I Lost a Day

Written and illustrated by Briana Corr Scott

Nimbus Publishing

978-1-77471-363-1

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

April 2025 

 

For many of us, losing a day is a negative event. It means that we lost 24 hours in which we could have accomplished something or been more present for others or ourselves or enjoyed life. It could be losing it to strong feelings or procrastination, to futility, defeat or discombobulation. But Briana Corr Scott shows children that the loss of a day can bring positives of calm, greater clarity, effectiveness, and more.

From I Lost a Day, written and illustrated by Briana Corr Scott

In rhyming verse, Briana Corr Scott gets into the heads and hearts of children as they are overcome with anger or rage or sadness.

When my head holds a storm

That blocks out the light

 

When my hands are hard fists

That are ready to fight...

When those times come, each finds a way to cope, whether it be hiding under their sheets, listening to the rain, reading, sketching, playing music, running, or just being outdoors. Everyone is different but they choose strategies that work for them to help be distracted from the anger or the sadness or to help it dissipate. 

I smell the cool earth

As the wind moves the leaves

 

A piece of my sadness

Floats away on the breeze. 

From I Lost a Day, written and illustrated by Briana Corr Scott

The strategy that touched me the most was the untangling of a ball of yarn as it is a metaphor for the undoing of a lost day. After all, a lost day is but one day among many.

Yarn that is tangled

Can always be wound...

 

In the days that I lost

It was me that I found.

The title of I Lost a Day caught me off-guard with the discouraging tone I thought it set for the book. It is but a title. That title and the first illustrations of the book are just a preamble to explain what children can do to deal with big feelings of anger and depression, irritability and anxiety. It sets up the story to be one of enlightenment, in other words one of learning to see differently and to feel the lightness that comes of self-care. Briana Corr Scott, whose book While You Were Sleeping I reviewed in 2023, has a delicacy to her storytelling and her artwork. Her author's note details a personal connection to the story of I Lost a Day–in addition to suggestions for other activities to help cope with those lost days–and I believe that this connection is what has helped her be sensitive and comprehensive in the strategies she recommends to children to try.

From I Lost a Day, written and illustrated by Briana Corr Scott

That awareness of the enormity of those feelings and that potential ways in which they may be addressed and successfully waived come through in Briana Corr Scott's illustrations. She uses gouache and watercolour to create artwork that portrays those overwhelming feelings that can cause a loss of days, days of raging storms and devastating anguish. These images are powerful in their darkness and their influence to dominate. But then Briana Corr Scott shows children finding the stillness in rain and reading and the quiet in running and drawing, and recovering themselves. 

The sadness can't catch me

I'll pass it right by

 

My body feels lighter

When I sit and sigh.

This is not a how-to book to defeat depression or anger. It is however a story that appreciates how time may be lost to feelings that overwhelm and offers possibilities for coping with no judgment and no obligation to conform or control. Briana Corr Scott, instead, shows kindness and understanding with the hope that we might find ways to care for our mental health that work for us.

Happenstance

Written by Debra Loughead

BWL Publishing

978-0-228632696

284 pp.

Ages 12+

January 2025 

 

What would bring a teen from a wealthy family with both parents and a younger brother and, until recently, a nanny/housekeeper together with a girl who lives with her struggling mom who left her abusive husband, can't hold down a job and now dates incessantly looking for a new man? A ring, a moonstone ring. One loses it, one finds it. It's all happenstance.

 

Happenstance is told in the alternating voices of Sophie and Tara. Sophie has a dad who is a bank VP and is always travelling while her mom spends tons of money, often on new age stuff. Her mom has been hospitalized previously for depression and her brother Jonah deals with anxiety. Now that Dhanu, their nanny/housekeeper, has returned to Sri Lanka, their household seems unsettled. It feels even worse when the moonstone ring Dhanu had given Sophie's mom goes missing when Sophie borrows it.

 

That very ring is found by Tara, a Grade 10 student who loves acting and is in the school's production of "Our Town" though only as an understudy to the lead role. At home, her mom had tried repeatedly to leave Tara's disreputable dad but finally made it permanent in the past year. Still Mom can't keep a job and is always going on dates with guys she meets on dating apps, hopeful of meeting the right one. Though Tara's friend Priya tells her to look for the owner of the ring, Tara is reluctant to give up something so mesmerizing, especially after her mother wins $75,000 and Tara feels like the ring had something to do with their change of luck.

 

As Tara contemplates returning the ring or not, and Sophie wonders whether to look for it or not–both girls are grappling with family dynamics that leave them resentful and confused–their lives are taking odd turns, particularly with their best friends and with a new guy, Silas. He's the lead in Tara's school play and he's Sophie's new neighbour. But who will catch his eye?

