perpetrators. Blood Brothers culminates with a violent struggle between brothers of different kinds and very real consequences for all involved in desperate ventures.
"It's too late, I want to tell her. It's like when water gets sucked down a drain. Stuffing a finger in to stop it won't do any good. The water still slips away." (pg.161)
Colleen Nelson leaves no time or breath of respite for the reader who is thrown from one harrowing situation to another, as both Jakub and Lincoln attempt to create lives that matter for themselves. Yet, with all the poor choices the two make–and there are many–they are guided by a desire to be part of something good whether it be family, friendship, church or school. They want to be persons of consequence, because of their art or their presence or their actions. They want what everyone wants: to matter. Whether that happens depends on where you start and where you go and all the steps you take in between. For Jakub and Lincoln, whose voices Colleen Nelson asserts both honestly and compassionately through those strides and missteps, it's their brotherhood that walks with them, leaving its own footprints.
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Be sure to check out Dundurn's book trailer for Blood Brothers at https://youtu.be/k026kfO89L4.
Close as brothers, Jakub’s and Lincoln’s lives diverge when Jakub gets a private school scholarship and Lincoln is lured into a gang.
Fifteen-year-old Jakub Kaminsky is the son of Polish immigrants, a good Catholic boy, and a graffiti artist. While his father sleeps, Jakub and his best friend, Lincoln, sneak out with spray paint to make their mark as Morf and Skar.
When Jakub gets a scholarship to an elite private school, he knows it’s his chance for a better life. But it means leaving Lincoln and the neighbourhood he calls home.
While Jakub’s future is looking bright, Lincoln’s gets shady as he is lured into his brother’s gang. Jakub watches helplessly as Lincoln gets pulled deeper into the violent world of the Red Bloodz. The Red Bloodz find out Jakub knows more than he should about a murder and want him silenced — for good. Lincoln has to either save his friend, or embrace life as one of the Red Bloodz.
If you haven't read Michael F. Stewart's Assured Destruction (2013), reviewed here, and Script Kiddie (2013), its sequel (reviewed here), then don't read this review. Get Books 1 and 2 in the Assured Destruction series first. You won't be disappointed and you'll enjoy Book 3 all the more.
When Script Kiddie ended, tech savvy Janus had saved her classmate and friend Hannah from attempting to kill an online predator, and sustained enough injuries–including a broken ankle and bruised ribs–to slow her down a bit. But only a bit because she's still got a lot to do. If she doesn't want to lose her semester, she must attend school every day and on time. With mom hospitalized and undergoing electric shock therapy, Janus feels like she must take on more of the business responsibilities. The mortgage on the business, Assured Destruction, is still in jeopardy and Janus is working on ways to make more money, including billeting ten international students (though she's got nothing ready for them, only space in their industrial park business/home). She also has a plan to make the company more profitable by seeking out some of the clients that had worked with her dad before he disappeared several years earlier, although her mom's boyfriend, Peter, thinks she shouldn't be doing this. Her visits to these clients, including AAA Ltd. and A ZaZa Pizza, leave her more confused. They don't have the number of computers that would make them customers of Assured Destruction; in fact, she's even warned away by a pony-tailed man she sees at several locations. Janus is quick to recognize that these clients may not provide the business they need but she's sure they may be helpful in finding her father. But her investigations hit too close to home, and her determination to learn the truth ends up putting her life and the business in jeopardy. While pursuing the mystery of her father's disappearance and his dealings with these special "customers", Janus again gets involved with the hackers online at Darkslinger to find a solution to something the media is calling the Zombie Worm, a malware program that is affecting the school server, her home computers, and businesses, traffic lights, etc. But Janus doesn't realize that, as they say, when you play with fire, sometimes you get burned. And when she's trying to do everything-school, business, heal, friends, boyfriend, community service, investigate her father, liaise with the police-she gets burned really badly, metaphorically, though almost physically too. Michael F. Stewart has developed Janus into a character who can see beyond the moment and beyond the computer, although this is something that is difficult for her. She is used to taking care of everything, not relying on anyone or anything. Her physical injuries at the end of Script Kiddie have required her to get help, whether she wants it or not. (Driving the van with hand controls is an especially funny scene.) Too soon her mental health is in jeopardy as well. Janus needed to know, really know, that she didn't have to take on the world by herself. Many of us don't like asking for help, assuming that it shows weakness. Wrong. The weakness is in not asking, especially when we know many hands make light work. Between her friends and others watching out for her, Janus has a lot of support. By continually going after things herself, she negates what they mean to her. Not deliberately, but she still does. Not until she is able to accept help do things start to turn around for her and Assured Destruction. Assured Destruction with Zombies may have an edge-of-your-seat adventure with several mysteries to solve and a whodunit that will surprise you but it's Janus' character that took centre stage for me, finally becoming a person with whom I could empathize. Her computer smarts are far beyond any that I will ever know, though I'm sure a few young readers will know exactly what she's doing always, but those are her skills and strengths. Showing her weaknesses and working with them, rather than through them, has made Janus stronger and a more likeable character. And I'm reassured, after reading Assured Destruction with Zombies, that nothing can destroy her. Janus may become damaged but she's an invincible protagonist who could take on the world, cyberspace and all.
