Kah-Lan The Adventurous Sea Otter: Book Launch (Vancouver and Kelowna)

Celebrate 
Sea Otter Awareness Week, 

Science Literacy Week, 

and 

the launch of children’s author Karen Autio’s new book!

Kah-Lan, the Adventurous Sea Otter

Written by Karen Autio

Illustrated by Sheena Lott

Sono Nis Press

978-1-55039-244-9

64 pp.

Ages 7-12

September, 2015

on Saturday, September 26, 2015

10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

at

Vancouver Aquarium

845 Avison Way

Vancouver, BC

AND

on Saturday, October 3, 2015

2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

at

Okanagan Regional Library

1380 Ellis Street

Kelowna, BC

Special to this event:

Contest for students!

A free author presentation 

for the school or homeschool co-op 

with the most students attending the event

Door prize for teachers!

Draw for a reading circle set of 6 copies 

(donated by Sono Nis Press)
for teachers who attend

Both events include:

• a reading by Karen Autio

• a Q & A with Karen Autio, and 

• a book signing.

Here's the description from Sono Nis Press, the book's publisher, retrieved here:

Kah-Lan, a young sea otter, is hungry. He is sure there are big crabs and sea urchins, his favourite foods, around the point, but his mother won’t let him out of her sight. Then, one day, Kah-Lan sees his chance. He and his friend Yamka race to the point and soon they are swept into danger. At first, the challenges are familiar: strong currents, crashing waves, the open ocean, and Orca, who is hungry too. Then, as the sea otters travel unfamiliar waters, they encounter new and strange dangers: two-legged furless creatures; fearsome, noisy, smelly things that pull log islands; and fish-filled webs that threaten to tangle them up and drag them down. All the while, they struggle to find enough food to keep going. Will they ever get back home? 

The heroic travels of two dynamic and realistic sea otter characters are a wonderful introduction to sea otters, and to the human activities that threaten them. Warm and appealing illustrations by Sheena Lott and a triumphant ending will inspire readers to learn more about these remarkable animals, helped by the factual notes and resources provided by author Karen Autio, who has loved sea otters from first sight.  

This is the fourth book by popular author Autio, and her first foray into illustrated chapter books and natural history.

Blue Mountain

by Martine Leavitt

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-423-7

165 pp.

Ages 8-12

November, 2014

The struggle for survival may bring readers of adventure stories regularly to the brink of their seats, anticipating the worst and hopeful for the best outcome but always calmed by the fictional nature of the story.  But, though a fictionalized account of a herd of bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains, Blue Mountain reads as authentic and harrowing as any biography of an explorer or a leader making life-and-death decisions for others.  Blue Mountain may be about bighorn sheep but the story of Tuk and his herd mates is a heart-rending tale of life on the edge, an account of the struggle to survive in both the natural and man-made worlds.

The story of Tuk, a male lamb, begins on the lambing cliffs with the other new lambs– Ovis, Rim, Nai, Mouf, Sto and Dall–learning the story about the mountain's gifts to the animals.  Lord Denu, the first bighorn, was gifted with tricky feet, strong jaws, and powerful horns, providing his descendants with the moniker of peaceable, since they did not fight but rather stayed in herds that helped protect their numbers.  When the lambs and their mothers return to the main herd at the summer range, meeting the yearlings and the barren ewes, Kenir the matriarch declares that Tuk is reminiscent of the strong lambs of many years ago and has been gifted to them by the mountain to help keep the herd from dying.  This is corroborated by his vision of a great blue mountain, so rarely seen that it is called story mountain.

