Still Alive (Kidnapped From Ukraine, Book 3)

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Press

978-1-5461-0457-5

320 pp.

Ages 8–12

April 2026 

 

 

While the war on Ukraine by Russia continues to this day, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is ready to resolve the story of twins Dariia and Rada Popkova. The story that began with Dariia's perspective on the attack and invasion of Ukraine in Under Attack (2025) after the girls' separation, and that led to Rada's story in Standoff (2025) comes full circle with a story that brings families together. They are still alive and fighting for themselves, each other, and their country.

 

Still Alive begins in November of 2022 with Rada and her mom living in a ski village in the Carpathian Mountains. Mom works as a manicurist at the Hotel Karpaty, and they are preparing to move into their prefab home in a new refugee area in nearby Prytulok. They receive unexpected messages from Dariia, who has been "adopted" by a Russian family in a Moscow suburb, with details about her "new" name and birthday, as well as those of other Ukrainian children who had been kidnapped to Russia. So begins their fight to get Dariia and the other children back to Ukraine.

 

With the help of Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian charitable organization whose initiatives includes rescue and reunification of children taken from Ukraine, Mom and Rada and their new family of friends get to work trying to find families of others so that they might rescue as many as possible. But it's an arduous task as all must be done legally, finding legal guardians, obtaining powers of attorney, and more.

 

The second part of the story comes after Dariia is rescued and comes to live with Mom and Rada. She may be back with much of her own family—the whereabouts of her soldier father are still unknown—but she must navigate a new reality. She and Rada may be twins but they have always been different. With the traumas that they have endured, it's not just being together like it had been. Here's healing that has to happen but still with the mission to help their country. In fact, they do even more. They find a way to...

...take a shattered world and make it into something beautiful. (pg. 273) 

A series titled Kidnapped From Ukraine does not intimate a story of joy.  Of course, a story based in the ongoing war on Ukraine could be nothing less than horrific. While Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is an author who tells real stories, she is also one who handles them with sensitivity, aware that there is a way to tell an impactful story and still offer reassurance. With Still Alive, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch remind us that this war is not over, and that people are still suffering. Rada's question about the senselessness of this war—"How much hate does it take to kill your neighbour with missiles aimed at churches, children, hospitals?" (pg. 43)—resonates throughout the book as Ukrainians consider atrocities, new or repeated. Their reactions are as diverse as their experiences but their resolve to do what they can—build drones, sew camouflage nets, feed abandoned animals—to save Ukraine is unmistakable. 

 

The Kidnapped From Ukraine trilogy may be disheartening in the nature of its story, but Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch heartens it by comforting young readers with a narrative of families, made and found, and hope for a new future.

 

Under Attack (2025)

Standoff (2025)

Still Alive (2026)

Planting Sunshine

Written by Andrée Poulin

Illustrated by Enzo (Enzo Lord Mariano)

Groundwood Books

978-1-77946-095-0

116 pp.

Ages 9–12

February 2026 

 

As is often the case, Theo's day is normal enough until it isn't. And what changes everything is watching the news coverage of war breaking out far, far away.

Theo's father

turns on the TV— 

     and war arrives

in their living room. (pg. 9)

Theo cannot believe what he is hearing and seeing. Horrified by the sights and sounds of bombs and guns, tanks and drones, and most of all the destruction of people and place, Theo is troubled. He wants to know why this happens, whether they are safe, and asks why humans are so cruel.

From Planting Sunshine, written by Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Enzo

Though the countries involved are never identified, readers might recognize some of the images described as those from the attack on Ukraine by Russia, such as the elderly woman who confronts a Russian soldier with sunflower seeds and suggests that if he puts them in his pocket. . .

At least when you die here

     on the soil of my country

     the sunflowers will grow 

                    around you. (pg. 20)

Theo asks his neighbour Mrs. Lena, an elderly woman who grew up in "the country now caught in this terrible war" (pg. 21), about the war and this incident, and she tells him of the sunflower—soniashnyk, in Ukrainian—being the "flower that feeds hope." (pg. 22) Seeing Theo's continued distress, day after day, she gives him sunflower seeds to plant.