 

Debra Loughead, who has previously published multiple books as Deb Loughead including The Secrets We Keep, Bright Shining Moment and The Snowball Effect, looks at two girls and how different they may be and yet how similar too. No one would ever see the similarities, but the moonstone ring allows their lives to become parallel and flipped to some degree. The superstitions tied to that ring may or may not be legit. The coincidences that occur may be just that: accidental and unrelated. But it offers an opportunity to see that lives are not all unfortunate or all lucky. It's a question of perspective. When Sophie and Tara ultimately meet, and connect with Silas, the teens see what they have in common even among the distinctions of their lives. Their new journeys with their families, their friends, and each other may have been prompted by a moonstone, a gem that signifies new beginnings, but how those new beginnings manifest is all up to those kids. Debra Loughead gives them the character to determine the nature of those new beginnings.

 

I don't know if that moonstone ring had any impact on these teens. After all, their lives are constantly in flux with friends, family, school, career choices, and more. But Debra Loughead makes us believe that things can happen sometimes by chance and sometimes by design and it's up to us to work with what we're given and make choices that are right for more than just ourselves.

It's My Brain!

Written and illustrated by Elise Gravel

North Winds Press (Scholastic Canada)

978-1-0397-1009-2

40 pp.

Ages 6-9

October 2024

 

From the brilliant brain that first brought us lessons about our bodies and how they work comes a fabulous follow-up about the control centre of those bodies. Elise Gravel, known for the quirkiness of her amorphous creatures in books such as It's My Body!, Everybody!, and Killer Underwear Invasion, has brought them back to teach young readers about the brain and its functions. Perfect for our youngest readers who are just learning the basics of the human body, It's My Brain! takes an in-depth but comical look at the brain and what it does for us.

From It's My Brain!, written and illustrated by Elise Gravel

From an introduction in which the brain is described as "big, jellyfish, squishy wods of chewing gum," It's My Brain! covers the basics of the brain's form and function. The text describes how information is collected through our senses, processed and responded upon. It talks of the learning that has to happen for babies. Most importantly, it talks about how, though our brains are essentially the same in what they do, they can work differently.

From It's My Brain!, written and illustrated by Elise Gravel

The spreads that discuss how we learn differently and at different rates are important ones. Readers will undoubtedly appreciate that some people learn through independent work while others prefer socializing to help them learn. Some learn better through play and activity, whereas others learn best through quiet observation. This acknowledgement of the diversity of brains and the positive message to respect these differences are a hallmark of so many of Elise Gravel's illustrated non-fiction books and one that elevates the lessons within from just content to a model of STEM teaching for young children.

From It's My Brain!, written and illustrated by Elise Gravel

But beyond lessons about the human body and how it works, Elise Gravel reminds us that sometimes the brain is challenged and struggles, and that talking to a trusted person, whether it be a parent or teacher, friend or doctor, "can help our brains feel better."

From It's My Brain!, written and illustrated by Elise Gravel

Young kids need to learn about body parts and what they do but It's My Brain! takes anatomy lessons from form and function to ones of sensitivity and appreciation. As always, everyone is included in It's My Brain! whether they be blobs of turquoise, red or gold. It doesn't matter whether they have ears or not, or pickle-shaped bodies or use a wheelchair; they all have brains that work for them and so deserve care.

 

Elise Gravel's colour palette and unique creatures are her trademark and will always get readers excited for a new lesson or story that reminds us that we are human and how to be our best selves. By making connections for kids between what their brains do to help them be and do, Elise Gravel boosts learning about a squishy mass to an appreciation of wonder for the human body and the diversity of its form.

 

• • • • • • •

 

Scholastic Canada provides activities like connect the dots and more for It's My Brain! as well as other Elise Gravel books at https://www.scholastic.ca/books/app/webroot/elise-gravel/.

 

• • • • • • • 

Meet Clara Hughes (Scholastic Canada Biography)

Written by Elizabeth MacLeod

Illustrated by Mike Deas

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-9772-4

32 pp.

Ages 6-10

January 2023

 

Just out this week is Meet Clara Hughes, the newest addition to Elizabeth MacLeod and Mike Deas's fabulous illustrated book series, Scholastic Canada Biography. They've covered important historical and contemporary figures in Canada, including athletes like Tom Longboat and Willie O'Ree–see the listing below for those titles–who dealt with issues of racism and discrimination. But, by showcasing a contemporary athlete who has dealt with mental health and turned that into advocacy for others, Elizabeth MacLeod and Mike Deas have championed Clara Hughes as much for her athleticism as her good work.

Born in 1972 in Winnipeg, Clara Hughes loved to read, do crafts, cook, ride her bike, and do sports like hockey and ringette. But when things got tough at home, with her parents arguing, Clara acted out, by shoplifting, partying, and staying out all night. Things changed after seeing Gaétan Boucher speed skate at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Taking up speed skating changed everything for Clara, focusing her energy on positive things, working hard, and having fun. As part of her training, she also cycled, and when the province of Manitoba encouraged more women to try that sport, Clara switched, eventually making Canada's cycling team for the 1996 Olympics, and then medalling.

