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.

In My Anaana's Amautik

Written by Nadia Sammurtok

Illustrated by Lenny Lishchenko

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-252-9

24 pp.

Ages 3-7

September 2019

Love and security are often found with a person or a place but to find them together in both is extraordinary. In My Anaana's Amautik is about a child finding them both in the pouch at the back of its mother's parka.

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

In its anaana's amautik, a child travels, sleeps and enjoys the closeness of being with its mother and experiencing its world of land, water and sky from a position of safety and intimacy. They feel the sun and compare it to the warmth of her skin, see the clouds and compare them to being swaddled, and are reminded of summertime flowers with her scent.

In my anaana's amautik, I feel safe. The protection of the hood around me is like my own tiny iglu. I love peeking out from inside my anaana's amautik. (pg. 11)

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

The child likens everything about being in its anaana's amautik to those familiar attributes of its own Arctic environment: sun, clouds, flowers (like Arctic poppy, blueberry and dock), cottongrass, iglu, ocean, stream. But most importantly it's about home.

In my anaana's amautik, I feel loved. The gentleness of her movements reminds me of her hugs and her love for me. I love my anaana's amautik. (pg. 19)

While the earlier books of Nadia Sammurtok's which I reviewed (The Caterpillar Woman, 2016; Siuluk: The Last Tuniq, 2018) had a distinct ambiance of darkness and legend, In My Anaana's Amautik is all lightness and affection. While still based in the Inuit culture, Nadia Sammurtok's heritage, and the Arctic environment, In My Anaana's Amautik enfolds the readers in the experience familiar to the very young Inuit. It brings us into that amautik to feel the bond of mother and child and of the land.

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

In a series of double-spread illustrations depicting only a child's head or hand, the only body parts that would ever be exposed from rest in an amautik, Lenny Lishchenko also focuses on the feeling, not the logistics. She makes the sun, or the clouds, the cottongrass or the water, all things with which the child analogizes their amautik experiences, the emphasis. In this way, the child is but a small part of everything but still part of it all.

In My Anaana's Amautik is an experiential picture book filled with the sensory reality of being close and safe and warm and loved. Oh, that every child could feel this.

Spin

Written by Colleen Nelson

Dundurn

978-1-45974-496-7

296 pp.

Ages 12-15

August 2019

 

Fifteen-year-old Delilah Doucette, affectionately called Dizzy by her father Ray and brother Lou, has had music around her her whole life. Her dad once toured as a saxophone player and now owns a record store called The Vinyl Trap. And her mother? Her mother is the famous singer Georgia Waters. Or at least Georgia Hay is, giving birth to both Lou and Dizzy before she chose to abandon them with Ray and embrace a life of touring and celebrity. Since leaving when Dizzy was one-year-old and Lou was four, Georgia has only seen them once in fourteen years. Still,

She might have escaped us, but we couldn't escape her. (pg. 10)

While Lou, already graduated from high school and working at the store, promoting it on social media and arranging special events, struggles with what he wants to do with his life, Dizzy is still in school and knows what she wants. For her, it's all about spinning and mixing music. The store may be an anchor for both, but for Lou it feels like it may drown him while for Dizzy, it's her foundation. And for Ray, it gives him the opportunity to continue with his music, sharing it with others, jamming with friends Donnie, Rudy, Barney and Big Tom, and providing for his family.

After Dizzy opens for DJ Erika at one of the store's Friday Night Spin DJ nights, she is advised to tell a story with her music to make more of an impact. Unbeknown to her family, she uses some private and forgotten recordings from when Ray and Georgia were first together in a mix that she uploads to her Mixcloud account. That mix and a choice to see Georgia in concert in the city leads Dizzy to turn her back on a promise she and her brother had made to their father to never reveal their mother's identify.

As both Dizzy and Lou search for the path that is right for them, Dizzy through her music and potential connection with her mother and Lou slipping into university English lectures and crushing on a fellow student Olivia, Ray tries to hold onto his love of music in any way he can and do what is right for his children. Whether that will be with or without Georgia will depend on how things play out.

Telling the story in Spin through the voices of Dizzy, Lou and Ray, Colleen Nelson creates one firmly rooted in perspectives. Three family members are all looking at the same circumstances–the abandonment of the family by the mother–and revealing different takes on her and her choices. From curiosity to anger, resignation and confusion, the Doucette family sees Georgia as an enigma. Whether she's as Lou sees her...

Georgia had had her chance ten years ago and she'd left us on the table. Forgotten leftovers from a life she didn't want. (pg. 33)

...or the potential celebrity mom that Dizzy craves or the love Ray once had, Georgia has chosen to be what she wanted and not necessarily what others wanted of her. And how they have reacted to her choice is what makes Spin a great story of family. It's not a straightforward story but then most families aren't.  They're complicated and messy and nurturing and debilitating in their own ways and Colleen Nelson knows this. (Read The Fall, 250 Hours, Finding Hope, and Blood Brothers for a good sampling of great stories about family.) Colleen Nelson excels at putting families in all their configurations out front and exposed, never judging their frailties or flaws, only revealing for the purpose of demonstrating that

It's how you go forward from your past 

that makes you who you are. (pg. 138)

Whether teen or adult, child or parent, the characters in Spin, including secondary characters like the homeless Leroy and Dizzy's best friend Maya, do move forward, choosing to advance their own stories with the spin they've selected for themselves, all courtesy of Colleen Nelson's dynamic text and powerful narrative.