From Planting Sunshine, written by Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Enzo

Each day there is more horrific news from the war, and the details stay with Theo. He thinks about the numbers, about the images, about the losses, and all he can do is wonder why no one is stopping it. Each day Theo asks, "Will the war end today?" (pg. 38) The war may be very far away but it's impacting Theo in the way he sees life. The word "bomb" no longer reminds him of diving board cannonballs. His friends playing war angers him. His dad refuses to let Theo watch the news anymore, so Theo hides his tablet and watches at night. And then the nightmares start, a mix of anger, fear, hatred and more.

 

When he meets a girl drawing doves on a wall as protest, Theo is finally able to share what he's feeling–never wanting to burden Mrs. Lena or his teacher or his father—and feels a little less alone. And he finds his own way to express his anger and his grief. 

From Planting Sunshine, written by Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Enzo

Still, he is unconvinced that the war will end or that things would change, until Mrs. Lena offers him the idea of hope. She tells him, "Hope lives in the after." (pg. 91) And, with a little help from those around him, Theo finds a way to settle his anger, remember what should never be forgotten, work to help a cause, and find "a small way to start building peace." (pg. 110)

I could quote page after page of eloquent text that clutches at the heart of Theo's bewilderment and trauma. Andrée Poulin has always had a knack for telling tough stories lightly—not lightheartedly—for a young audience. Whether it's sanitation (Burying the Moon, 2021), diversity and tolerance (Tickled Pink, 2020), or abandonment (The Biggest Poutine in the World, 2016), Andrée Poulin recognizes that her audience is young, and will be impacted differently about important issues. Theo is just such a child, significantly impacted by a war thousands of kilometres away, and not understanding fully what is happening. He's feeling a lot and needs help understanding those emotions and directing them into activities that help. Andrée Poulin takes Theo full circle, from unfamiliarity with war, to an introduction by media, to immersion in images and sensory overload, to impact and trauma, and finally purposeful attention. And she does so eloquently in words and in verse form. This book will become an exemplar of telling a story with sensitivity and compassion, and awareness of how world events can impact children in powerful ways. 

From Planting Sunshine, written by Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Enzo

Enzo (a.k.a. Enzo Lord Mariano), a Montreal-based illustrator, provides the artwork that frames Andrée Poulin's story. Using Procreate with watercolour textures, Enzo gives us some war images—the ones of a blue tractor in a field of sunflowers that is later devastated by bombs is especially heartrending—but generally it's all about Theo because this is his story. It is not a story of war. It is a story of a boy who struggles with the concept of war and his emotions with the senseless destruction it perpetuates. Enzo helps us see Theo's anguish and his anger, the trauma of his sleepless nights, and his despondency. But Enzo also shows us family, friendship, and community, and how those can soften the suffering.

 

I don't think I can say enough about Planting Sunshine. (A French-language version, Semer des soleils, was published in 2024 by La courte echelle.) Not only does it remind all that there is an ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but that there are children beyond the borders of that war that are struggling with it. Highly sensitive children like Theo can be impacted by what they see and hear in the news and cannot always articulate what they are feeling or recognize how to grapple with those emotions. In a world of strife and public media, children will continue to be exposed to all manner of frightening news. Awareness of their potential struggles and attention to their needs might help them find ways to plant sunshine and to unearth hope.

The Tunnel

Written by Sarah Howden

Illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina

Owlkids Books

978-1-77147-427-6

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

March 2022

Something bad has happened. There is much concern for the child, with his mother offering hugs and his aunt asking him if he's okay. But the boy doesn't want to talk about. What he does want to do is dig a tunnel and crawl inside. So he does.

From The Tunnel by Sarah Howden, illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina

Taking a small plastic shovel, the child starts digging into the floor of his bedroom. Deep, deep he digs, excavating a meandering tunnel that encounters worms and beetles and moles and more.  

From The Tunnel by Sarah Howden, illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina

It's dark down there but I don't mind.

In fact, the boy realizes, after he comes up to the surface outside his home, that no one knows that he's out there.

I could just disappear.

From The Tunnel by Sarah Howden, illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina

That empowering thought is enough for the boy. He doesn't have to disappear right now. 