Anticipation for Orca's upcoming Seven The Series has been growing since first announced earlier in the year and its enticing book trailer released in February. If Ink Me, just one of the seven books set for simultaneous release on October 10, 2012, is any indicator, all young readers will be hooked instantly.
Bunny (a.k.a. Bernard) is just one of seven grandsons who, upon the death of their grandfather, receive a letter and instructions about a task to perform. At 15, Bunny is the youngest of the grandsons but he may be the most challenged, living with a mental disability. Regardless, Bunny is a very astute young man, understanding far more than many, even if Bunny believes that,
"they all reddy no Im a dummy." (pg. 3)
And Ink Me is all about how people, places, objects, situations - everything - are perceived and how these perceptions, right or wrong or misunderstood, affect everything else. Bunny's task is to go to a particular tattoo parlour where they have been instructed to give him a specific tattoo. The tattoo of the number 15 with a candle doesn't strike Bunny as anything special or too unusual; after all, he turned 15 on his most recent birthday. But, the reader soon realizes, even if Bunny does not, that the tattoo that he sports indicates that he is part of the 15 Street gang and that he has made one kill. When Bunny defends a skinny gang member, Jaden, from a beating by a member of a rival gang, the Angels, he is introduced to other members of 15 at the gym where they hang out. Being white, Bunny is an oddity within the gang but his tattoo and surprising knowledge, albeit naively, of gang members with whom 15 is making a deal, gives him some credibility. For the first time, Bunny is enjoying the camaraderie of friends, particularly Jaden. Moreover, Morgan, a former pro fighter who now runs the gym, recognizes that Bunny could be a great fighter, with his fast reflexes and the moves his grandfather had taught him, and Morgan starts training him. Although enjoying the benefits of his new friendships, Bunny also must withstand the negatives associated with being a part of 15, though he does not always recognize these drawbacks as such. Even after being hauled away with the gang by the police and interrogated about "the deal" and later chased and shot at by a rival gang, Bunny continues to see everything as a new experience and himself under the care of his friends. The line between the good guys and the bad guys continues to get blurred for Bunny as the deal between 15 and two other gangs is brokered. Richard Scrimger, one of my favourite Canadian authors, is brilliant at telling a story without any lessons creeping in to weigh down the plot; that is, until the last few pages of the book are turned. Readers will be too engrossed in the upshot of Bunny's honesty and incomprehension to realize that Ink Me exposes the vulnerability of perceptions to misinterpretation. Whether it be the tattoo that marks Bunny as a gang member, or Jaden acting one way but in reality being someone else, or how guns are bad except when they're useful, these matters are all vulnerable to misperception. Even Bunny's mom, a philosophy professor, has a hard time believing what Bunny tells her, instead reading situations as she chooses or as she is accustomed. Though writing as Bunny must have been an arduous task for Richard Scrimger, as the text is so laden with spelling and grammatical mistakes, the author provides a real example of the dangers of "misreading." I had to remind myself constantly that "no" in Bunny's text is "know" for me, and that I had to read carefully in order that I not let my prejudices alter the text's meaning. Ink Me is a brilliant story, less about gangs and tattoos than about our relationships with others and the roles misunderstanding and perspective play in securing or destroying the integrity of those connections.