From Meet Clara Hughes, written by Elizabeth MacLeod, illus. by Mike Deas

Still, Clara experienced depression. After she was able to ask for help and find ways to help her cope with her depression, she challenged herself to return to speed skating. By focusing on doing her best and the joy of her pursuits rather than winning, she achieved great success in her sports, becoming the only Canadian who has ever won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympics.

But Clara Hughes's successes have reached beyond the Olympics and the podia. Her work with Right to Play, an organization that helps kids in conflict zones and poverty learn important life skills through sports, and her mental health awareness advocacy work that includes Bell Canada's Let's Talk campaign have extended her impact beyond her athleticism and into the realm of public service, touching many in ways we might not even understand.

From Meet Clara Hughes, written by Elizabeth MacLeod, illus. by Mike Deas

I'm so delighted that Elizabeth MacLeod chose to showcase Clara Hughes in this latest book of Scholastic Canada Biography. Elizabeth MacLeod has always told the stories of exemplary persons (see the list below) who've achieved much, though sometimes inconspicuously during their lifetimes. They come from a variety of backgrounds, whether in the fields of science, business, the arts, or sports, but their achievements have led them to greater societal impacts than may have been recognized at the time. For many, Clara Hughes is a successful speed skater and cyclist, achieving gold, silver, and bronze medals at multiple Olympics. (In fact, she's the only Olympian to win multiple medals in both winter and summer sports.) But her advocacy work, particularly with regards to raising awareness about mental health, must be recognized as significant, taking discussions about mental illness from inner thoughts and doctors' offices to public forums and educational campaigns. By telling Clara Hughes's story of becoming a successful athlete alongside her challenges with depression and efforts to cope with it, Elizabeth MacLeod has made Clara Hughes more real.

From Meet Clara Hughes, written by Elizabeth MacLeod, illus. by Mike Deas

Because of the complexity of Mike Deas's art, using digital tools with watercolour and gouache paints as well as ink, the illustrations of the Scholastic Canada Biography series always set the right tone. While emphasizing the biographical, showing the Clara Hughes that we all recognize from her Olympic events like carrying the flag at the 2010 Winter Olympics or raising the Canadian flag after a winning race, Mike Deas gives us more than just that which could have been seen in photographs. We also see her hanging out with other troubled teens in a parking lot, overwhelmed by a black cloud of depression as she speaks to her doctor, and finding solace in nature with her partner Peter Guzman. Mike Deas helps us see the child, the athlete, and the advocate, through all her triumphs and her challenges. 

 

For many, Meet Clara Hughes will give them a new perspective on an athlete whose prowess in cycling and speed skating are just a fraction of her achievements. By going beyond the Olympic medals and showing us how Clara got to be the outstanding athlete and how her personal and sports challenges led her to further accomplishments in mental health education and awareness, Elizabeth MacLeod and Mike Deas have given us the true and complete Clara Hughes.

 

 

 • • • • • • •

Scholastic Canada Biography (to date)

Meet Viola Desmond (2018)
Meet Chris Hadfield (2018)
Meet Tom Longboat (2019)
Meet Elsie MacGill (2019)
Meet Willie O'Ree (2020)
Meet Terry Fox (2020)
Meet Thérèse Casgrain (2021)
Meet David Suzuki (2021)
Meet Mary Ann Shadd (2022)
Meet J. Armand Bombardier (2022)
Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie (2023)

Meet Clara Hughes (2024)

White Lies

Written by Sara de Waard

DCB

978-1-77086-649-2

224 pp.

Ages 13+

May 2022

Birthdays should be joyful celebrations, especially for young people. I know that lots have elaborate events (perhaps sometimes too extravagant) but for some the mere recognition of the day as auspicious would be enough. Sadly, for 15-year-old Missy Bell, her last three birthdays have been tortuous and her sixteenth is almost upon her and she has no reason to expect any different. Ever since the death of her younger brother Jeremy when she turned 13, Missy's special day has been marked by her parents behaving badly through their grief and Missy dealing with the fallout on top of her own loss and guilt. In fact, most of the time, they don't even recognize her needs, with her father Tim, whom she refers to alternately as Trick or Treat, wallowing in alcohol and other illegal substances, and her mother Susanna now in prison and unable to see beyond herself.  

An untethered Missy has found refuge at the vintage toy store of Ren Lin, where she organizes and cleans voluntarily for multiple hours most days of the week. Even though Ren's perfect daughter Valkyrie doesn't trust Missy and is often rude to her, the store is a far better choice than going home to a house with little, if any, food, and a father often drunk or high on the couch hurling abuse at her. By keeping the routine of working at the store, seeing her psychiatrist Dr. Tandalay every Monday, visiting her mother the first Wednesday of the month, and going to school, Missy is keeping it together. For now. 