In the Sky at Nighttime

Written by Laura Deal 

Illustrated by Tamara Campeau

Inhabit Media

978–1-77227-238-3

28 pp.

Ages 3-6

May 2019

While getting a child to sleep with familiar imagery is not unusual, it is when it embraces the northern environs of the Arctic and culture of its indigenous people.

In the Sky at Nighttime is a northern bedtime story. It's late and it's dark, and outside there is the crunch of winter snow and the cold crisp air. There are northern lights "painting bright colours across the endless sky" and a hunter on snowmobile returning home. Far above the snow-covered buildings and streets, a raven roosts, calling to others. But deep within a house illuminated in the darkness, there is an intimacy as a "mother's delicate song to her child rises like a gentle breeze."

From In the Sky at Nighttime, illus. by Tamara Campeau, text by Laura Deal

Nunavummiuq Laura Deal's text is very simple, usually with two lines per double-spread, often starting with "In the sky at nighttime." It takes us from outside in, leading from the expansive outdoors of both rural and urban landscapes, then drawn into the world of a mother and child. It sees the day ending and the outlook for a new day.

At peace for the day ahead

and the one we leave behind.

Quebec's Tamara Campeau brings the chill of the text to the book's landscapes through her snow-covered homes and streets, her people bundled in hooded parkas, and red-nosed and -cheeked children. The snow glistens as it provides still insulation but also as it sparkles with the stars and luminous northern lights in the darkened sky.

From In the Sky at Nighttime, illus. by Tamara Campeau, text by Laura Deal

I've just updated my Read a Book of Bedtime booklist to include Laura Deal and Tamara Campeau's splendid bedtime picture book In the Sky at Nighttime. Children in northern areas will be tickled with the book's familiarity and homeyness of people and place, while those in other climes will learn bedtime in the far north can be as warm and as cozy as a mother's embrace amidst shelter from the cold.

The Center of the Universe

Written by Ria Voros

KCP Loft (An imprint of Kids Can Press)

978-1-5253-0038-7

512 pp.

Ages 14-18

April 2019

...we slam into people around us, invisibly, all the time. Through things we say and don't say. What we do and don't do. That we are slowly changed by the constant bombardment. That we consume and are consumed, until we become products of our interactions, made of old and new parts, simultaneously broken and healing. (pg. 351)

When her mother, GG Carter, celebrity and news anchor, goes missing, seventeen-year-old Grace's world becomes warped, though not shattered. She'd already been arguing with her mother who is obsessed with her reputation and her work, often putting it before her family, even missing out on important events like Grace's astrophotography exhibit. (Grace is a budding astronomer, an active member of Star Club and a fan of Elizabeth Tasker.) Though Grace thinks her mother has been more stressed lately, it's evident that her mother has been keeping her cards close to her chest for awhile, and Dad even wonders if GG just needed some time away. But when Grace's dad gets a text from GG that reads "I'm not coming back. Don't look for me. Goodbye." (pg. 50), which he is convinced didn't come from her, Grace begins to pull memories and evidence together to learn what truly happened to her mother.

In tandem with her mother's disappearance, Grace is connecting with her crush, Mylo McLean, who has his own family issues including a powerful mother whose parenting causes him much stress. Together Grace and Mylo support each other knowing the struggle of having well-known mothers but, when Mylo admits that his father has been gone for five years and may be living on the street, the two realize that being in limbo puts them in a similarly unique place, the Perpetual Waiting Room (PWR).

He could sit in my PWR with me because we actually shared the waiting room. We were sitting against the same wall, staring at the same old magazines, waiting for different people to come through the door. (pg. 201)

The Center of the Universe may revolve around GG Carter's disappearance as her family struggles to learn what happened to her and then to reorganize upon her return home but she is not the center of Grace's universe. Her actions may impact her daughter but Grace exerts her own pull on those around her. While she may not realize her impact, she still draws others to her, including her young brother, her grandmother, her friends, her love interest and even her mother, and it's her story that Ria Voros has appropriately made the focal point. There is much discussion about perspectives and perceptions, especially with regards to GG Carter's back story, but Ria Voros makes Grace a compassionate and astute teen, especially as she attempts to process what she learns about her mother, while choosing what and whom she needs in her own life.

Ria Voros has written an extraordinary young adult novel about a mother-daughter relationship that is turned inside out but, first and foremost, The Center of the Universe is a coming of age for Grace as she learns who she is, with and without her mother, and that she is a star in her own universe.

Sadie

Written by Courtney Summers

Wednesday Books

978-1-250-10571-4

308 pp.

Ages 14+

September 2018

If you notice that the book cover is larger than I usually post, it's because Sadie, the book and the girl, should not be relegated to the back or to a corner to be forgotten. In her life, Sadie was neglected and abused and she may have felt insignificant, but she is courageous and responsible, and she deserves to be noticed–and not because of her stuttering–and her extraordinary efforts appreciated.

Sadie begins with the murder of Sadie's thirteen-year-old sister, Mattie Southern, after she'd left their home in Cold Creek, Colorado, ostensibly to search out their mother Claire, who'd left 3 years earlier. Mattie had never given up hope on her mother, an addict who'd showered her meagre love and limited attention on her youngest daughter and essentially ignored or was hostile to her eldest.

