Malaika's Costume

by Nadia L. Hohn

Illustrated by Irene Luxbacher

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-754-2

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

March 2016

Bring in the sunshine of the islands and the colours of Carnival and Trinidad and Tobago with Malaika's Costume which launches tomorrow in Toronto.

Young Malaika is anticipating her first Carnival without her mother who has moved to Canada to make a better life for Malaika and Grandma.  She is hopeful that her mother will be sending money for a costume, as promised.  But a letter arrives that has Grandma pulling out a “tired costume. It smell funny and it dusty.  The costume squeeze my belly and some of the sequins fall off.  I feel hot and itchy.”  Distraught, Malaika runs through the familiar streets of her community until a kaiso song reminds her of her grandmother and that being poor does not mean being without dignity.

With donated scraps of fabric from Ms. Chin the tailor lady and Grandma’s help, an astounding peacock costume of red, blue, jade and purple, with gold and more is created, ultimately bringing the Carnival to her mother in Canada.

Nadia L. Hohn has given Malaika’s Costume a rhythm that evokes the busyness and warmth of a community that nurtures and supports.  Even the young girl’s initial disappointment is tempered with the affection of her Grandma and the realization that she has so many good things in her life.  And the text, rich with dialogue of patois, ensures that the atmosphere was created for the ear as well as the eye.  Irene Luxbacher, whose own Mr. Frank (Groundwood, 2014) introduced the illustrator’s collage artwork, complements that text with brilliant and bold art that bombards the senses.  The colours are lush, the textures surreal and the balance of characters and setting make Malaika’s Costume as much a place to visit as a story to be told.

From Malaika's Costume by Nadia L. Hohn, illus. by Irene Luxbacher

Small Bones

Written by Vicki Grant
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-45980-653-5
256 pp.
Ages 12+
September 29, 2015
Reviewed from audiobook
978-1-4598-1098-3

We’ve probably all wanted to reinvent ourselves but Dorothy (Dot) Blythe probably has more reasons than most.  With the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girl burned down and the eldest seven girls being sent away, with only a few scraps to help them determine their heritage, Dot doesn’t have that much to hold onto.  So it’s not surprising that when, dressed in a fine suit donated by the wealthy Mrs. Welsh, Dot does not reveal her orphan background to the young man, Eddie Nicholson, whom she meets on the train.  Eddie helps get her to the Dunbrae Arms, a lodge where she needs to get a job, after having been robbed of her money and finding her destination, a men’s clothing store named Howell’s of Buckminster, closed.  Seems the town of Buckminster is her go-to place for answers, being the name on the cashmere overcoat in which she had been swaddled when deposited at the Home.  Other than a few barely legible initials and a tiny silver spoon with a crest, Dot doesn’t have much to go on.  So with no money and Howell’s closed, she gets a job a a seamstress at the Dunbrae Arms.  And there she pursues her history, asking questions of the snarly Mrs. Smees, who runs the housekeeping for the lodge, and Bas Simmonds, the laundry man, as well as Eddie who seems to know everyone and begins to spend time with Dot.

But, it is evident that Dot’s small frame and face remind others of someone but the confusion  or even anger her presence evokes is never clear to her.   And then she is invited to a summer party to commemorate ByeBye Baby, the unexplained discovery of a tiny baby in the woods seventeen years earlier.  A baby that was seen but disappeared before help arrived.  Knowing she must have been that baby, Dot encourages Eddie to pursue the story–he is a summer reporter for the Buckminster Gleaner–so that she too might learn everything she can about that baby and the mystery surrounding it.  And I haven’t even mentioned the small bones that begin to appear around the seamstress’ cabin where Dot rooms.  Fragile, incomplete, and mysterious bones, probably those of birds.

Vicki Grant weaves a loaded story about a pregnancy that was kept hidden and a birth that was obscured from small-town gossip and yet so important as Dot’s seemingly insignificant origins.  The cover up about her birth may have been haphazard but it was effective in keeping the truth concealed.  And yet many individuals knew a little something about the event.  Some knew better than to talk about it, afraid of ruffling feathers, but others just didn’t realize that they knew anything important.  With astute questioning and biding her time, Dot is able to piece her story together from a patchwork of details, and though her story may have been a tad frayed around the edges–she does jump to a few incorrect assumptions–it is heart-warmingly trimmed with a happy ending or two.  In fact, Vicki Grant, with her light-touch and say-it-straight writing manner, makes sure that it’s “Better than any fantasy” (pg. 239) that Dot could ever have imagined.

Mr. Frank

by Irene Luxbacher

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-435-0

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

September 2014

Mr. Frank is a tailor, and one who has served many people through many decades by creating a wide variety of clothes, and Mr. Frank, the book, begins with the excitement of receiving a special "order for an outfit that made all the others seem rather dull."(pg. 6) From Mr. Frank's hand to the forehead as he receives the call, the order seems overwhelming. But the elderly tailor takes his time thinking about the fabrics and the design, the style and the fit, as well as comfort and playfulness.  This man is more than a tailor, he is a creator of dreams, albeit one with needle and thread.

And as Mr. Frank makes his decisions, he takes several trips down memory lane, first recalling his mending of uniforms from more than 60 years ago when he was but a child, to the suits he tailored as a young man, and then the wild outfits of the 1960's and 1970's.  As fashions and Mr. Frank's tailoring change with the decades, so too does Mr. Frank, going a little more grey and a little more perplexed by the trends, but always accommodating, and taking on a variety of orders.  But it is evident that Mr. Frank will be closing up shop after today, after he completes this most special of orders.  It will be his pièce de résistance.

Irene Luxbacher was inspired by her own father's tailoring to write Mr. Frank, and the respect and admiration she extends is evident in the depth of her illustrations.  Though there is an understated melancholy about Mr. Frank, as he wraps up his tailoring career with one last special order, Irene Luxbacher emphasizes the textures and colours of a full life of creating fashions for others.  From the patterned wallpaper and rug and the textured fabrics, to the bold patterns of the mod clothes of the 1960's, the details all tell of a richness of a life well lived.  There are collages of photographs with magazine pictures, drawings and pattern pieces that I suspect once graced the walls of the real Mr. Frank's tailor shop, as I believe do the wall photos in the residence to which he delivers this last outfit.  In a lovely homage to her father and to the relationships between the generations, Irene Luxbacher has created her own masterpiece for the ages, one that she and her readers will look upon fondly for many years too.