But two new people enter her life and offer her something she's rarely experienced. First, there's the new custodian, Miss Maalouf, who extends supportive kindnesses to Missy. And then there's classmate Luke Geurtin, who also visits a mother at the penitentiary. Missy and Luke form an unorthodox relationship that is both supportive and hostile, as the two damaged teens try to navigate feckless parents, poverty and abuse, and systems purported to offer support. Only time will tell whether they can feel beyond their traumas and circumstances.

 

Sara de Waard, an author and screenwriter of Métis descent, has delved into numerous issues in White Lies, giving us a tough story about childhoods, or at least teen years, saturated with misery and discouragement. It's about young people not living their best lives because those who should be there for them aren't and, in fact, work against them, mistreating them with neglect or emotional abuse, and sometimes even physical harm. Those who should love them, their parents, give them very little but strangers like Miss Maalouf, Ren and even Missy and Luke for the other step up, offering what they can. But Missy and Luke are working at a deficit, trying to survive and, knowing that their parents are the only ones they have, make do. And still they persevere.

The soft ceiling tiles soften the profanities of the inmates, but can't silence them. The four-letter words puff from the ladies' mouths like rings of fire, blazing through the massive concrete gathering space. But they fall on my deaf ears. I'm used to it. Nothing shocks me now. I may look like china in a bull's shop, but I'm a matador of life's crap.  (pg. 22)

Thankfully, without solving all of Missy and Luke's problems, Sara de Waard has given them hope, in each other and in others–though perhaps not their parents–that perhaps a little kindness will help lift them out of difficult circumstances or at least sideways so they can avoid harm.

I'm Good and Other Lies

Written by Bev Katz Rosenbaum

DCB

978-1-77086-632-4

211 pp.

Ages 13+

September 2021 

 

It doesn't take long for me to start feeling a constant pit of dread in my stomach. The future... (pg. 108) 

 

Seventeen-year-old Kelsey Kendler has every right to be anxious about her life. If the recent past is any indication, things are not heading in the right direction. And the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't even hit yet. There will be lots more to set her off kilter and how she manages is only partly up to her. Parents, friends, school, work and social media will all have a hand in taking her down or bringing her up.

Kelsey and her parents Hannah and Mark have just moved from fashionable and wealthy Rosedale to transitional Parkdale because of Kelsey's celebrity comedian mom's fall from grace. Perennially stoned, drunk or abusing her pain meds, Hannah Kendler, a former participant on "Those Crazy Comics" TV show, is now unemployable and a raging, confused mess. Sadly, Kelsey's dad is less than helpful, either arguing with his wife or avoiding the household altogether. Not surprisingly, Kelsey vows to make some meaningful connections outside of their rat-infested house. There's Molly, a classmate whose perfect family doesn't prepare her for meeting the out-of-control Hannah, and crush Luca, which whom Kelsey begins a textlashionship. But, best of all, Kelsey gets a part-time job at an ice-cream place called Soft Spot. There she meets Chelsea, Veer, Quinn, Ruby, and Lee in addition to Kira, the owner's stoned niece and ineffective manager. Except for the rats in the house, her sleep paralysis that turns her nights into terrors, her warring and oblivious parents, and missing her only friend from before, Makayla, now in LA, things are stable. Then the pandemic hits.

They'd all been hearing about the virus. Makayla's mom, an actress, gets sick, as do others on her film set, and Kelsey worries that her mom's coughing could be it too. But when school is cancelled after spring break and then returns in some mishmash of independent learning and then virtual lessons, and Soft Spot is closed, and she's stuck at home with her worthless parents, Kelsey is left untethered. She may be saying she's fine but dealing with a tenuous support system and mental health during the trauma of a pandemic with lockdowns is just a lie.

We all know how difficult living through this pandemic has been but it's more than just difficult for some. For a teen, when life is in flux as they transition from dependence to independence, it's even more challenging. And for someone like Kelsey, whose home life is painful, she has no respite from the stress. Couple that with sleep paralysis that pervades her nights, this girl has trauma upon trauma with which to deal. I'm surprised she's as sane as she is. Maybe that's the hope that Bev Katz Rosenbaum has written into her story, reassuring her readers that as crappy as things are, there are glimmers of normalcy and even brightness that can help pull you through and out. Whether it's a socially-distanced get-together, texting with a new friend, connecting with a psychologist or being honest about what you're going through, there is hope even while "learning to accept uncertainty" (pg. 182). I'm Good and Other Lies is a powerfully authentic account of a teen living with a multitude of challenges, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sometimes Kelsey accepts the challenge and puts it down and sometimes she buckles, but it is always real and enlightening. With I'm Good and Other Lies, Bev Katz Rosenbaum has told us a story of not being fine but finding a way to make it so.