I can't even put into words what it's like to swallow down a moment like that, but I can tell you exactly how bitter it tastes. (pg. 55-6)

Sadie had given all of herself to her baby sister and mothered Mattie even more, when at 16, it was just the two of them, abandoned and living in a trailer park run by their surrogate grandmother, May Beth Foster.  When Sadie disappears eight months after her sister's murder and her car found abandoned the next month, May Beth contacts WNRK New York to get some media attention and help. So begins a serialized podcast, The Girls, by producer West McCray, who pursues Sadie's story and consequently Mattie's as well.

The Girls explores what happens when a devastating crime reveals a deeply unsettling mystery. It's a story about family, about sisters, and the untold lives lived in small-town America. It's about the lengths we go to protect the ones we love. . . and the high price we pay when we can't. (pg. 1)

Sadie alternates between The Girls podcast and Sadie's telling of her pursuit of justice for her sister. West's podcast includes narration and interviews with persons of interest as he tries to locate Sadie, all the while unravelling her story. There's May Beth Foster who acts as his home base for information and clarification, and then the people Sadie meets along her journey. The chapters based on Sadie's pursuit of Mattie's murderer begin at an out-of-town diner where Sadie suggests she's looking for her father, always showing a photo of her family with Claire's ex, Keith. From that starting point, she gets one lead after another, desperate to locate the man she is convinced is responsible for Mattie's death. Mixed with reminiscences, many unsettling, as triggered by those she meets, Sadie must uncover Keith's story, told from the points of view of those who considered him a good guy and those who won't reveal much from the cloak of shame and trauma. Regardless, she pursues and inevitably helps in ways she might never know.

Courtney Summers always tells bold stories, whether based on zombies (This is Not a Test, 2012; Please Remain Calm, 2014), on sexual assault and shame (All the Rage, 2015), on bullying (Some Girls Are, 2010) or self-destruction (Cracked Up to Be, 2008). They immerse the reader in tense situations of agonizing brutality, emotional and physical, that rarely have happy endings. But that's reality. Life is not neat and it's not fair. It's raw and real and not for the faint of heart. Courtney Summers sugarcoats nothing. Nothing at all. Even as West McCray speaks to witnesses or persons of interest, they spin Sadie's story with an effort to make themselves look better. It's not honest but it's real. Take Claire, for instance. This woman cared more for the child who looked like her than the one who didn't (and blames that on her youth, her mother's death and May Beth); neglected her children in favour of her addiction; sends an abuser packing only when she suspects he might have attacked her favourite; abandons her children for years; and blames West McCray when he can't find Sadie. Yikes. Sadie's story is gut-wrenching in itself: bullied for her stuttering, neglected by her mother, abused by her mother's boyfriend, abandoned, becoming a surrogate parent to a resentful child, and grief-stricken for her beloved sister. Her story is almost too much to take.

Don't look for a happy ending in Sadie, and it's not because Courtney Summers ends Sadie with another tragedy. It's just hard to tell what kind of an ending Courtney Summers has given readers. While there is justice, Courtney Summers also leaves a gaping hole in Sadie's story that readers will need to fill, either with hope for a new story for Sadie or with another tragedy to complete her original one. Read Sadie and let me know what you think happened to this fierce young woman because her story is far too important to let her be forgotten.

Enid Strange

Written by Meghan Rose Allen

DCB

978-1-770865259

240 pp.

Ages 10-13

May 2018 CAN / September 2018 US

Enid Strange is eleven years old and she is writing a book, How to See the Faeries. Of course, you can't just "see" faeries as they "work through non-anticipation" (pg. 8) but you can see their shadows in patches of sunlight viewed in your right periphery.  Spotting faeries and writing her book engross Enid whose life is far from normal.

She and her mother live in a semi-detached rental home next to Mrs. Delavecchio whom Enid treats as a grandmother and her mother treats as an unpaid babysitter. In fact, Enid's mother, Margery, who'd always believed in faeries and knew enough to create banishing powders and plant trees to protect their house, now seems almost angry to Enid's interests. In fact, Margery is downright nasty to her daughter.

"I just wonder why," her mother said, returning to whisking, "you didn't turn out differently." (pg. 35)

Ouch.

Enid begins to think that the faeries are up to mischief, knocking over trees in the garden, bewitching her mother whose behaviour is definitely becoming odder and manipulating Margery's relationship with Dr. Holden, a geriatric psychiatrist at the William O. Wistop Memorial Long Term Care Facility (which Enid calls the Will O'Wisp) where Margery works. This is worse still as Dr. Holden's seventeen-year-old daughter Amber is always getting up into Enid's business. It's up to Enid to make things right and she intends to do so by catching the faeries.

Enid Strange, the book, is as odd a little thing as Enid Strange the girl. After all, faeries aren't real, are they? Readers will start by wondering whether Enid is just imagining the little mischievous creatures or whether they truly exist. Weird things are definitely happening at home and at school and it's not surprising that a girl who is told to behave herself since "We don't want you to be someone who spoils other people's happiness" (pg. 82) would be looking to find a way to take some control over her own life in a world going wacko. And Enid is an astute little thing. She sees more than she lets on and comprehends beyond her eleven years of age. For example, she knows how important it would be for the lonely Mrs. Delavecchio to reconnect with her son in prison: "She told me you are broken. Well, fix yourself up and send her a letter." (pg. 73) She devises a hypothesis that "faeries are able to manipulate light's dual nature: using waves to propel themselves forward and using particles to hide behind when they wish to remain unseen" (pg. 136) and proposes an experiment to test it.