I'll go home for now, I tell myself.

But I can always come back.

By returning home after his jaunt, the child can now take comfort in his room and his mother's presence.

I think she knows I need a secret place.

She might have secret places of her own.

 

I think she knows we sometimes travel far away. 

Alone, where we don't have to talk.

I'm glad Sarah Howden never reveals to young readers what nature of bad this boy experienced. By leaving it open, it could be anything and thus relevant to any child who has felt a trauma. His response, then, could be theirs. They might recognize the need for a parent or concerned adult to try to help but not knowing how. Fortunately, Sarah Howden gives this child the freedom to choose what he needs: to be silent or to escape, whether figuratively or literally. 

 

There is starkness in his situation and in Sarah Howden's words, so the bleakness of Vancouver's Erika Rodriguez Medina's artwork mirrors that atmosphere. There's not much colour in this child's life right now, nor are there in Erika Rodriguez Medina's illustrations. It's pretty much black and white, with some grey and only minimal red. I'm sure that's how this child feels. Whatever has happened to him, it has turned his world into monotones, gradations of badness. There is some colour, not unlike the goodness that is shadowed in his life, but it is so close to him that he might not be able to see it until he can look at it from a distance, perhaps outside his house or himself.

From The Tunnel by Sarah Howden, illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina

Sarah Howden could've given her picture book a happy ending in which the boy's distress is erased with his tunnel and the love of family but, let's face, that's not very realistic. Trauma does not disappear because of good intentions or diversions. But, both Sarah Howden and Erika Rodriguez Medina show us that there is some light and colour in his life and they make sure he sees it too.

A Soft Place to Fall

Written by Tanya Christenson

Red Deer Press

978-0-889956384

409 pp.

Ages 12+

January 2022

 

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars. 

~ Kahlil Gibran 

Kahlil Gibran's words may end Tanya Christenson's debut novel, A Soft Place to Fall, but they work well as a preface to a story of struggles, challenges and loss from which triumphs emerge from the ordinary.

The story is told from the perspective of Creighton Fischer, a boy whose singing mom, Gracie Rae, left when he was just five, and whose father's work with the carnival has kept them moving for many years. When, after Creighton's Grade 7 year, Dad decides it's time for them to settle down, they move to Breton, Mom's old home town. Because of gaps in his learning and attendance, it is recommended that Creighton join an alternate school. There, under the compassionate and diverse teaching methods of Ms. Hayworth, Creighton becomes part of a unique cohort. The dozen or so students soon reveal themselves to be impacted by various traumas and disabilities but Ms. Hayworth's approach is to meet their needs and not slot them into the rigid curriculum. And by showing flexibility and empathy, she brings out the best in most of them. That is, except for Carlos a.k.a. Carcass. And for Creighton, he finds his first real friends in Carin, Ratchet and Schooner and the support system he and all of them need to brave the loss of loved ones, economic hardships, bullying, past traumas, criminal charges, and even love.

The twelve kids in Ms. Hayworth's class may attend L.O.S.E.R. (Lane Oslo School of Educational Reform) but they aren't losers. They may be flawed through trauma, mental health, disability or circumstances beyond their control but they are not losers. They are human. Their resilience may at times be shaky but it is undeniable and it thankfully allows them to persist.

 

BC's Tanya Christenson, a teacher and school counsellor, knows kids and she's written these kids as human as you and I. And she doesn't wrap up their struggles with happy endings, ribbons or balloons. Tanya Christenson makes their outcomes as real as the kids. They've suffered abandonment, abuse and upheaval, and they have endured. Sometimes they've triumphed over those struggles and  sometimes not, and like all of us, they have needed support and a soft place to fall. Because, after all, we will all fall some time, some way. I just hope that there will always be a soft place to fall, perhaps even land, for anyone challenged by life. And that's everyone.

The Life and Deaths of Frankie D.

Written by Colleen Nelson

Dundurn Press

978-1-459747586

256 pp.