• • • • • • •

If you would like to hear author Bev Katz Rosenbaum talk about I'm Good and Other Lies, register for Future Shock (and Future Hope), a webinar with authors Wesley King and Eric Walters.

Date:  Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Time:  11 AM-12 PM, 1-2 PM

Registration costs:  School ($150), Class ($65), Home ($10)

Details:  https://www.storyninjawritingclasses.com/special-events

Sunny Days Inside and Other Stories

Written by Caroline Adderson
Groundwood Books
978-1-77306-572-4
176 pp.
Ages 8-12
August 2021

 

The world may be living under the shadow of the same pandemic but our stories are so different. In Sunny Days Inside and Other Stories, author Caroline Adderson takes us into one community, that of a Vancouver low-rise apartment building, and shares the stories of its residents from the eyes of its youth.

Sunny Days Inside relates the story of Danila's family who were finally going on a plane holiday to Días de Sol (Sunny Days) resort in Baja, Mexico, courtesy of her grandmother. Because of the disparity in wealth between their family and her mother's sister, a woman who travels extensively, the holiday becomes a source of conflict, with the children's aunt heading out on a cruise days before they leave. Then the pandemic hits. Danila's family makes their own indoor holiday but it's tinged with sorrow and guilt when her aunt gets COVID-19 on the ship.

Brothers Alek and Ivan decide they're going to become cave men, after all the barbershops close, in the story How to Be a Cave Family. All the strategies that Palaeolithic beings used to survive, from being afraid of everybody, to hunting and gathering and developing their own language, become their guide to getting through the pandemic.

In Reo and Juliet, Grade 7 peers from apartments 3D and 4B become friends across their balconies as Reo, the athlete, struggles with how to train and Juliet works at overcoming her shyness.

In the following four stories–I Like Your Tie, The Entrepreneur's Bible, The Two Harriets, and The Incredible Escaping Bra Man–young people are challenged with parents who are front-line workers, or those who have lost their jobs or closed businesses, or those impacted by illness, including cancer and anxiety. The kids make new friends, become spies and save a resident's life, and face their own fears about the virus, their families and friends, and their new realities. And it's all while adhering to lockdowns and pre-vaccine protocols.

In the final story, Imagine, the young residents and one special one come together in a socially-distanced and rebellious act that brings them together safely and outside.

Caroline Adderson has always written powerful stories (e.g., Very Serious Children, 2007; Middle of Nowhere, 2012; Norman, Speak!, 2014), though with a smidgen of humour that never distracts from serious issues like abandonment, parenting, foster care, and now COVID-19. Told from a variety of perspectives, the pandemic is viewed as an adventure, a source of fear and anxiety, an opportunity, or even a challenge. We've got kids who worry about their parents, who become superheroes, and those who gain perspective on their pre-pandemic lives. They are all different, as are their stories, but somehow young readers will recognize every one them and their issues, sure to see themselves within. These middle-graders are shy and athletic, Deaf and hearing, silly and serious, anxious and confident. Whether annoyed with a younger or older sibling, cooperating with working or non-working parents, cheering the lack of haircuts, or finding new ways to communicate without congregating, these kids are living through this pandemic. In fact, they're staring it in the face, mask securely on and two metres apart, and reclaiming their lives, albeit new configurations of them.

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.

 

• • • • • • •

What's Up, Maloo?

Written and illustrated by Geneviève Godbout

Tundra Books

978-0-7352-6664-3

40 pp.

Ages 3-7

January 2020

Tackling issues of mental health in picture books requires a special touch. You can be neither silly about it nor aggressive while still getting the message out that there is help. Geneviève Godbout's text and art, always thoughtful and serene in soft pastels and coloured pencils, meets the challenge with style and compassion.

From What's Up, Maloo? by Geneviève Godhout

When kangaroo Maloo is happy and hopping, she is on top of the world. Life is a bed of roses, pink ones in fact. But when she's not, the hop goes out of her and a grey cloud envelopes her thinking. She walks to her friends who all ask, "What's up, Maloo?" and all she knows is that she's not hopping. There's the baking wombat, the swimming crocodile, and the koala, all who want to help. They attempt to lull her into play with balls in the water, and levitate her with the air from fans but the black cloud around Maloo does not dissipate and she isn't hopping.

From What's Up, Maloo? by Geneviève Godhout

The friends continue on their walking journey until they find a sail-like sheeting which they spread out and upon which Maloo bounces, hoping for her hop to come back. A bit of fun, a lot of friendship and a little time and Maloo is hopping again, now with her friends in tow!

