Afikomen

Written by Tziporah Cohen

Illustrated by Yaara Eshet

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-606-6

32 pp.

Ages 3-6

March 2023

 

Soon the Jewish community will be celebrating Passover (April 5-13 this year) and many non-Jews know little of the traditions or stories that accompany the holiday. With no words, Afikomen invites us to attend a Passover Seder and witness Tziporah Cohen's family's traditions, but it also transports readers to ancient Egypt via time slip to witness Moses' beginnings.

From Afikomen by Tziporah Cohen, illus. by Yaara Eshet

As the family gathers at the table to read the Haggadah, the guidebook to the Passover Seder, i.e., the Passover religious service and dinner, the three matzah breads rest in front of the host. He takes the middle one, breaks it in half, and places the larger piece in a special bag to become the afikomen. The afikomen will be the last food eaten at the seder meal but, depending on the traditions of the family, the afikomen will play a big role before that end. In this family, the children "steal" the afikomen, and will return it for small gifts. First, though, these three children and their dog, hide beneath the table skirt and are transported to ancient Egypt.

From Afikomen by Tziporah Cohen, illus. by Yaara Eshet

 

There they become part of the Jewish story of the Exodus from Egypt, the basis for Passover. As Pharaoh had decreed that all Jewish baby boys were to be killed, Moses' mother saved him by placing him in a wicker basket and sending him down the Nile. The contemporary children witness this, and like Moses' sister who watches over him as he travels down the river, they ensure that he is safe from calamity like getting stuck in the reeds, taken by playing Egyptian boys, or accosted by a crocodile, so that he might be found by the Pharaoh's daughter and saved. It is only at this point that the children return to their own time and deliver the afikomen–with an unexpected twist–to end the Seder.

From Afikomen by Tziporah Cohen, illus. by Yaara Eshet

I knew so little of the story of Passover and nothing of the afikomen, so I am grateful to Toronto's Tziporah Cohen for giving us a wordless story and an extensive Author's Note to help educate. While a time slip story is unusual for a picture book and especially one with a non-fiction element, Tziporah Cohen makes it work. Not only did I learn about the afikomen and the Passover Seder, but I also learned that Jews of different origins, e.g., Ashkenazic and Sephardic, may differ in their traditions regarding the afikomen. 

 

Moreover,  I learned that even a holy celebration with a sombre history can have joy, and even playfulness. That comes through in Yaara Eshet's watercolour and ink illustrations which show us family who come together. The table laden with wine, the Seder plates, and texts, and the extended family members of varying ages makes for a colourful and textured display. With the expressive kids and dog, registering both the fun of stealing the afikomen and their surprise once dropped in ancient Egypt, as well as the bright landscapes of flowing water, golden sand, and lush riparian vegetation, Yaara Eshet gives a richness to the wordless story. Tziporah Cohen may give us story without words, but Yaara Eshet gives the content colour and texture, and together they give us a visual narrative that teaches and captivates.

Flashback

by Simon Rose
Tyche Books
978-1-928025-23-8
155 pp.
Ages 8-12
2015

Max seems like a typical fourteen-year-old boy: he hangs out with his friends; he has to endure parenting, or lack thereof, from his father; and he keeps secrets, especially the one that would make him look like he was going crazy.  You see, Max keeps seeing this boy, about his age, with a thick mop of black hair watching him and then disappearing.  And Max continues getting these bizarre images of being restrained on an operating table and a hypodermic needle and a girl with green hair.  It’s all very weird and frightening.

Since the images began at the cemetery when he’d stood beside the stones of Jonathan Dexter and his son David, Max does a little research.  He meets a man named John Carrington, a retired private investigator, who had been involved in a case twenty years earlier when the fourteen-year-old son, David, of politician Jonathan Dexter went missing.  With the tip from a psychic, the boy’s remains were found a few years later, just prior to Jonathan Dexter’s own death in a fire.  But just when Carrington found a connection to other missing persons’ cases, the whole investigation was shut down.