Ages 12+

April 2021

 

Who is Frankie D.? Before the girl with the skin that resembles scales had been found, at 10 years of age, dirty and dehydrated in an alley, who was she? Is she the Goth she has transformed into, embracing the darkness and hiding her lamellar ichthyosis under thick makeup? Or is she just an abandoned child, considered too hideous to love by a family? Perhaps she's related to the girl in the old-fashioned dress that keeps appearing in her dreams alongside a circus ringmaster? Whatever her story, it's both one she wants to know and not know. 

 

In the seven years since she was discovered, Frankie has endured fresh traumas, including at the hands of Foster Mom #2's Boyfriend #3. Still, the last two years with Kris Steffanson, the social worker who'd first drawn her out of that alley, have been as close to normal as she can remember. At home anyway. At school, where she is bullied by the Aprils–her name for the beautiful, normal, mean girls–Frankie takes very few classes but her art class with Mr. Kurtis offers her sanctuary before school and confidence for her drawing skills. So it's not surprising that Frankie begins to draw the characters that continue to appear in her dreams. 

When Kris gifts her with tickets to ComiCon, Frankie is thrilled. There she bumps into the new kid at school, Max, whom Frankie suspects is a foster kid too but she is most surprised by his recognition of the man in her ringmaster drawing as Monsieur Duval. At ComiCon, they spot a man who looks like Monsieur Duval and follow him to a booth called the Circus of Marvels and Wonders. There the man, Monsieur Philippe Duval, presents performers that include Concetta, the limbless woman; the contortionist Ahmed; conjoined twins Ella and Elvira; the hirsute Daniel; and Yuri, a magician with Albinism. They are also invited to another performance at a warehouse which Frankie learns is near the alley where she was found at age 10. 

At this event, Monsieur Duval reveals a sepia photo of the girl in Frankie's dream, a girl with ringlets, petticoats and skin like Frankie's, a girl named Frances, the only name Frankie knew when she'd been found in the alley. Then, Frankie is asked if she'd like to join them.

Frankie, with Kris and Max's help, tries to piece together what is happening but, with few people in her life who can give her answers or whom she can trust, it's a struggle for Frankie. Coupled with her dreams which are getting more and more elaborate, and include many of the performers at Monsieur Duval's side show, Frankie learns her place, and that of the others, in Frances's story. But shocking of all is what they want of her.

It's clear from the onset of The Life and Deaths of Frankie D. that there are many layers to Frankie's story and it's this deep mystery of who Frankie D. (D. for Doe) is that grips the reader. Colleen Nelson draws us in and it's impossible to step back from the question of Frankie's story, whether it's before she appears at age 10 or how she is connected to Frances, Monsieur Duval and the others. Her story is layered with the past and the present, and even the future, and then infused with other layers of trust and abuse and bullying and friendship. Fortunately, Colleen Nelson, who is a master in getting into the heads of young people dealing with trauma (check out Blood Brothers (2017), Finding Hope (2016) and The Fall (2013) as three superb examples of this), keeps Frankie's voice authentic, strong when needed, confused when vulnerable, and always real. Colleen Nelson doesn't do platitudes about being resilient ("Being resilient doesn't mean you're going to be okay. It just means you don't give up." pg. 134) or winning over the bullies (there are always bullies) or offer healing of Frankie's skin disorder. What she does so effectively is take the reader along with Frankie, as she dreams, finds her strengths, remembers and evaluates what is and what was, so that she might be able to have a what-will-be. Colleen Nelson makes us care, and shows us that we can be hopeful that Frankie will get the life she deserves, unencumbered by those who deem to use her to get the lives they desire.

☥🎪☥🎪☥🎪☥

An online book launch for The Life and Deaths of Frankie D., along with that for Deborah Kerbel's new middle-grade novel Like A Duck, takes place this Thursday, April 15, 2021. See details here.

Nothing But Life

Written by Brent van Staalduinen

Dundurn 

978-1-45974-618-3

304 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2021

Fifteen-year-old Wendell (Dills) Sims's story in Nothing But Life begins with his juvenile sentencing after attacking a classmate, Patrick (Pat) Schultz, with box cutters. But this isn't the real start of his story because it's his backstory, about what happened before he and his mother moved back to Hamilton from Windsor, that overwhelms his present.