From What's Up, Maloo? by Geneviève Godhout

Geneviève Godbout's illustrations are so serene and thoughtful, emphasizing a tenderness to Maloo's plight and the compassion of her friends. But still Geneviève Godbout's story stays inspirited, playing with graphic idioms such as Maloo's lack of a spring, or hop, in her step, the black cloud around her as an analogy for depression, and the bed of roses that make up her landscape when she is happy. Geneviève Godbout's What's Up, Maloo? makes me hopeful that, with a little help from friends who are supportive without being controlling or taking charge of her feelings, Maloo can get her hop back whenever the dark cloud descends again.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

It seems highly appropriate that I review What's Up, Maloo? on January 29th which is Bell's Let's Talk Day.  This is the day when media corporation Bell Canada contributes 5¢ to mental health initiatives in Canada for every applicable text, call, tweet, or social media video view in support of Bell Let's Talk.  So let's talk about What's Up, Maloo? to get our own conversation going about using Canadian picture books to support mental health. You'll find me on social media doing just this and I hope you'll do the same.

When Molly Drew Dogs

Written by Deborah Kerbel

Illustrated by Lis Xu

Owlkids Books

978-1-77147-338-5

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

September 2019 

On the night before the first day of school, a pack of stray dogs moved into Molly Akita's head.

Deborah Kerbel's story of a little girl's anxiety manifesting as a pack of dogs is both gripping and reasonable, especially as the dogs are both her distress and her salvation.

From When Molly Drew Dogs by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Lis Xu

Like anxiety, the dogs make their way into her thoughts and her sleep, "restless, they scratched at her brain, begging to be let out." So Molly drew the dogs, everywhere and all the time. "When Molly drew dogs, her heart sat up and smiled." But her art was not always appreciated, especially by her teacher Ms. Shepherd who believed Molly needed to focus on her work and restrict her drawing to art class.  Even her after-school tutor demands that no dogs be allowed when Molly's math problems became drawings of dogs.

From When Molly Drew Dogs by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Lis Xu

Distraught, the child runs away, knowing that "she couldn't erase them, even if she wanted to." Getting lost, Molly finds shelter from the rain in a garden shed and uses her chalk to draw her dogs. But she does more than draw the dogs. She gives them life and concerns herself with their well-being, giving them coats so they aren't cold, as she is, and food, as they were all probably hungry like Molly. The dogs don't nip at her or attack but rather curl up and give her solace. Moreover, when discovered the next morning by her teacher, Molly learns that a pack of dogs in coats had chased off a robber in the neighbourhood and finally Ms. Shepherd realizes the inherent value of Molly's dogs to the little girl.

From When Molly Drew Dogs by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Lis Xu

It's an apt metaphor to use dogs as an expression of anxiety.  Dogs can be demanding and relentless with their need for attention and care but, on the flip-side, they are companionable and comforting and even inspiriting. Deborah Kerbel's text is astute but profound, recognizing the immensity of Molly's distress and lack of control over her anxiety until she tends to her "dogs" as a coping strategy. By caring for them, she tames them and they abide by her needs, not their own, and offer her safety.

Toronto artist Lis Xu's illustrations, soft and understated in pencil crayon, give Molly's story a delicate texture that reminds us that this is a child's world.  It's a world in which the dogs may be very real or completely imaginary, not unlike her worries and angst. At night the dogs are smoky dark–and aren't worries always worse through the night?–but by day they are pink and yellow, blue and orange. That is, until Molly takes care of them in the garden shed and the dogs are all in comforting shades of brown. In other words, the dogs become as real as Molly needs them to be.

Molly's anxiety, like that of many, is a debilitating disorder that interferes with her daily life. It's affecting her sleep, her learning, and her interactions with others. Her anxiety is real. But she has found a way to cope with that anxiety and that includes drawing dogs and ultimately embracing them as protection.  By acknowledging them and accepting them as friend not antagonist, she will survive and do much better when others recognize her coping strategy as effective for her.

Larkin on the Shore

Written by Jean Mills

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-577-6

310 pp.

Ages 13+

October 2019

"...her words have stayed with me, just like Jonah's. Words do that. Words spoken and words in books. Words you write. They start to breathe and live and just take over. And right now, I've been taken over by the words of other people–people talking–and I can't find myself or my own words." (pg. 221)

After she is traumatized by something that happened with a boy, Jonah, and ejected from a moving car, sixteen-year-old Larkin Day is sent from her home in Toronto to stay with her grandmother Granne in Tuttle Harbour, Nova Scotia for the summer.  Larkin had managed to finish her Grade 10 exams but the gossip and social media about what happened have left her feeling isolated and unsafe and contemplating the relief of suicide. Her dad decides his mother, a retired principal, would be the best bet for his daughter while he heads to Vancouver to deal with Larkin's mom, a woman addicted to painkillers and bouncing between the unsafe streets and rehab. 