Author Meghan Rose Allen gives voice to middle graders who have lots of ideas about their parents, school, and home life but never seem to be heard. Enid has a lot going on in her life. Loads. And yet she seems to have no support system. She's out there on her own, trying to deal with nastiness from Amber Holden and being ignored by her mother who disregards her parenting responsibilities and chastizes Enid for her dramatics when learning who her father is. Meghan Rose Allen embeds Enid's story in a rich world of faeries, and not your sweet pink variety, and allows the child to take some control over her life, with a little help from some unexpected supports, and learning that there is magic around and even in her.

Ten Cents a Pound

Written by Nhung N. Tran-Davies

Illustrated by Josée Bisaillon

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-056-8

24 pp.

Ages 5-9

April 2018

I defy anyone to read Nhung N. Tran-Davies' text in Ten Cents a Pound and not be moved to tears by a mother's willingness to work at gathering coffee beans so that her child could have a better life. All the more poignant is the response from the child who recognizes her mother's struggles and does not want to leave her in order to pursue an education elsewhere. Their dialogue, told with love and admiration and respect, is the story of Ten Cents a Pound. 

From Ten Cents a Pound by Nhung N. Tran-Davies, illus. by Josée Bisaillon

Mama, I see your hands,
Coarsened and scratched,
By the twigs and bark of the trees, row on row,
By the leaves and berries, picked one by one.
I will stay with you.

So begins Ten Cents a Pound, with a daughter seeing the toil of hard work on her mother's hands and her declaration that she will stay with her.  Ah, but her mother will have none of that.  Calling her "silly child" or "faithful child" or similar, the mother asserts that she is working so that she might put books in her daughter's hands and set her on a life beyond their mountain and villages. Still the girl cannot see past her mother's pain and hardship and repeats that she cannot leave her.  Always with great affection and fortitude, her mother vows that the girl will be set free with an education and must go beyond the confines of their village. Finally, the girl accepts the wisdom of her mother's wish for her future but contends that she will return.

From Ten Cents a Pound by Nhung N. Tran-Davies, illus. by Josée Bisaillon

Though I cry readily, not all books move me to tears. Ten Cents a Pound did so. Many parents sacrifice much for their children, though those trials are not always acknowledged, but here a child recognizes that suffering and doesn't feel like she can accept the cost of her mother's unselfishness. I don't know if physician and author Nhung N. Tran-Davies, who came to Canada from Vietnam, ever witnessed this self-sacrificing love but Ten Cents a Pound is a testament to the determination a parent can have for wanting a better future for their child.  This mother is willing to suffer the back pains, the harm to feet and hands, and declining eyesight and more just to ensure her child has an education and a better life.

Award-winning illustrator Josée Bisaillon blends the realism of the mother-daughter relationship with a lightness that belies the gravity of their circumstances. The outdoor scenes of fields and trees are grounded in the earth but give rise to the green of dreams and expectation. Even the fluttering butterflies and the child in flight suggest a journey of hope and ascendancy.

From Ten Cents a Pound by Nhung N. Tran-Davies, illus. by Josée Bisaillon

Ten Cents a Pound may be a tome that supports the idea of education as the means for freedom and advancement or a social justice story embedded in the coffee fields of Vietnam.  But, at its heart, it is a dedication to mothers and daughters who are willing to offer anything to ensure a good life for the other.

The Big Bed

Written by Bunmi Laditan

Illustrated by Tom Knight

Farrrar Straus Giroux

978-0-374-30123-1

32 pp.

Ages 4-6

February 2018 

This child is going to be arguing cases before the Supreme Court; that is, before she ends up presiding over it and being appointed Chief Justice.  She is confident, articulate and, though very young, she knows what she's after and why she should get it. In this case, it's sleeping with Mom in The Big Bed.

From The Big Bed by Bunmi Laditan, illus. by Tom Knight

With eloquent arguments that she purports to be "reasonable" and filled with positive reinforcement about her father's skills as a wrestler and piggyback-ride giver, the little girl opines about what happens at night.  Seems the big bed isn't big enough for herself and her parents, and it's clear who will be leaving.  As she's afraid of the dark, and her father still has his own mommy–hence no need to share hers–she recommends a solution that she is sure he will "find not only satisfactory, but also quite generous."

From The Big Bed by Bunmi Laditan, illus. by Tom Knight

Bunmi Laditan, the blogger behind the very funny "The Honest Toddler" (at http://www.thehonesttoddler.com/), brings her trademark humour to this child's story.  Because it is all told from the child's perspective, from sitting her father down, arguing her case, presenting her plan to her mother (who laughs hysterically) and a culminating claim that "Mommy and I just want you to be happy", I feel like this is based on something Mommy Bunmi Laditan has experienced.  Everyone knows kids say the darnedest things and this little one does more than just say, she reasons and orates.  Supporting that perspective are British artist Tom Knight's illustrations.  His artwork, particularly that of the graphics the child herself creates, bolsters the cuteness of a child's perspective and makes The Big Bed as convincing as she is.

I truly hope her father can get some sleep on his new cot.