The next day, Max is shocked to learn that Carrington has been found dead in the park.  Slipping into the private investigator’s office while renovations are being done, Max uncovers documents and photos related to the Dexter case, including a connection to a researcher named Aleksander Kovac. Following the clues revealed within, Max makes the acquaintance of the psychic named Deanna Hastings and the teen bizarrely time slips into David’s life twenty years earlier.  And from there and then, Max tries to solve the mystery of David and Kovac and a weird headache-causing young man named Kane.

Flashback is an action-packed adventure perfect for middle grade readers.  Young readers will enjoy the plot-driven story rife with the supernatural, bad guys, evil experimentation, and time slip. While I found some of the plot progressions to be a little contrived, I think younger readers will appreciate the fast pace and suspenseful thrill of learning what really happened to David Dexter courtesy of a middle-grade sleuth.

The Clouded Sky: Book 2 of the Earth & Sky Trilogy

by Megan Crewe

Razorbill

978-0-670-06813-5

343 pp.

Ages 13+

May 2015

When YA author Megan Crewe introduced her newest trilogy with Earth & Sky last fall, I don’t think she could have anticipated the positive response she would get to it.  While still speculative fiction like her wildly-popular Fallen World series, Earth & Sky took us into true science fiction, with teen Skylar meeting and helping alien Traveler Win to procure the parts of a weapon that would destroy the time field generator that his fellow Kemyates had been using for millennia to experiment with Earth.  When we last encountered Skylar, she had agreed to accompany Win and other interplanetary rebels–leader Thlo with Isis, Mako, Pavel and Jule–on a spaceship headed to their space station home orbiting their devastated planet of Kemya. There, Skylar would assist the rebels in recreating the weapon–based on her memories and the parts she and Win discovered and the addition of the power source kolzo–so that it could be used to destroy the time field generator.

But, though she is trying to help, Skylar’s presence is not easily explained or even acceptable, until they contrive to have Skylar play the role of Jule’s pet, a common acquisition by richer Kemyates.  Win isn’t pleased but he accepts this as the means by which Skylar can evade the scrutiny of the Enforcers and still be safe, even allowing her the freedom to learn Kemyate and practise navigation simulations in the privacy of Jule’s private apartment.

However, two unexpected circumstances begin to alter Skylar’s contribution to the mission.  First, several mishaps suggest that there is a traitor amongst the group and Thlo charges her with making observations of the rebel group.  And then, unbeknownst to Win with whom Skylar had been becoming close but now sees only occasionally, Jule and Skylar become romantically involved.

Skylar is questioning everything she is seeing and hearing and experiencing.  And her increasing fluency with their language enables her to overhear much which would normally be kept from her.  She needs to know who is sabotaging the mission and putting herself and others at risk.  And who can she trust?  What about Win and what about Jule?  Skylar may be a teen trying to help save her world and put things to right but she needs to learn how to navigate more than just a jet-pod.  Does Win still care about her?  Is her relationship with Jule, Win’s nemesis, a consequence of her “pet” status, as is not uncommon between Kemyate owners and their Earthlings, or something special?

The Clouded Sky may refer to the hazy violet-red clouds that contaminate the air over the “vacant, dust-strewn wasteland” (pg. 343) that is the uninhabitable Kemya but it is even more applicable to the murkiness of truth and deception that Skylar must steer through if she is to accomplish her one true purpose: to stop Kemyate scientists from continuing to alter Earth’s history and to degrade the fabric of her world.  She is strong and focused and, though she allows herself to enjoy the closeness of an unexpected romance and of caring friendships with several rebel Kemyates, Skylar knows the dangers that lie within and outside, and that her role in everything is very tenuous.  But that’s how Megan Crewe writes it.  She keeps the readers wondering and worrying and expecting and disbelieving throughout the story, never giving any hints to her startling ending.  But Megan Crewe has always kept us on the edge of our reading chairs, and she does so again in The Clouded Sky.  And that final line will undoubtedly shock you as it did me.  Luckily, I’ve seen photos of the third book in the series, A Sky Unbroken, which will be out soon and I know Megan Crewe will be at this weekend’s Eden Mills Writers’ Festival so here’s hoping we know sooner, rather than later, the upshot of all that was Earth & Sky and The Clouded Sky.

