...take a shattered world and make it into something beautiful. (pg. 273)
✽ Promoting children's and YA books by Canadian authors and illustrators ✽
June 08, 2026
Still Alive (Kidnapped From Ukraine, Book 3)
November 29, 2021
Birds on Wishbone Street
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| From Birds on Wishbone Street by Suzanne Del Rizzo |
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| From Birds on Wishbone Street by Suzanne Del Rizzo |
Suzanne Del Rizzo's polymer clay art has always impressed, giving new textures and colours to already-strong stories. But when she illustrates her own stories, Suzanne Del Rizzo shines. There is a synergy of her words and art that elevates both into something truly extraordinary. In Birds on Wishbone Street, Suzanne Del Rizzo honours her own family and those of all immigrants to Canada, and upholds the idea that communities are based on an appreciation for our differences and acknowledgement of our commonalities. With that sense of community, great things can happen: a newcomer feels at home, a bird is helped, and important learning can happen. And with her magnificent art, created with polymer clay, acrylic glaze and other mixed media, Suzanne Del Rizzo takes us to Wishbone Street, into the parkette and into the snow, to bird-watch with Sami and Moe, to yearn for cannoli and churros shared between neighbours, and to feel those first snowflakes on our faces. We're there on Wishbone Street, watching as a world unfolds and enfolds, making one community out of many.
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| From Birds on Wishbone Street by Suzanne Del Rizzo |
November 10, 2021
Traitors Among Us
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Don't Tell the Nazis (2018) Trapped in Hitler's Web (2020) Traitors Among Us (2021) |
December 29, 2020
The Library Bus
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| From The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard |
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| From The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard |
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| From The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard |
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| From The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman, illus. by Gabrielle Grimard |
September 25, 2020
The Paper Boat: A Refugee Story
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| From The Paper Boat by Thao Lam |
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| From The Paper Boat by Thao Lam |
As mother and daughter escape through long grass, hiding from soldiers, they follow a parade of ants in the moonlight to the water's edge. But while they wait for Vietcong patrols to leave, the mother distracts the child by fashioning a paper boat from the wrapping around their food. When their escape boat arrives, the paper boat is left behind but discovered by ants who will begin their own escape by boat.
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| From The Paper Boat by Thao Lam |
The ants endure a multitude of hardships–undoubtedly mirroring what the child and her family bear on their own boat–from limited food and water, to calamitous weather and the capsizing of the boat before making landfall. Even as they help each other, some are lost, before they come together at a new table in a new place.
From the clues in Thao Lam's story, as well as her "Author's Note," it becomes evident that The Paper Boat is based on the author-illustrator's own family history of escape from Vietnam. This tale of migration is laced with trauma and danger and, by telling it through the parallel story about the ants, Thao Lam tells us so much without the reader witnessing the horrors of their fleeing. They, like the ants, come to make a new home, with the child together with both parents and even a new little one–though a photograph with incense on a side table suggests a grandmother who did not survive–in a city teeming with families undoubtedly with some of their own stories of migration.
By creating her story without text, Thao Lam invites the reader to delve into the story and make connections between the two families, one ant and one human, finding the similarities and differences in their plights and the relationships between and within. By using her collage art with images on cut paper layered to create depth and texture, Thao Lam brings us to a table, onto a boat, and into a city. Moreover, by using a limited palette, mostly sombre colours like dark blues and black with splashes of pink and golden for hopeful elements like the sun, the boats and food, Thao Lam makes us see where hope lies. Reassuringly, their new home is filled with the colour of promise.
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| From The Paper Boat by Thao Lam |
April 21, 2020
Story Boat
A young girl and her little brother begin a journey with family and others, travelling from one "here" to another "here" and finding comfort where they may in a cup, a blanket, and especially in a story of hope.
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| From Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, illus. by Rashin Kheiriyeh |
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| From Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, illus. by Rashin Kheiriyeh |
Here is our journeyImagine what it must be like for young children for whom the destination is a grey hole of nothingness, unable to anticipate where home may be or who will be there or what it will look like. Kyo Maclear's wonderful child's storytelling transports them to a new here.
That holds the warmth of a cup,
The softness of a blanket,
The brightness of a lamp,
The strength of a flower
And the openness of a story.