But for Larkin, Granne and Tuttle Harbour are unfamiliar and she must learn to assess every person she meets for sincerity and safety. That includes neighbour Will Greenfield who is helping his dad Billy renovate an old house for Granne into the Tuttle Harbour Café and Reading Room. As Larkin helps Granne with the book donations for the reading room, she deals with her anxiety which tempers her interactions with others, even with nice-guy Will. But when Will takes her to a local campfire with his peers, Larkin meets the gregarious Casey Henwood, his girlfriend Beth and others, and overdoes the drink when "...it tastes so good and goes down easily." (pg. 70). Could she be putting herself in harm's way?

When a fire destroys the back of the café, Casey and Beth and others are quick to point fingers at Will's dad, a recovering alcoholic, who'd apparently once burned down a shed he was building at the Henwood's farm. Hearing the gossip about Billy as well as about Will from Beth, and reflecting on the talk that went on about her after she was injured, Larkin is perplexed about whom to believe or to trust. What's worse is the news coming from her dad about her mother's health situation.  Walking out into the water until the darkness envelopes her or trying to swim out to Prince Edward Island, knowing she'd never make it, continue to overshadow her regular visits to the shore until she starts to live beyond others' words.

Jean Mills, who wrote the Red Maple-nominated Skating Over Thin Ice (Red Deer Press, 2018), knows how to tell a story about dealing with expectations from family, school and self. She gets what it's like to trust and not trust your own feelings and to be confused about how those you care about conduct themselves around you. From an addicted mother to an unfamiliar grandmother and peers that are both charming and deceptive, Larkin must look at every interaction as a potential disaster and possibly harmful. Sadly this is probably not unusual for teens who are trying to understand a world in which they are expected and allowed to take on greater responsibilities but may be unsure whether they have the strength or understanding to meet them. For Larkin, it may not always be evident which is the safe world or the dangerous one, not unlike a shore that borders land and water, but she is developing the courage to choose her heading and a solid intuition about good people that will guide her.

The House of One Thousand Eyes

Written by Michelle Barker

Annick Press

978-1-77321-071-1

354 pp.

Ages 14+

2018

The House of One Thousand Eyes is a dark book but 1980s East Berlin was a dark time and place. It was a time of the Berlin Wall and the Stasi (the State Security Service) and repression of thought, opportunity and interaction. It was a time of oppression and control and secret-keeping. It was dark and even more so for seventeen-year-old Lena Altmann.

When she lost her parents in a factory explosion, Lena was sent to an asylum. After three years of treatment, she was released into the care of her aunt, a Party member, who treats Lena as a simpleton in need of direction to prevent her readmission to the hospital.

... but Auntie was a good citizen, and goodness was rewarded.
     Badness, however, got you a one-way ticket to smartening up ... (pg. 57)

Unfortunately, her Uncle Erich, whom she adores and visits weekly, is a writer and a man of opinions and insight. 

Paper could get a person in trouble. When you wrote something down, you gave it life and made it yours. (pg. 22)

When she witnesses the removal of his things from his flat and finds a new tenant in place who tells her he has lived there for five years, Lena wonders whether she is delusional. She is told by all that she has no uncle. She cannot locate any of his books at the bookstores or library (her own have disappeared as have her photos of him) and is told there is no birth record of such person.

Working as a night cleaner at Stasi headquarters, also know as the House of One Thousand Eyes, Lena tries to determine what happened to her uncle and cut through the deceit and illusion that all is right in the "Better Berlin." But will the wall she has built up in her own mind continue to protect her from harmful thoughts and brutality such as that she suffers nightly at the hands of one Stasi officer? Or is it like the real Berlin Wall, still in place in 1983, doing more harm than good or in danger of crumbling?

The House of One Thousand Eyes is a brilliant novel of historical fiction. The setting may only have been thirty-six years ago, still in my lifetime, but it's of a time and place so inaccessible, concealed in the propaganda disseminated by those in power and perpetuated by those choosing to survive at all costs, that it will seem far more distant.  It is a hard and dark time for East Berliners who had to choose whether to deceive themselves about the inequities perpetrated by a corrupt regime or to suffer the consequences, as does Lena's uncle, for free thought and disapproval. Just as Uncle Erich knows about veiling one story in another, Michelle Barker's subtext about mental health, social inequalities and the freedom of expression is never lost in the story of Lena as she searches for her uncle and tries to make sense of a world that often made no sense at all. But Michelle Barker builds up Lena's worlds, real and "schrullig," into a monument that honours lives lived with courage and conviction, never blocking the light of truth, and she does so with strength of words and greatness of style.

Undiscovered Country

Written by Jennifer Gold

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-031-5

320 pp.