Earth & Sky

I'm very pleased to be participating in the Earth & Sky Blog Tour organized by Vikki VanSickle at Razorbill to promote a new series by Megan Crewe, author of the Fallen World Trilogy.  Though taking her writing into a different dimension (both temporally and spatially), Megan Crewe has stayed true to her speculative fiction roots and to her young adult fans and I'm excited to share my review of Earth & Sky here with you now.

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by Megan Crewe

Razorbill Canada

978-0-670068128

336 pp.

Ages 13+

Release date: October 28, 2014

We all have gut instincts that tell us when something is wrong, though we might never listen to those warnings, but when teen Skylar gets the feeling that something is "wrong, wrong, wrong", a refrain she gets in her head periodically, she's actually perceiving subtle changes in her environment that no one else seems to pick up on.  For example, when her law class visits the courthouse, she sees a bomb going off and everyone dying, including herself, but it doesn't actually happen.  Strange thing is that it did.  But through a time shift, it was prevented from happening this time, so Skylar could live.

Sounds freaky to me and I can't even imagine why Skylar is not freaking out when a young man named Win shares all this information with her, although it is nice to have someone understand what she's been experiencing and not think she's crazy.

Every now and then, you go somewhere, or you see something, and you feel it doesn't make sense.  It should have been different somehow.  But there's no obvious reason why, and no one else seems to notice. (pg. 32)

Perhaps the freaky part is that Win identifies himself as a Traveler from his planet, Kemya, and tells her that beings from his planet have been coming to Earth for thousands of years and manipulating situations to learn more, using a time field generator that allows them to travel between the present and the past.  Problem is that there are some, like Win, who believe that this experimentation has to stop, especially since the world is becoming less stable with every shift.  Using a weapon, which their leader Jeanant has hidden on Earth, the group intends to take down the time field and let Earth be.  But the security team of Enforcers from Kemya is after them, determined to stop their plan.

Though he is breaking all protocols engaging with an Earthling, Win believes that Skylar's ability to tell when the past has been shifted could help them find Jeanant and the weapon parts.  Skylar agrees to helping, knowing that for "the first time ever, I might have the chance to set the wrongness right." (pg. 62) Using a very cool time cloth, which can function like a laptop and a time-machine, dropping them anywhere at any time (including visits to the Colosseum in 81 AD, China in 938 AD and twelve years earlier when Skylar's seventeen-year-old brother Noam disappeared), Win and Skylar begin a tenuous temporal and emotional journey.

Unfortunately, being very different beings, Win and Skylar cannot always understand the other's motivations, especially since they have personal agendas that they are reluctant to share fully.  But their growing appreciation for the trials each has endured and the companionship they enjoy is bringing Win and Skylar closer.  Now if they just could get all the weapon pieces, live through attacks by the Enforcers and an assortment of history's warriors, and start being more forthcoming with each other, there really may be a chance for them to make things right, all around.

I thought Megan Crewe's first series, the Fallen World Trilogy, was larger than life.  Its premise of a world falling apart with the explosion of a fatal epidemic that pits survivors against each other is overwhelmingly scary, and Megan Crewe's exploration of the human psyche and society's response to dire circumstances is very real.  In Earth & Sky, the surreal fate of the world is in question and Megan Crewe is still able to scrutinize how we might respond when faced with the option of doing the big good for everyone or just helping ourselves.  By extending the whole concept of social justice beyond Earth, Megan Crewe has taken a universal theme of meeting an obligation to society into the galaxy and suggests the possibility of aliens considering their role on other planets, and perhaps our's on theirs.  The fate of Earth may be up to Skylar and the aliens' time shift generator in the sky but the fates of Skylar, Win, and their worlds are safely in the hands of Megan Crewe and I trust that she'll restore some kind of justice in the sequels to Earth & Sky, having offered a smidgeon of promise–and romance–towards that end here.