From The Big Bed by Bunmi Laditan, illus. by Tom Knight

Swimming with Seals: Book launch (Ladysmith, BC)

Maggie de Vries

launches

her newest picture book

Swimming with Seals

Written by Maggie de Vries

Illustrated by Janice Kun
Orca Book Publishers

9781459813212

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

April 2018

on

Thursday, May 8, 2018

7:00-8:30 p.m.

at

Salamander Books

535 First Avenue

Ladysmith, BC

Ally isn't able to live with her mother. Instead she lives far, far away, on the other side of the country, with her gram and great-aunt. But one summer Ally goes to stay with her aunt and uncle in the "big city by the ocean" and gets to spend time with her mom. While exploring the shore, watching whales from the boat dipping into the salty water, Ally finds out something important: her mother loves to swim as much as she does.

This is a very personal story. Ally is based on the author’s niece, Jeanie, and Ally's mother is based on the author's sister, Sarah, who went missing from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver in 1998. Jeanie is like a seal in the water, and Sarah was just the same, but they never got to swim together. In this story, they do. Swimming with Seals is a story that was written for the thousands of children who long to live with their birth parents and will never fully understand why they can't.

Retrieved from Orca Book Publishers' website at

https://www.orcabook.com/Swimming-With-Seals-P1418.aspx

on April 3, 2018.

Love You Forever: New Pop-Up Edition

Written by Robert Munsch

Illustrated by Sheila McGraw

Paper engineering by Bruce Foster

Firefly Books

978-1-770859654

14 pp.

All ages

September 2017

Though not Robert Munsch's first book, Love You Forever is perhaps his best known, with astronomical sales over the decades and inclusion on multiple lists of top books of all time.   Published in 1986, Love You Forever is an iconic picture book about a parent's love for her child and it is now available in a pop-up version.

From Love You Forever Pop-Up Edition

The story begins with a mother holding her new baby and singing a lullaby to him:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I've living
my baby you'll be.

Then the boy becomes a toddler and gets into much mischief but still his mother sneaks into his room and rocks him back and forth while she sings the lullaby to him. This continues as the boy becomes nine, and then a teenager and finally an adult who moves away.  Still his mother sneaks into his room, rocks him and sings her lullaby.  But when she is too old to come see him, he visits her and sings the lullaby she cannot, revising it appropriately:

I'll love you forever,
I'll love you for always,
As long as I'm living
My Mommy you'll be.  

From Love You Forever Pop-Up Edition

The story ends with the son returning home, supposedly after his mother has passed, and he sings the lullaby to his own daughter, just as his mother sang to him.

Because of the alternative format with fold-out flaps and pull- and push-tabs to create three-dimensional illustrations, this Love You Forever is only 14 pages long.  Still the whole story is there, Robert Munsch's original words and Sheila McGraw's illustrations, now brought to life with the paper engineering of Bruce Foster, an American paper magician. (You can see a demonstration of the rocking chair pop-up on his website Paperpops.) There's not much I can say about the book Love You Forever that has not already been said time and time again but I can address the novelty of Bruce Foster's paperwork in adding a third dimension to the art and hence the story.  Though some of the illustrations may appear dated–check out the clothing, the computer and the hairstyles–there is a freshness that comes with the pop-ups, bringing new life to the pages of Love You Forever.  Parents may still be reading the story and singing the lullaby to their children but now children can interact with the story, pushing and lifting and pulling tabs, to help tell that story and appreciate the love between parent and child.

•••••••••••••••••••••

For anyone who will be reading Love You Forever and has never heard the melody to the lullaby the mother sings, Robert Munsch shares it on a YouTube video uploaded on January 13, 2011 by tvoparents at https://youtu.be/YFX6pdwJWpA.

On the Spectrum

Written by Jennifer Gold

Second Story Press

978-1-177260-042-1

336 pp. 

Ages 13-18

September 2017

The push for books that reflect diversity has been extending more recently to include those with characters on the spectrum or with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as does On the Spectrum.  But, unlike the recently reviewed Slug Days by Sara Leach (Pajama Press, 2017), On the Spectrum takes a different approach, placing the character on the spectrum in a secondary role, as a step-brother to the teen protagonist, thereby providing a different perspective to life on the spectrum. 

In On the Spectrum, the protagonist Clara is a sixteen-year-old whose issue is orthorexia i.e., an unhealthy preoccupation with how much and what she eats.  After a social media faux pas and the intervention of social workers disturbed by her ballerina mother’s own extreme healthy lifestyle fixation, Clara heads to Paris to spend the summer with her Dad, his new wife Mag and her half-brother Alastair, a six-year-old child on the spectrum.  While visiting Parisian tourist attractions and adhering to Alastair’s routines, Clara begins to learn about her little brother’s behaviours and needs, like his weighted vest and use of noise-cancelling headphones to help him calm, and starts to really care about him.  Conversely, Alastair is learning about his sister, putting together the pieces of what he overhears from his parents’ discussions and interpreting her words and actions, convinced that, though Clara denies it, she must be on a spectrum herself, on an eating disorder spectrum.  Complicating matters for Clara is Alastair’s friendship with Michel, the son of a local baker, who whips up amazing pastries and meals with Alastair and is convinced he can help Clara enjoy food once again.  

Young adult author Jennifer Gold, whose previous books Soldier Doll (Second Story Press, 2014) and Undiscovered Country (Second Story Press, 2017) have been reviewed on CanLit for LittleCanadians, gives Alastair voice through Clara’s narration; only through his sister’s interpretations do we hear what Alastair says and does.  It’s still a valid voice but it reads very differently from the first-person narrative of Slug Days or Spaghetti is Not a Finger Food (Jodi Carmichael, Little Pickle Press, 2013), both of which are written for younger audiences.  But then again, On the Spectrum is Clara’s story and Alastair is akin to her sidekick who is there to help steer and illuminate her thinking, which he does so effortlessly both about his autism and her issues.  He may be on the titular spectrum but apparently Clara is on one as well.  The spectrum, whatever it may be based upon, is broad, indicating that there is no one way of being autistic or having eating issues.  Even being different is different for everyone, and Jennifer Gold's Clara and Alastair and all those in-between make that abundantly clear.