Now tracked with an ankle monitor by his probation officer Sean, Dills begins his community service picking up garbage at Churchill Park and environs. Under the casual direction of the park manager Gal, a scarred man who smells of pot, Dills toils away in the heat, trying to keep his head down and avoid trouble, even when his bully Pat comes around to provoke him. But Dills constantly hears his stepdad Jesse's voice in his head, remembering the advice he often shared, especially from his time in the military, to help Dills understand and make good choices.

"Own your own shit, kid," Jesse says. "One, no one can shoulder it for you. Two, it feels good to be responsible." (pg. 167)

Now, though, Jesse is also beckoning him to visit him. "I'm here. Come see me." Over and over again, Dills hears Jesse begging him to visit him in the hospital where he lies in a vegetative state, neither dead nor living. But Dills is torn between his love for the only father he has ever known and the horrors of a shooting at his school for which Jesse was responsible. Troubled by his confusion of feelings and tethered by his probation, with neither the money nor the physical means to get to Windsor, Dills is stymied. When he becomes acquainted through Gal with Mia Al-Ansour, a classmate and competitive wrestler, things take a different turn, and Dills make a decision to make the impossible possible, albeit with much deception, some hacking, and a lot of support from Mia, Gal and his Aunt Viv.

Though Nothing But Life is based on how Dills has coped in the aftermath of a school shooting by his stepdad, it's not about a school shooting. In fact, Hamilton author Brent van Staalduinen provides very few details of what actually happened at Wendell's school. What's more, though Dills finds a way to visit Jesse in Windsor, it's less about reconnecting and more about finding closure so that there is nothing but life ahead for Dills. Still, by writing with much seriousness, Brent van Staalduinen makes the reader realize that a story about a young man reclaiming his life rather than living it as the legacy of his stepdad's military PTSD or his own trauma associated with the shooting is sombre and requires thoughtfulness and compassion. The dying happened and that would never change. But Dills finds a way to ultimately end things with Jesse so that he might go beyond the kid whose stepfather perpetrated a school shooting and become the kid who is taking responsibility for his actions, and, even better, being open to friendships and more. It's nothing but life and, as Jesse would say, "Clear as mud."

The Project

Written by Courtney Summers

Wednesday Books (St. Martin's Press)

978-1-250-10573-8

352 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2021

 

In 2011, when Lo is just 13 years of age, she is critically injured in a car crash that kills her parents. Her 19-year-old sister Bea is called to the hospital and, in the chapel, begs for a miracle and Lev Warren appears. The miracle happens for Lo but Bea disappears from her life, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt Patty.

Six years later, Lo knows Bea has joined Lev Warren's The Unity Project, an organization whose mission is to do good works to atone for all sins and bring salvation. After an earlier exposé investigating The Project as a cult, Lev has tried to keep The Project out of the media, focusing on their community work and annual public sermon. But, now working for SOV magazine, Lo is drawn to look into the organization again. While she has tried numerous times to reconnect with Bea, she is always kept away by Casey Byers, The Project's spokesperson and Lev's right hand. But Lo's interest is piqued by the death of a young man, Jeremy Lewis, whose father Arthur had been trying to save his son from The Unity Project. When Lo sees Bea in the photos Arthur's private investigator took of Jeremy, coupled with numerous voiceless calls she receives, Lo is determined to find Bea and learn more about The Project.

Alternating between the past and the present, primarily over seven years, Lo and Bea's stories unfold with Bea looking to prove herself worthy of a miracle she believes Lev performed and Lo looking for her sister. Their stories are eerily parallel, especially under the charismatic Lev who has become father, friend, therapist and even saviour to members of The Project. Both sisters are bereft because of their losses of family but each feels compelled to action because of The Project. But, it would seem, The Project has other things in mind.

Everyone should be prepared for an unnerving read in The Project. By balancing family and everyday living with the extremes of manipulation and doctrine, it's Courtney Summers at her best. Like her award-winning Sadie (2018), The Project is chilling in its possibilities because this could be someone's reality. A tragic accident, absolute faith in an irresistible leader, family estrangement, a compelling mission and the need for connection could all be elements of any of our lives and with her storytelling Courtney Summers will disquiet readers with the possibilities.