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See Megan Crewe's official book trailer for Earth & Sky here and check out more about her new series at http://www.EarthSkyTrilogy.com

Now and For Never

by Lesley Livingston

Razorbill

978-0143182108

280 pp.

Ages 12+

May, 2014

Lesley Livingston left off both Once Every Never (Puffin, 2011) and Every Never After (Razorbill, 2013) with someone left hundreds of years in the past and a pair of hearts tenuously separated.  Always a cliff-hanger but, rest assured, Lesley Livingston is charitable in her story-plotting.  Sweet endings, without the sugar, are her specialty.

When Clare Reid, BFF Allie McAllister and Milo McAllister, Allie’s cousin and Clare’s crush, shimmered back to present day Glastonbury Tor, the site of the archaeological dig, Marcus Donatus a.k.a. Mark O’Donnell–who’d been left as a teen in Ancient Rome–remains behind because of the manipulative Stuart Morholt.  Morholt had told Roman Governor Paulinus that Marcus knew the whereabouts of the Druid gold stolen from Boudicca and hidden by now-dead Posthumus.  Allie refuses to leave Marcus/Mark in the past and she and Clare make plans to return to 500 A.D., leaving Milo and Piper behind to ground them when they shimmer.

But Allie and Clare shimmer onto a Roman ship lead by Paulinus, chasing a second Roman ship which the Scathians stole with Boudicca’s gold and taking Marcus and Morholt with it.  Both ships have something the other wants: the Romans want the stolen gold back, and Mallora–Boudicca’s sister–wants Llassar, the Druid blacksmith who knows the black magic.

The saving grace is a digital camera memory card upon which Clare had recorded images that would be useful to them in the future (actually their present).  Milo gets a hacker friend to help them recover the images and he and Piper pursue the clues to get themselves in position to help Clare, Allie and, hopefully, Marcus/Mark shimmer back.

Add some weird ocean vector spirals, an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the reappearance of Boudicca’s daughter Comorra and her prince Connal, a kidnapping by Skraelings (skin-walkers), a power-hungry Roman, and a big oops moment, and Now and For Never takes the reader from one cardio crash to another.  Just when it looks like it’s all going to work out, Lesley Livingston throws in another twist that will prevent the future from turning out as it should.

Though readers will have their favourite characters, whether the geeky but romantic Milo, or the girl-inexperieced Marcus Donatus/Mark O’Donnell or the unlucky Clare, all the characters add to the story, showing growth and change, learning from their mistakes (some sooner than others), and revealing that sometimes they are misunderstood, rarely in a positive way.  But, I defy anyone to read the series and not enjoy Lesley Livingston’s fantastical storylines of Celtic and Roman history that intertwine the past as present, the present as the future, history, treachery, boy-girl crushes, and supernatural elements into a story bigger than the sum of all its parts.

Every Never After

by Lesley Livingston

Razorbill

978-0-14-318208-5

242 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Since curses are the order of the day in Every Never After, and in its prequel Once Every Never (Puffin, 2011), I would like to serve up my own.  OK, not really but Lesley Livingston: Why? Why? Why? Why would you drop readers cliffside, or at least Glastonbury Tor-side, with the last four sentences of your newest book?  And no respite until when? 2014? Not fair!

Now that I've got my Mercer-esque rant out, I can surprisingly and honestly inform the reader that I was so captivated by Every Never After, and every nuance of every interaction between familiar and new characters, that I was devastated by its ending.  So, if Lesley Livingston had not created yet another fantasy of such richness and emotional quality, I would not have yelled out, "NO!" upon reading those last words.  So, Lesley Livingston, it's your fault.