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| From Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, illus. by Rashin Kheiriyeh |
Kyo Maclear and Rashin Kheiriyeh's Story Boat may be a story of those seeking refuge and children finding ways to cope with uncertainty but this story transports and guides just like their story boat. For them and for us, stories can save and illuminate new ways.
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| From Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, illus. by Rashin Kheiriyeh |
March 17, 2020
My Name is Konisola
After an especially brutal attack by Konisola's uncle, their male guardian since the death of the girl's father, Konisola's mother stealthily grabs her child from school and they travel to Toronto. Their first bit of good luck comes when they meet Ayo, a fellow passenger, who gives them her address so they'd have something to tell the Canada Border Services agents. When Abimbola tells them "We need protection" and gives them the address, she is reassured that they will receive a notice about appearing before the Refugee Protection Division.
While staying with Ayo, Abimbola collapses and is taken to hospital. With Ayo's return to Nigeria, Konisola goes to stay with another woman who expects the girl to take care of the household and not go to school. After many weeks, Konisola contacts her mother's nurse, Colleen, and learns that her mother has advanced colon cancer. Though Konisola is ever hopeful that her mother will be with her soon, it becomes evident that Abimbola will never leave the hospital.
Colleen arranges for another nurse, Darlene, to take Konisola home with her. This is surprising to Konisola, as Darlene is white and already has her daughter Sara and grandson Kayden living with her. But over time, Darlene begins to feel like home.
As rife as Konisola's life is with worries of her ill mother and foreign living situation, some fortuitous circumstances ensure Konisola's safety, which is everything her mother wanted for her daughter. From meeting Ayo and then Colleen, and then Darlene, the right people found their way into Konisola's life. Her mother stays well enough to attend the refugee hearing and even make sure her wishes for Konisola's adoption are clear. At the hospital, Konisola meets Willson whose wife is also ill and this man, a retired lawyer, who was once the Children's Lawyer of Ontario, advises them through the legal adoption process.
From abusive circumstances in Nigeria to finding a new home with a new family, Konisola's story is one of angst and uncertainty. The child endures worries about her mother's health, the strangers in whose care she has been placed, the opportunities of going to school and being with other children and whether she'll ever be able to just be herself and a child. Imagine being a child and worrying that any pleasure you take in life, from play or laughter, is inappropriate. Even when she finally gets adopted–and there is a photo of an older Konisola and Darlene that proves the story is based in reality–she wonders, "Is it possible to find and lose a family at the very same moment?" (pg. 150)
Still Alisa Siegel, a true documentarian, develops Konisola's story with objectivity and distinction for her young audience. She tells it with accuracy from the perspective of a child who is often kept in the dark about adult problems but who shows the resilience and fortitude to endure. I suspect Konnie has done well for herself, heeding her mother's sage advice:
Your present circumstances do not determine where you go, they merely determine where you begin. (pg. 133)
June 18, 2019
A youngCanLit booklist for World Refugee Day: June 20
People fleeing their home countries to find shelter from both man-created and natural calamities is not new. From Jews fleeing Spain in the 1400s to avoid conversion to Christianity to Syrian refugees displaced because of a war which started in 2011, the plight of refugees is historical and contemporary. Though a day designated for refugees was only designated in 2000, the United Nations created the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in 1950 and its purview continues to expand in scope. I hope this subset of youngCanLit titles will help young readers appreciate the scope of experiences by those displaced by conflict, persecution and natural disaster in seeking new homes across borders.
PICTURE BOOKS
The Banana-Leaf Ball
Written by Katie Smith Milway
Illustrated by Shane W. Evans
Kids Can Press
32 pp.
Ages 8-12
2017
Reviewed here
From Far Away
Written by Robert Munsch
Illustrated by Michael Martchenko
Annick Press
24 pp.
Ages 4-7
1995
From Far Away (new edition)
Written by Robert Munsch and Saoussan Askar
Illustrated by Rebecca Green
Annick Press
32 pp.
Ages 4-7
2017
Mustafa
Written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay
Groundwood Books
40 pp.
Ages 4-8
2018
My Beautiful Birds
Written and illustrated by Suzanne Del Rizzo
Pajama Press
32 pp.
Ages 6-10
2017
Reviewed here
Out of the Blue
Written and illustrated by Wallace Edwards
Scholastic Canada
32 pp.
