Rez Kid

Written by Andrea Landry

Illustrated by Isabelle Fassler

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-1125-3

32 pp.

Ages 4–7

September 2025 

 

When kids shout out labels or taunts that are meant to hurt or to expose personal vulnerabilities such as poverty or physical appearance, it can be to bully and demean. But, though taunts of "Rez Kid" on the school bus are hurtful, the main character in Andrea Landry and Isabella Fassler's picture book focuses on what living on the reserve means to her and how she can help others understand what being a rez kid is like.

From Rez Kid, written by Andrea Landry, illustrated by Isabella Fassler

Being singled out as a rez kid makes this child's heart sink as she makes her way to the back of the school bus to return home at the end of the school day. But as the bus gets closer to home, her spirits are lifted. For her, being home on the rez means being with her mom and beading together. It's the smell of sweetgrass and sage.

From Rez Kid, written by Andrea Landry, illustrated by Isabella Fassler

It's picking sage, porcupine root and dandelion for medicine with her Nóhkom. It's riding horses with her Moshum. It's enjoying tea with her aunty and harvesting vegetables out of the garden. And it's listening to their wise suggestions about how to deal with the name calling. They suggest she show the other kids how to be kind, how to learn something new, how to be confident, and how to be generous. With every heartfelt interaction with her family and her own kindheartedness—she prays for those with hard hearts—this child turns taunts into understanding and appreciation.

From Rez Kid, written by Andrea Landry, illustrated by Isabella Fassler

Though the verbal jabs at the child are meant to hurt, she is able to be mindful about seeing beyond the bus ride and embrace the rez as a place that she loves. It is a place of trees, lakes and land, and it is one of family and love. This child knows what goodness is in her life by virtue of life on the rez but, in order to resolve the bullying she endures, she must help others see it too. By recognizing that their ignorance is the root of the bullying, she invites them to visit with her and her family on the rez to see the wonderful life she has there. 

I show them the home of my ancestors.

The home of my family.

I show them the beads,

the medicines,

the horses,

the vegetables from my aunty's garden.

My home.

Andrea Landry, an Anishinaabe who now lives on Poundmaker Cree Nation, shares some background into reserves (or reservations as they are called in the U.S.), including the challenges endured because of broken promises by settler governments. But, as she does in Rez Kid, Andrea Landry focuses on the communities that Indigenous families are creating despite these difficulties, and invites readers, like the child does to her bus mates, to see the rez not as a less-than-favourable place but as a home of heritage and compassion. The rez is not a place of less but a place of different and more.

From Rez Kid, written by Andrea Landry, illustrated by Isabella Fassler

While the school bus ride has some cruel moments, Toronto's Isabella Fassler gives us the warmth of brightness in her artwork, rendered in pencil crayons and digitally finished.  And everywhere she incorporates elements important to Indigenous culture, whether it's the brightest of beads becoming flower earrings, a ribbon skirt, or the bannock that is shared. When Isabella Fassler lets the light of the child's pride in her rez home shine, even that dark bus is enlivened. From swirls of colours, stars and waves of flowers and plants, Isabella Fassler gives movement and spirit to rez life and those who make their homes there.

While I know that all schools will not enjoy the presence of rez kids, I hope that Rez Kid, the book, will start a discussion about different cultures, traditions, families and the understanding which we should all show those who are different than us. This child and others including Andrea Landry and her children see the good in living on a reserve. For any child, rez or not, who is lives differently, be proud. Your experiences are incomparable and that makes them all the more special, especially when they abound in love and compassion.

Monsters: The Reckoner, Book Two

Written by David A. Robertson

HighWater Press

978-1-55379-748-7

246 pp.

Ages 14+

October 2018

Trust comes from truth. (pg. 199)

In Strangers, the first book in David A. Robertson's The Reckoner series, Cole Harper returned to the Cree community of Wounded Sky, a reserve constantly in recovery from tragedy. At that time, he'd been lured back by Coyote a.k.a. Choch with whom Cole had made a deal when the supernatural being helped save Cole's two friends, Eva and Brady, from a school fire ten years earlier that killed so many others. Though treated as a pariah, Cole helped stop a murder spree and provided a cure, with his unique blood, for a flu affecting the community. Now, in Monsters, that trickster Choch expects Cole to stick around and try to expose the truths about the mysterious experimentation that had taken place at the research facility and help heal a community.

Cole's first step is to recover the files he'd discovered in Strangers that revealed how he and others had been test subjects at the former Mihko Laboratories research facility. However, with Mihko returning to the community and quarantining all those who had been cured but now were looking worse, and Victor, a local resident, and Jayney, a spirit girl, talking about a monster or bogeyman or perhaps even Upayokwitigo, Cole's task becomes more complicated. Who is this creature? Why are the "flu" patients looking sick again? Why are guards posted at the clinic and the research facility? With the residents of Wounded Sky vacillating between acclaiming Cole as a hero and a criminal, Cole is finding it hard to learn anything. And did I mention how flummoxed he is about his feelings, particularly for best friend Eva, who has a boyfriend, and for another girl, Pam? Cole's probably feeling like it sucks to be him. No wonder his anxiety is out of control and he's struggling between choosing to take meds and trying to cope without. But can he quash that debilitating anxiety sufficiently to save himself and Wounded Sky from monsters of so many manifestations?