Wow.  That rant does seem to go on, doesn't it?  

Every Never After begins shortly after Once Every Never (reviewed here) resolves itself with 17-year-old Clare Reid's successful return from her "shimmering" time slip into the first century AD when Boudicca, Queen of the British Iceni tribe, fought the advances of the Romans.  Now, Clare and her best friend, Allie McAllister, have been accepted to help out on an archaeological dig at Glastonbury Tor, a distinctive hill with known historical significance and claims of faery and Arthurian connections.  Along with the other "trowel monkeys" excavating under the direction of Dr. Nicky Ashbourne, the girls will be recording a video blog of their work. And Allie's cousin, Milo McAllister, who Clare is dating, is joining them to put his computer and mapping skills to work developing a virtual dig-site app for the museum. 

Clare's relationship with Milo is making Allie feel a bit like a third-wheel so she is happy to continue working one day when Clare and Milo go off early for lunch.  Videotaping it on her iPad for the blog, Allie excavates a skull and disappears in a flashes and waves of darkness and colours before dropping into the midst of violent clashes between Roman cavalry soldiers and berserking Druidesses.  Though rescued by a Roman legionnaire, Marcus Donatus, Allie is manacled and kept with the other prisoners until her status is clarified and her fate determined by the ailing Praefect Postumus.  And who should she discover in the prisoners' tent but Stuart Morholt, the same "ass-hat" who'd grabbed the torc from Clare (in Once Every Never), resulting in his deliverance to the first century AD.

Meanwhile, once realizing that Allie has disappeared by some very unlike "shimmering" episode, Clare and Milo are desperate to locate her.  Destiny has them making the acquaintance of Piper Gimble, snidely nicknamed Goggles by Clare.  Piper is in possession of a family "heirloom" that has been passed from generation to generation -- a tin box scratched with instructions from Stuart Morholt that it only be opened by Clarinet Reid.  Seems the pompous Stuart Morholt (yes, a man from the present) is an ancestor of Piper's having had a dalliance with Boudicca's sister centuries before he is/was actually born. 

(Temporally it might be difficult to keep straight what happened first and then what arose from that point. Maybe it's a chicken-egg argument.  Just remember: this is fantasy.  It doesn't have to make sense in our world.  Just believe that Lesley Livingston capably keeps the plot lines synced.)

Clare and Allie may have been sympathetic to the Celts whose land is/was being annexed violently by the Romans but, through the eyes of Marcus Donatus, Allie begins to see the Romans, or at least some of them, in a different light.  It seems Marcus Donatus is actually teen Mark O'Donnell who disappeared from Glastonbury Tor in the 1980's when Stuart Morholt and several of his devotees, including Clare's Aunt Maggie, performed some mystic ritual.  Twenty-five years may have passed in our world but it has only been four years in Marcus' new one.  And geeky Mark O'Donnell is/was now a hunky Roman legionnaire whose loyalty to Postumus and concern for Allie has her crushing on him. 

Confused yet?  Well, it's just the way I tell it, because from Lesley Livingston's pen, it is all handled beautifully.  The subplots of the two different time periods (or are there three?) merge courtesy of Clare and Milo's actions bringing them to the Roman camp of Allie's current circumstances. (OK, that's definitely an oxymoron.  How can the past be current?)  I won't tell you how it ends, though you might recall my earlier rant.  Suffice it to say that Every Never After climaxes with a maelstrom of ancient battles, romantic revelations, sacrifice, and mystic time-slips that will leave the reader reassured that Clare has accomplished her "mission" but, if the readers are anything like me, desperately awaiting the third book in the series, ever hopeful for a happy ending.

Falling for Henry

Written by Beverley Brenna

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-442-7

281 pp.