Ages 3-7
2018
Reviewed here
The Roses in My Carpets
Written by Rukhsana Khan
Illustrated by Ronald Himler
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
32 pp.
Ages 5-8
2004
Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey
Written by Margriet Ruurs
Artwork by Nizar Ali Badr
Orca Book Publishers
28 pp.
All ages
2016
Reviewed here
Written by Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh
Tundra
40 pp.
Ages 3-7
2020
Reviewed here
The Walking Stick
Written by Maxine Trottier
Illustrated by Annouchka Gravel Galouchko
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
22 pp.
Ages 6-9
1998
NOVELS AND SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Blue Gold
Written by Elizabeth Stewart
Annick Press
304 pp.
Ages 13+
2014
A Cage Without Bars
Written by Anne Dublin
Second Story Press
160 pp.
Ages 10-14
2018
Reviewed here
Dance of the Banished
Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Pajama Press
288 pp.
Ages 12+
2014
Reviewed here
The Garden
Written by Meghan Ferrari
Red Deer Press
109 pp.
Ages 12+
2018
Reviewed here
A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk
Written by Jan L. Cotes
Red Deer Press
274 pp.
Ages 12+
2010
Manuelito: A graphic novel
Written by Elisa Amado
Illustrated by Abraham Urias
Annick Press
91 pp.
Ages 13-17
2019
Masters of Silence
Written by Kathy Kacer
Annick Press
265 pp.
Ages 9-12
2019
Mud City
Written by Deborah Ellis
Groundwood Books
168 pp.
Ages 8-14
2003
Pieces of the Past : The Holocaust Diary of Rose Rabinowitz, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1948 (Dear Canada)
Written by Carol Matas
Scholastic Canada
168 pp.
Ages 9-12
2013
Refuge Cove
Written by Lesley Choyce
Orca Book Publishers
128 pp.
Ages 12+
2002
Room for One More
by Monique Polak
Kar-Ben
232 pp.
Ages 12+
October 2019
Seeking Refuge
Written by Irene Watts
Illustrated by Kathryn Shoemaker
Tradewind Books
136 pp.
Ages 8-14
2016
Shanghai Escape
Written by Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press
240 pp.
Ages 9-12
2013
Walking Home
Written by Eric Walters
Doubleday Canada
304 pp.
Ages 9-13
2014
The Whirlwind
Written by Carol Matas
Orca Book Publishers
244 pp.
Ages 12+
2007
NON-FICTION
Children of War: Voices of Iraqi refugees
Written by Deborah Ellis
Groundwood
128 pp.
Ages 8-14
2009
Adrift at Sea: A Vietnamese Boy’s Story of Survival
Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch with Tuan Ho
Illustrated by Brian Deines
Pajama Press
40 pp.
Ages 6+
2016
Reviewed here
The Bite of the Mango
Written by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McLelland
Annick Press
216 pp.
Ages 13+
2008
A Cave in the Clouds: A Young Woman's Escape from ISIS
Written by Badeeah Hassan Ahmed with Susan Elizabeth McClelland
Annick Press
232 pp.
Ages 16+
2019
Rescuing the Children: The Story of the Kindertransport
Written by Deborah Hodge
Tundra
64 pp.
Ages 8-4
2012
The Ship to Nowhere: On Board the Exodus
Written by Rona Arato
Second Story Press
176 pp.
Ages 9-14
2016
Stay Silent: A Refugee's Escape from Colombia
Written by Natalie Hyde
Clockwise Press
144 pp.
Ages 10-15
2016
Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees
Written by Mary Beth Leatherdale
Illustrated by Eleanor Shakespeare
Annick Press
64 pp.
Ages 10-14
2017
To Hope and Back: The Journey of the St. Louis
Written by Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press
204 pp.
Ages 11-14
2011
Too Young to Escape: A Vietnamese Girl Waits to be Reunited with her Family
Written by Van Ho with Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Pajama Press
152 pp.
Ages 8-12
2018
Reviewed here
What is a Refugee?
Written and illustrated by Elise Gravel
Schartz & Wade
32 pp.
Ages 8-10
September 2019
Where Will I Live?
Written by Rosemary McCarney
Second Story Press
24 pp.
Ages 5-9
2017
Reviewed here





























