"...if there's somethin' that evil, there's gotta be somethin' that good." (pg. 236)

There is a lot of evil hanging around Wounded Sky and, at this time of year, many will think those monsters will all be vicious creatures that inspire fear. But, though there are a lot of monsters in Monsters, not all are physical beings. Some are inner demons, like Cole's overwhelming anxiety founded in his past but pervading his present and undoubtedly ready to affect his future. But they are also the community's fears that it will be unable to recover from its tragedies and that it's in danger of losing its identity. Those are monsters like no other. Fortunately, there is still much goodness and strength in Cole and the community, and readers will be hopeful that there are some happy endings for both.

David A. Robertson continues the thriller he began in Strangers by setting up new mysteries built on those established in Book One. However, although Monsters may answer a few questions, David A. Robertson leaves the reader still wondering about that research facility and what they did to Wounded Sky's inhabitants, past and present, and hoping that Cole will not lose himself in his struggle to find the answers.

Still, without spoiling the ending, readers need to be prepared for David A. Robertson's plot twist. A monster may be revealed, seemingly tying up a plot line, but Monsters closes out with a shock and a gasp that will have readers waiting for Book Three in the series, Ghosts, to learn how Cole, the Reckoner, is able to make peace for himself and Wounded Sky.  Spring 2019 can't come soon enough.

 

••••••••••••

Just a quick note that

MONSTERS

launches

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

7 p.m.

at

McNally Robinson

Grant Park in the Atrium

Winnipeg, MB

and

will be hosted by

Katherena Vermette

A portion of book sales from that night will be donated to

Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba

Details here

Fire Song

Written by Adam Garnet Jones

Annick Press

978-1-55451-977-4

232 pp.

Ages 14+

March 2018

Maybe the game is rigged and the only way to win is by giving up. (pg. 115)

So much about Shane's life hurts that it's hard to find the faith he needs to help endure it.  It should be full of hope and promise. He's finishing his final year of school and anticipating a move to Toronto for post-secondary. He's smart, given the nickname of "College".  He has a pretty girlfriend, Tara, who adores him. But much is a facade because underneath it all, Shane is a mess of grief, confusion and guilt.

Fire Song begins the day of the memorial for Shane's younger sister Destiny who took her own life six weeks earlier. His mother Jackie is despondent, unwilling to leave Destiny's room, even with the constant ministrations of elder Evie. Fortunately, his Anishinaabe reserve community, the only home he's every known, is tight and supportive.

His heart beats under this ground and the roots of the trees spread through his lungs. (pg. 14)

But Shane has secrets and burdens that are disturbing his potentially bright future. He has just learned that his funding for school isn't available from his reserve because he is registered with his father's reserve, though his father is long passed and Shane never lived there. School wants a hefty deposit but Jackie hasn't worked since Destiny's death. Moreover, the roof on their house is disintegrating and, though the materials are in at the store to repair it, his family does not have the money for both the roof and his schooling. But Shane's most emotional struggle comes with balancing his growing sexual relationship with David, Evie's grandson, and his public romantic involvement with Tara, a teen eager to find a new life away from an abusive father and a private writer of introspective prose and poetry.

How can it be
That the smell of home and
the smell of lonely are the same? (pg. 70) 

As Shane tries to keep a roof over their heads and prompt his mother into action, hide his relationship with David while craving it desperately, make some money in a community with few opportunities, and grieve the loss of his sister, his life continues to fray and threaten his future. It's all about choices and not one of them is easy.

Adam Garnet Jones tells Shane's painful story in such expressive prose and poetry, the latter courtesy of Tara's writing, that the reader is carried on a wave from anguish to heartbreak to misery. Shane's story is a tragedy on so many levels: family, school, community, love. But, in each of those circumstances, there are still slivers of buoyancy: a mother who loves him but has abandoned him in her grief; acceptance to school in Toronto, though the money is not at hand; a community of friends who support Shane but would not accept his being a two-spirited person; and a boy and a girl who love him but confound his life's plan.  Adam Garnet Jones may not pretty up Shane's story but he does bring a fitting conclusion to it. I won't tell you if the roof gets fixed or if Shane goes to school in Toronto or if he chooses David or Tara, but I can tell you that things get worse before they get better but better they do. With acceptance of his choices and the life he needs, Shane survives another day to love and be loved.

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Fire Song is based on a film by the same name, written and directed by Adam Garnet Jones and produced by Fire Song Films Inc. and Big Soul Productions Inc. I encourage readers to check out the trailer for Fire Song which premiered at TIFF in 2015.

Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/1HyRNI9kKkA on August 6, 2018. 

Uploaded by TIFF Trailers on August 13, 2015.