Ages 12+

2011

Discontented Kate Allen hardly seems a substantial enough character (except for her full figure) to carry her from the 21st century back to 1507 to connect with young Prince Henry, Duke of York, future king.  But, a bizarre incident in a tunnel slips Kate back in time to become Katherine of Aragon, widow of Henry's elder brother and soon-to-be first wife of Henry VIII himself.

Amazing circumstances for a young girl, unhappily living with her older sister in London, following the accidental death of their father in New York.  With a mother who disappeared when she was quite young and a grandmother in Brighton, Kate moves to England where her sister, Willow, is attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.  During a school field trip to Greenwich, claustrophobic Kate enters a tunnel and strangely witnesses a hunting party led by a red-haired young man who kills a buck; a young girl on a gray mare hiding from the others; and a wolf cub and a snarling adult. Although she's convinced she is imaging things, Kate warns the teacher of the presence of wolves, setting herself up for more humiliation from her peers who claim there have been no wolves in Britain for centuries.

Back in the real world, Kate is surprised by the attentions of an older schoolmate, Hal, who takes her out, kisses her, and makes her feel special.  But, while taking out the garbage, Kate sees Hal kissing another girl, petite and blond.  This chain of events, including Kate wearing a stunning blue dress (an unused costume from Willow's current play, Henry VIII) that Willow planned to alter for her, seems too contrived for this reader, especially as Kate, desperate to get out of sight, boards a bus and ends up back in Greenwich at the tunnel where she first slipped back in time.

Regardless, Kate enters the world of Katherine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain, love interest of Prince Henry, charge of  Doña Elvira, and confidante of William Fitzroy, the Prince's companion, who is tending to an injured wolf cub, though wolves have been outlawed.  While she has some inherent knowledge of Katherine's life, Kate lacks many memories, stumbling her way through her days of being courted by Henry, while keeping her contemporary insights at bay.  However, the erratic nature of Kate's memories as Katherine (e.g., she cannot remember gifting the astrolabe but knows she practised equestrian arts as a child) as well as Henry's acceptance of her use of words such as technology (pg. 226) continued to throw off my temporal train of thought, often leaving me unsure of what Kate knows and how she would react.

Luckily, Beverley Brenna undertook an exhaustive research regarding Henry VIII, wolves in Britain, an illness called the "sweating sickness" and all manner of Tudor customs, providing young readers with an authentic perspective on British history, made all the more intriguing by focusing on Henry VIII's life as a charming young prince rather than his disreputable nature as a husband.  Although the parallels between Kate's and Katherine's lives seem somewhat fabricated (e.g., suitors Hal-Henry, mothers Isobel-Isabella, dogs Patch-Patch, friend William-Will), the lesson Kate learns, that "No matter how long it takes...the best any of us can wish for...is to fill our place" (pg. 265), cannot so easily be manipulated and is one she will need to work out for herself.

Once Every Never

by Lesley Livingston
Puffin Canada
978-0-14-317795-1
302 pp.
Ages 12+
2011


Lesley Livingston, author of the Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book of the Year Wondrous Strange (HarperCollins Canada, 2008), continues to provide young adult readers with riveting fantasy based in the supernatural with just a shimmering of romance and an ample seasoning of humour in her newest, Once Every Never (Puffin Canada, 2011).

Torontonian Clare (Clarinet) Reid is sent to England to stay with her Aunt Maggie, a professor of archaeology, while her parents are away on their orchestra's world tour.  Luckily her best friend, Allie (Alice) McAllister, also 17, has managed to arrange a stay in London with relatives including her former-geek-turned-hottie cousin, Milo, an Oxford student working with the British map-making agency.

Although Clare considers her supervision under her aunt mundane, Allie, an archaeology buff, is thrilled to get an opportunity to examine a new exhibit of bog people (perfectly preserved corpses found in a peat bog) and a variety of antiquities such as a shield, torcs (neck rings), and helmets set for restoration.  While her Aunt Maggie consults with the curator, Dr. Ceciley Jenkins, Clare unpardonably touches the shield and discovers herself in another time and place, witnessing a meeting of two men, one in possession of the shield.