Ages 13+

April 2017

I feel the familiar wave of sadness overtake me, trapping me underwater, stealing my breath.  Here in the jungle, it is easier to forget my grief.  Sometimes, it feels like something I forgot to pack, something there wasn't room for in my suitcase, and I feel I've won, I've escaped.  Then I remember, and it feels as fresh and raw as it did the night she closed her eyes for the last time. (pg. 125)

Seventeen-year-old Caitlin Marks' grief is as raw and unrelenting as the environs of Bolivia  to which she has thrown herself as a volunteer for nine months with Students Without Boundaries. SWB is Cat's way of running from Ohio and the recent death of her mother from cancer and a father too wrapped up in his own anguish to be a parent to his daughter. But what Cat discovers is that grief resides everywhere, in different forms, and can travel as easily as she does.

Told in alternating perspectives of Before and After, Undiscovered Country is Cat's story of the months leading to her mother's death from cancer and then her experiences as a volunteer in the village of Calantes, a community of poverty, violence and political unrest. As the reader learns of Cat's mom finding the lump in her breast and subsequent gruelling chemo, loss of hair, struggle for dignity and affliction with brain cancer which ultimately takes her life, Cat struggles with balancing being the support her mother needs and going on with her own life, taking her SAT, dealing with peers who see her in terms of her mother's illness, and planning for school at Stanford.  Each step is a struggle of emotions and logistics, helped only somewhat by her sessions with Dr. Shapiro who diagnoses her with Bipolar II.  Bolivia undoubtedly seems like a chance to really help while escaping the overwhelming torment of her sadness.

Sadness is like cancer that way, an unwelcome guest that takes the body or the mind hostage, stripping the joy... (pg. 138)

In Calantes, Cat meets bunkmates Margo who's there to appease her ultra-competitive parents and outdo her cousin who just got into law school; Taylor who'd flunked his first year of college after coming out as gay to his wealthy family; and Melody, a devout Christian, whose self-righteousness masks hidden traumas. And, though everything reminds her of her mother–make-up, Diet Coke, pretzels–Cat soldiers on, meeting the handsome local Rafael and others in the village where she ends up working in the rudimentary infirmary.  But, as she and fellow SWBers  struggle with their emotional baggage, the people of Calantes must deal with their social and political strife, troubles which Rafael is adamant can only be solved with dangerous actions.

The ambiguity that is Cat is normal after a tragedy.

Sometimes it feels as if there are two Cats–the one who longs for love and companionship, who's lonely and desperate for affection, and the other one, who's desperate and desolate and pushes people away, almost determined to stagnate in her grief. (pg. 187-188)

It's unfortunate that Dr. Shapiro and others in Undiscovered Country are so quick to label sadness and grief as mental illness in need of medication.  Cat's foray into a third-world country to volunteer and ease her impotence in helping her mother may not be ideal for all but it works for her, allowing her to discover herself and others in new circumstances.  Without realizing it, Cat's explorations abroad and within challenge her to accept her new normal.

Jennifer Gold, author of Soldier Doll (Second Story Press, 2014), again takes the issue of grief and connections and creates a story of loss, confusion and redemption, with honest characters dealing with realistic challenges but this time in a contemporary setting.  Her characters are dealing with grief, cancer, sexual abuse, foster care, sexuality, family expectations and the teen angst of relationships, peer and romantic.  It's a lot for them to deal with and a lot for Jennifer Gold to tackle.  Still Undiscovered Country, unlike most of us and most definitely Jennifer Gold's characters, never stumbles, instead exposing different paths of salvation to life's struggles, some safer than others, but all viable and very real.

Breaking Faith: Book launch (Burlington, ON)

Join

E. Graziani

author of

War in My Town

(Second Story Press, 2015)

for the launch of her new young adult novel

Breaking Faith

by E. Graziani

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-024-7

248 pp.

Ages 13-17

March 2017

Review here

on

Sunday, April 2, 2017

2 p.m.

A Different Drummer Books

513 Locust St.

Burlington, ON

In addition to a book reading and signing, 

youth mental health expert Dr. Vimala Chinnasamy will give a talk.

From Second Story Press' website about the book:

Faith Emily Hansen just wants to be loved and to live without the weight of addiction. But the lure of drugs is strong. The relief that she gets from being wrapped up in the cozy little cotton ball of heroin is impossible to ignore.

Faith’s story starts in her earliest days, before drugs, before her family falls apart. Before her mother leaves. Before her sister betrays her, taking away Faith’s last connection to home. She eventually becomes consumed by the need to “chase the dragon” – the heroin addiction that seems to keep the Darkness at bay, but leads her to live on the street. The determination to find love and comfort that lures Faith to drugs is ultimately the same stubborn force that can drive her to recover.

Retrieved from https://secondstorypress.ca/teen/breaking-faith on March 13, 2017.