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(A version of this review was originally written for and paid for by Quill & Quire but space limitations prevented its inclusion in the recent October issue.)



36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You

Written by Vicki Grant

Running Press Teens

978-0-7624-6318-3

288 pp.

Ages 13+

October 2017

This is a love story.  It's the story of eighteen-year-old Hildy meeting nineteen-year-old Paul–though they're supposed to refer to themselves as generic Betty and Bob–as participants in a university research project to determine whether the asking of 36 questions could facilitate personal closeness that might result in a relationship.  Although the two teens come into the study from different perspectives, where they end up is heart-warming with a final scene right out of a Hollywood romantic comedy. (Yes, the book would make a GREAT film.)

Hildy is a bit of a mess.  She seems to be a little clumsy and does a whole lot of babbling though it's clear she is bright and astute and interesting.  But she describes herself at the onset of the study as someone who has

"...a lot of stuff happening in my life right now.  My own fault, of course.  Big mouth.  Tunnel vision.  Faulty social radar." (pg. 14)

That statement is very telling.  Without revealing all there is about her situation, Hildy suggests a crisis in her family, for which she is willing to take blame, but what is going on with younger brother Gabe, ER doctor mom Amy, and school principal and drama coach dad Greg, is only revealed in dribs and drabs through the context of Hildy's get-togethers with friends as well as in her meetings with Paul a.k.a. Bob Somebody both in person and online. (They have to extend their session beyond the original hour needed after she reacts to some comments he makes and she throws a puffer fish at him.)

Paul/Bob is more of a closed book.  When he's supposed tell the details of his life in four minutes (that's Question 11), Hildy assesses his answer as,

"That was a ten-second cover-up of a thirty-six-part docudrama.  What you didn't say was way more interesting than what you actually said." (pg. 62)

He gives very little away about himself and blankets most of his answers with an attitude Hildy doesn't appreciate. He does reveal his drawing ability in his endless doodling–mostly of a hand, Kong the puffer fish whom he adopts temporarily, and Hildy–and a love of drumming.  But Paul/Bob just wants to get this over with and collect his $40.

As the questions become more intimate and revealing, Hildy and Paul share more about themselves and seesaw between anger, frustration, appreciation and affection.  But when Hildy stands Paul up and can't locate him to try to make things right, it looks like the project and their budding friendship might all be in jeopardy.

Readers are going to fall in love with Hildy and Paul. They are so not perfect, separately and together.   They are masses of weaknesses and missteps especially when dealing with others and it's a wonder they ever got to the place where they'd want to do the psych study.  But, along with their weaknesses, they are strong and courageous and compassionate.  And yet, the two are infinitely different.  Still, Vicki Grant doesn't let that stand in the way of a great love story, one in which the complicated Hildy and the casual Paul can see beyond their frailties and foibles and expose themselves to possible happiness that no questions could have predicted. It is impossible not to laugh with them and laugh at them when you read their dialogue i.e., discussions based on the 36 scripted questions.

Question 10

Paul: If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

Hildy: I wish I hadn't been kept in the dark so much.

Paul: Explains why you're so pale.        (pg. 53)

I know this may be a spoiler but I don't want readers to worry that Hildy and Paul might never get together.  Rest assured that Vicki Grant, with her trademark humour, will bring the two teens to completing their psych study obligation and, better yet, to undertaking a new, more personal, venture on their own, with or without Kong in tow. And it only took 36 questions.

🐟

Wade's Wiggly Antlers

Written by Louise Bradford

Illustrated by Christine Battuz

Kids Can Press

978-1-77138-615-9

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

May 2017

Wade loves his antlers.  They look like trumpets and are the basis for much imaginative play with his squirrel, fox and bird friends.  But when he feels them wiggle, he panics and races home (hoping that doesn't jostle them!) to his mother.  She reminds him that they'd already talked about his antlers falling off and then growing new ones in the summer but Wade is distraught, knowing all the wonderful things he does with them: paddles for ping pong; perches for friends; mitts for softball; and hooks for kite-flying.  Desperate to hold onto his antlers, Wade keeps himself from fun with his friends so as to prevent the antlers from falling off.  But, after days of life on the sidelines, Wade realizes he's already missing out on fun with his friends and vows to start living again, come what may. (And we all know what comes because growing up is all about change.)

From Wade's Wiggly Antlers

by Louise Bradford

illus. by Christine Battuz

Your little ones will probably not be worried about losing their antlers but there are changes that may cause them anxiety, such as losing their baby teeth.  Yes, it may be natural and something that happens to all children but that dismissal will not alleviate the stress that can arise.  His mother is wise enough to have prepared Wade for the inevitable loss of his antlers but she also consoles him with the knowledge that he would grow new antlers in time. She is a very wise mother.  But Wade still needs to work through this in his own way, and thankfully Louise Bradford allows him to do so with the support of his family and friends.  There's even a party with colourful cupcakes to celebrate when his first antlers are lost.