Returning to the museum, Clare enlists Allie's help to witness her disappearance after touching the Snettisham Great Torc (a particularly unique torc).  This time Clare returns with an account of the handsome young man seen earlier interacting with a raging, red-haired woman who'd been whipped and to whom he gives the torc.   Hidden behind a rock, Clare is not seen by anyone until a young woman chances to touch her, thereby making her visible.  After asking for Clare's help and surreptitiously slipping a brooch to her, the young woman is grabbed by a Roman soldier.

Based on Clare's observations and what she hears (and understands, although in a unknown language), the girls' internet research reveals the injured woman to be Boudicca, the Queen of Britain in 1 AD, who rebels against the Romans, and the young woman who asks for Clare's help is Comorra, one of Boudicca's two daughters.

When the Snettisham Torc is stolen from the museum, Aunt Maggie suspects a former colleague, now presumed dead.  Unfortunately, she is correct and this same man, Stuart Morholt, who claims to be a Celtic mystic, learns of Clare's gift of shimmering (that's what they call her time-travel) and uses threats to coerce her into locating a buried cache from Bouticca's time.

The plot is complex but not confounding, all the more substantial for the different times into which Clare shimmers, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, always revealing.  Livingston excels at bringing two very different worlds into contact, without either losing integrity.  In each, the voices, hearts and actions of the times' characters successfully immerse the reader in that time.  Even poor Clare, who must modify her behaviour to meld with those in the past, is true to herself, showing less cockiness  when dealing with the Celts and Druids, although her erratic train of thoughts still compel her to misspeak occasionally.

But, it is the humour that continues to pull me along for the journey, particularly Clare's attitude that comes across as self-deprecation with snarkiness.   When returning from the time when Connal's blue body paint (in preparation for his sacrifice) smeared onto her, Clare declares that, "I was partying with Smurfs.  I wanted to fit in." Teens will also appreciate the hint of romance in Once Every Never, particularly as Clare is attracted to two different young men, one in the present, one in the past, confusing her even more.  Expertly, Livingston epitomizes the teenage mind, sharing Clare's thoughts, both erratic and sure, as she tries to figure things out, whether it be history or people and their motivations.

Just added: video of Lesley Livingston talking about Once Every Never

Mind Gap

by Marina Cohen
Dundurn Press
978-1-55488-801-6
168 pp.
Ages 12+
2011

There's teen angst and there's teen anguish.  Jake MacRae sadly is experiencing the second, probably because of the first.  At 14, Jake has been trying to fit in, through drinking, gambling and sneaking around, and now he and best-friend, Cole, are being recruited to make a delivery for the 5 King Tribe, a local gang.  With his father abandoning the family ten years earlier, and now Jake getting into trouble regularly, his mother seems to want him out too.  Trying to avoid making any decisions to Cole's and his mom's demands that he decide whether he is "in or out," Jake sneaks out to a midnight party meeting at St. George subway station, to take the southbound train at midnight.

But missing the train throws Jake into another world, one which first takes him to the past, to meet his father on the day he leaves, then later into the future and finally returning to the present.  This is no tale of Scrooge, with the joys and possibilities of Christmas, seeing his life as it could be.  This is a brief look into a darker world, in which things don't always turn out for the best and you see people as they truly are, not as they show themselves to you.

At one point, when Jake asks himself half-heartedly whether he was experiencing something from The Twilight Zone, he gives voice to the impending terror the reader experiences from the onset of Cohen's fourth novel.  Time-travel novels are ubiquitous but in Mind Gap the travel and the destinations are the stuff of nightmares, where your voice is unheard, your face unrecognizable or invisible, and your influence ignored. 

Cohen leaves no gaps in her story-telling, taking the reader forth on a chilling journey with multiple stops and an unknown destination, leaving no one doubting that there are always consequences to our decisions when asked, "In or out?"