This is a heavy responsibility placed on Tuk and, though he suffers ridicule from a yearling named Balus and others, one that he does not take lightly or is convinced belongs to him, especially after he fails to save a lamb from an eagle.  But when a mother puma and her kitten put the herd at risk, Tuk uses his lamb horns to bat the kitten off a ledge, resulting in its death and its mother's vow of revenge.  Ultimately, the king of the rams instructs Tuk,

"You must find a way west from the winter valley to blue mountain before she hunts again."..."Son, it is the only way to save the herd." (pg. 38)

And so begin Tuk's journeys, the first being one of personal growth and learning so that he might lead the second one, a trek through inhospitable territories to one where the herd might thrive.  Enduring food shortages, threats from wolves, men with shotguns, monster machines, and unusual altercations with a wolverine, a bear and an otter, Tuk brings them to a place where

Tuk saw that the herd would always be, and that he had been part of the always. (pg. 159)

He couldn't have asked for a better legacy.

Martine Leavitt tells of her father, James Webster, and his love for the natural world and particularly the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that he studied.  Blue Mountain is her own story based on his notes of observations of these majestic animals through the seasons and years.

My story became a very different thing than his beautiful and perfectly accurate rendering, but we tell the stories we can. (pg. 164)

As Tuk succeeds so nobly after questioning his own leadership as a bighorn sheep, I believe Martine Leavitt has honoured her father's research and reconfigured it into a splendidly beautiful and accurate saga.  I'm sure he couldn't have dreamed of a finer gift.

Willow Finds A Way

by Lana Button

Illustrated by Tania Howells

Kids Can Press

978-1-55453-842-3

32 pp.

Ages 3-7 

March 2013

I know that school has only been out for a few days but with a relevant and delightful story like Willow Finds a Way, it really doesn't matter whether it's read in school or out of school.  When a child finds the means to deal with a classmate who coerces loyalty with the carrot of a birthday party, this life lesson could be useful for any one of the millions of circumstances in which people behave badly. If an author provides a strategy for young people to deal successfully with such situations, I say we publicize it as much as we can, especially if it is as subtle and non-preachy as it is in Willow Finds a Way.

In Lana Button and Tania Howell's sequel to Willow's Whispers (Kids Can Press, 2010), Willow's classmate Kristabelle announces that she will be having a fantastic birthday party and she has made a list of those who are invited.  Willow and her classmates are relieved to see that on a pink sparkly paper Kristabelle has listed all their names.  But Kristabelle doesn't just make a list.  She holds it over everyone as a bribe to encourage them to do just as she asks:  play on the climber, sit at her table, allow her to be line leader, wear pink.  If anyone doesn't comply, Kristabelle crosses their name off her pink sparkly list.  Around her, children want to do different activities, sit other places, wear different colours and enjoy their own choices, but no one comes to the aid of those whose names are removed so publicly from the list.  As in Willow's Whispers, shy Willow must find her voice again and do what she believes is right and she does, all without hurting anyone's pride.

The austere text and simple drawings by Lana Button and Tania Howells respectively acknowledge the commonality of the circumstances of Willow Finds a Way.  No child wants to be the ostracized by his or her peers, experience friendlessness, or feel coerced instead of compromising. Likewise for adults for whom these same circumstances could be witnessed in any workplace.  Without shaming Kristabelle, Willow finds a way to send her the message that it is not OK to treat others as she does by threatening to take names off her list.  By allowing Kristabelle to examine the situation and amend it herself, every one can keep their frail egos intact.

It's a rare day when you'll read a review of a children's book in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe & Mail, nowadays.  At one time, a "Children's Books" column could be found every second Saturday in their Books section, sharing reviews of a number of children's books, Canadian and otherwise.  So imagine my surprise to see the cover of Willow Finds a Way on a Book page in the June 22, 2013 edition of The Globe and Mail!  A delightful contribution of reviews by author Andrew Kaufman (Born Weird, Random House Canada, 2012) and his children, Frida and Phoenix, starts with Willow Finds a Way.  To have this book win the attention of Andrew Kaufman and company in this rare promotion of children's books should tell readers how special this book is in challenging children to see beyond the obvious and stand up to injustice, even if it is only in regards to a birthday party.  But, as you may recall from your youngest days, birthday parties are a very, very big deal to the young.  By solving these kinds of problems, young readers may be more resilient, all courtesy of Willow, Lana and Tania, when more significant problems arise.