From Wade's Wiggly Antlers 

by Louise Bradford

illus. by Christine Battuz

Louise Bradford's text is very comprehensive in evoking Wade's distress and his mother's wise reassurances but it's Quebec illustrator Christine Battuz who uses her digital art to create playful scenes of Wade with his family and friends.  She capably gives him expressions of delight and concern and surprise with but a few strokes of her digital artistry.  Even his little friends are expressive in those same emotions and more, including the tiny blue jay and cardinal that flit around the larger animals. Christine Battuz uses bright colours and bold patterns to energize her illustrations, even in the cool sobriety of winter, the time of moose antler shedding. See if Wade's sweater with contrasting wrist and waist ribbing, along with his dotted scarf, don't bring a smile to your face.  

From Wade's Wiggly Antlers

by Louise Bradford

illus. by Christine Battuz

While it may seem silly to release a winter-based book in May, Wade's Wiggly Antlers is actually a timeless book since kids will be losing their first teeth all year round (unlike moose who shed their antlers between December and March).  Let Wade and his friends help lighten your own children's anxieties, whether it be about loose teeth or some other growing up change, or, if they're fearless, use Wade's Wiggly Antlers to teach some science about seasonal changes and ecology.  Either way, there's some playful learning to be had.

From Wade's Wiggly Antlers

by Louise Bradford

illus. by Christine Battuz

Breaking Faith

Written by E. Graziani

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-024-7

328 pp.

Ages 13+

March 2017

Reviewed from advance reading copy

For most people, turning points help define them in terms of before and after.  They are sparks of tragedy or ecstasy that depress or elevate, twisting the trajectories of lives onto paths unpredicted.  For Faith Emily Hansen, her turning points began with those of her mother, Lacey, but when her own begin to accumulate, they lead her down paths that are both random and dangerous, and sadly all her own.

Life for Faith’s family has never been easy.  Her mother had been devastated when her husband Simon had died, leaving her with a two-year-old daughter Constance.  She tried to get on with her life, moving back in with her criticizing and argumentative mother Dot, and even getting involved with two different men and having Faith a year later and Destiny two years after that.  Still Lacey’s life is tenuous at best, and out of control at worst.  Although her love for her children is evident–including coming to Faith's rescue when the four-year-old becomes an innocent victim in a horrific act of violence–she leaves them when Faith is just seven, moving to Toronto and making promises she'll never keep.

When Constance moves in with her other grandmother, the affluent Josephine, Faith is left to mother her younger sister and navigate her own Darkness, ever difficult as she is overwhelmed with sadness and anger, hurt and loneliness.  And she is just a child.  As they all deal with Lacey’s spiral into drug use, Faith yearns for normal but is unable to make choices that support that.  Even some counselling and making friends with Norma and Ishaan in middle school can't keep Faith from eventually breaking and heading to a life on the streets of Toronto and into using heroin, eventually hitting rock bottom.

"And my soul was broken–I'd lost Faith.  Lost hope. Lost my belief in my own destiny." (pg. 264)

The story that E. Graziani tells with heart-breaking power and poignancy is devastating in its sadness and bleakness.  Though Faith's reactions are her own, the circumstances of her life were thrust upon her by a mother with her own addiction and mental health issues, by a random act of violence and by familial circumstances which burden her and for which she, as a child, was unprepared emotionally and physically.  Even happiness was a burden.

"And the feeling of constantly being on edge, walking on eggshells, and feeling guilty (though outlandish as that may seem) if I felt a positive emotion." (pg. 17)

But, though Faith sees little positive in her life, she is the poster child for the Bob Marley quote she repeats throughout: "You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice."
The reader may be hopeful that, since it is a nineteen-year-old Faith who is writing about the events and conditions that led her to a point where she needs to be rescued, Breaking Faith must have a happy ending i.e., she survives to write her story.  But I don't think there are any happy endings here.  As the Afterword by psychiatrist Dr. Vimala Chinnasamy states, Faith's story is not an uncommon one, one in which mental illness and addiction are perceived as emotional weaknesses and for which inadequate support, both within the family and outside, is provided, thus contributing to the tragedy.  And Breaking Faith is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.  The only saving grace is that Faith survives these chapters of her life and that E. Graziani provides a deep look into a life we need to witness so that we might walk with the Faiths of this world before we need to pull them up and rescue them or worse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Check out the next post for details of the book launch for Breaking Faith this Sunday at A Different Drummer Books in Burlington, ON

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

Written by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Razorbill

978-0-425-28759-0

368 pp.

Ages 13–17

February 2017

After, I stand for a few moments looking out over the water, the moon reflecting off its glass-like surface.  It's beautiful, yes.  But the beauty doesn't reach me the way it's supposed to because I feel like it's been shoved down my throat.  I register the stark gorgeousness of the dying day, and what it fills me with is unease, and an ominous sensation of cracking inside–of cracking open, of a corresponding excruciating pain I have kept at bay by incredible discipline beginning to seep toward the surface. (pg. 87)

Ingrid Burke must feel like she's been deposited in another world, and one not of her choosing.  In fact, not even one like in the brochure her mother, retired opera singer Margot-Sophia Lalonde, had shown her of Peak Wilderness, an outdoors camp in northern Ontario, to which Ingrid has agreed to go so her mother would permit her attendance at a prestigious music school in London England.  Worse yet, Ingrid, who perceives herself to be “a model citizen and paragon of stability” (pg. 53) compared to the miscellany of other troubled youth campers, must survive three weeks of hiking, canoeing, roughing it, and sharing under the supervision of leaders Pat and Bonnie who seem to enjoy the group’s failures at near impossible tasks.

What happened that led Ingrid to this challenging and repeatedly dangerous situation is told in alternating chapters, organized by Ingrid's age, that speak to her life before Peak Wilderness.  They tell of her life travelling the world with her famous mother and then, after damage to Margot-Sophia’s vocal chords leads them home to Toronto,  the reversal of roles when Margot-Sophia is overcome with depression.  Revealed slowly but with ease are Ingrid’s experiences at school and home, feeling vulnerable and frustrated, fearful and positive, and her attempts to achieve normalcy and some happiness. Eventually we also learn what led her to Peak Wilderness.

My words cannot do justice to the depth of Danielle Younge-Ullman's characterizations and story-telling.  There is so much to share with readers that my words seem sparse and ineffective. But I can tell you that Danielle Younge-Ullman weaves Ingrid’s present and past into a fabric of ordinary and extraordinary, creating a life of tenacity to which most of us could aspire.  Though Ingrid doesn’t want to acknowledge the vulnerabilities that brought her to the camp, Danielle Younge-Ullman provides hints throughout the story–Isaac, an axe and an injured leg–that there is more to the teen’s story than she reveals to others and even to herself.  Her go-to survival mechanisms include a strained positivity —“How exciting, and what a magnificent opportunity to get in touch with my inner savage” (pg. 29)— and silence with a dose of denial.  But beyond Ingrid’s inner turmoil are the relationships the teen has with her mother, her new father, a boy with whom she has a connection, and all the campers.  These relationships drive Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined.  They ebb and flow, both serene and passionate, not unlike the music of a great opera that Margot-Sophia might have performed.  Though Ingrid might think she knows the music of her life really well, she’s just learning to perform it with passion so that she can make it successfully to the triumphant finish. And Danielle Younge-Ullman makes sure that we want to stay for the whole performance without ever nodding off.

****************

On May 6, 2017, Danielle Younge-Ullman will be speaking at the Stratford Writers Festival Young Adult forum along with numerous other YA authors.  I'll post about it here soon but you can get details at http://digiwriting.com/stratford-writers-festival-young-adult-2017/

I'll be there and you should be too!

Short Stories for Little Monsters

Written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-896-9

48 pp.

Ages 5-8

March 2017

Whether they’re your little monsters, rugrats, toads, or anklebiters, you can bet that little children will be up to no good and good when March break comes around in a few weeks.  You can either prepare yourself for those days with these humourous stories or share them with your own little monsters to while away the days or nights with some imaginative fun, or save them when your own creativity is waning.

From Short Stories for Little Monsters 

by Marie-Louise Gay

In nineteen short-stories told on single pages or double spreads (except for the final story "The Secret Life of Rabbits" that needs four pages to show us what magnificent worlds rabbits make), Marie-Louise Gay takes readers into the fantastical minds and play of children.  From imagining what can be seen when eyes are closed ("When I Close my Eyes") or fantasizing that no one sees them when clad in pillowcases ("The Incredible Invisible Boy" and "The Incredible Invisible Twins") or outrunning monsters that lurk in the wild ("Monster!"), Short Stories for Little Monsters celebrates the creativity of children in their minds and their play, alone and with others.  And beyond child’s play, Marie-Louise Gay takes their visualizations into the worlds of cats, snails, trees and rabbits, for example exposing what our feline friends really see in a dust bunny or a chess game  ("What Do Cats See?" and "What Games Do Cats Play?") and giving us  a snail’s-eye view into "Snail Nightmares" (who knew?) and "The Secret Life of Snails."  Of course, amidst all the fun there is still the apprehension of every day life, when the teacher may call on you ("Who? Me?"), that your mother can see all you do always ("Zombie Mom") or that your friends might see through your façade of wisdom ("Rhisonoros") but this is all life, told in the splendour of colour, line, shape and ingenuity of the very original and inventive creator of Stella and Sam, Marie-Louise Gay.

From Short Stories for Little Monsters 

by Marie-Louise Gay

The wealth of stories about imaginative fun and speculation abounds in this compendium of illustrated stories.  The stories are a delight, both humourous and insightful, but it's Marie-Louise Gay's illustrations that will grab readers first, as they always have. (She has been honoured with numerous awards including three Governor General's Awards for illustration in English-language children's books.)  In her artwork, that often resembles the loose frames of graphic novels, she tells of childish diversions but gives them life with her effusive children, and ever-present secondary characters of bunnies, cats, snails, birds and other creatures.  The details are whimsical and ever-present, and children will delight in spotting the stray underwear, the fish that can't add 2 + 2, and the rabbit flying a carrot plane.  And the colours, glorious colours! And the swirls, the patterns, the textures of her lines and watercolours!  There is a gaiety to Marie-Louise Gay's art (it's okay to pun; Marie-Louise Gay does it too) that is like no other, and brings merriment to each story, even if it's about "Lies My Mother Told Me."

It's always a celebration when Marie-Louise Gay publishes a new book but this multi-story illustrated format is certainly unique and worthy of attention.  Moreover, because it's not a book that needs to be read in any order or all the way through in one sitting, I suspect Short Stories for Little Monsters will be appreciated by all readers and listeners, whether they be little monsters or not, who will continuously find nuggets of wisdom and whimsy throughout.

From Short Stories for Little Monsters 

by Marie-Louise Gay