While her plotting is always sophisticated and involved, never leading the reader to a predictable ending, it's Courtney Summers's atmospheric writing that is most captivating. There's a perennial sense of foreboding, even with the most mundane of circumstances, like grabbing a cab or working in an office. Courtney Summers never lets the reader relax and maybe we shouldn't because bad things happen, even if dressed up as good.

 

Lo, the writer, tells Lev that...

If you tell a story–something real, something true–you get to be alive in other people. (pg. 251)

Thankfully Courtney Summers is alive and well by virtue of The Project and all her other stories. She tells the truth, even if it's unsettling.

He Must Like You

Written by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Viking (Penguin Random House)

978-1-9848-3571-0

336 pp.

Ages 14+

July 2020
Reviewed from advance readers copy

Young girls are often told, or at least they once were, that if a boy teased you or went out of his way to annoy you or get your attention that “he must like you.” And even though  they may feel unsafe or targeted, they were instructed to just bear it and were essentially chastized for making a big deal of it. Everyone should know better today. But do we?

Libby lives with her parents in the small community of Pine Ridge and in January of her senior year, her parents inform her of her new reality. Seems that because her older brother Jack dropped out of pre-med and skipped off to Greece around the time her dad was fired from his real estate brokerage firm, her parents have decided that they’ve spoiled their kids and it’s time for Libby to become independent. Not only do they want her to get a job and look for an apartment–they have plans to redo her and Jack’s rooms for Airbnb rental–but her education fund is gone. Libby is flabbergasted but she has no choice but to find a way to make some money.

She is determined to get a job as a server so she can boost her savings with tips. Because of her dad’s reputation as a jerk who provokes local businesses–they later learn he’s moved on to trolling on social media–she gets a wait job at the Goat, a restaurant just out of town. The staff is friendly and she likes the work, and Kyle, the host, helps her out by sending the big spenders her way to increase her tips.

Though Libby is not currently seeing anyone, she’s struggling with feelings about relationships and interactions she’s had and is having with certain guys in her life. She had a weird relationship with her ex-boyfriend Boris that was based more on relenting to sex than consenting to it. Then there’s Kyle who flirts like crazy with her and with whom she has sex though doesn’t feel good about doing it. There’s also her good friend Noah who is in a long-distance relationship but to whom Libby is drawn romantically.  And then there’s Perry Ackerman, the town’s saviour and big-tipping Goat customer, who regularly harasses her with sexually explicit banter and handsiness.

The turning point for Libby is a school assembly about consent given by a public health nurse.

…Dahlia Brennan basically just reached into my brain, grabbed a bunch of my memories from where they were filed (mostly under “crappy sex” or “boy acts like jerk” or “Libby is an idiot”), threw them on the floor, and told me I have to refile them under “coercion,” “sexual assault,’ and “rape.” (pg. 66)

So not only is she dealing with a lousy family situation, Libby is recognizing that, beyond the overtly offensive Perry whose behaviour should never have been tolerated by so many,  her crappy feelings related to Boris and Kyle need to be resolved if she is to have a positive relationship with Noah (fingers crossed) and keep a job she needs.

He Must Like You is a big story. (Danielle Younge-Ullman knows how to do important stories for young adults. If you haven't read her Everything Beautiful is Not Ruined, which won the Forest of Reading's White Pine Award and was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award, put it on your to-be-read list.) He Must Like You is a story about sexual harassment, assault, consent, relationships and family. And Danielle Younge-Ullman ensures that it is all about Libby and what she is experiencing and what she needs. She gets to choose how she feels. She gets to decide what is acceptable for her in approaching the guys who have compromised her will and safety.  She gets to decide what she will and will not accept. In a time of #MeToo, Danielle Younge-Ullman educates young teens of all genders that consent is not just a yes or a no. It’s so much more. And Danielle Younge-Ullman does this with subtlety and sensitivity, common sense and even humour.

He might like her–and Noah does–but no person should feel unsafe or compromised or guilted by the another's interest or actions and He Must Like You and Danielle Younge-Ullman leave no room for misinterpretation or ambiguity about this while telling a great YA story that inspires hope for love and empowerment.

Larkin on the Shore

Written by Jean Mills

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-577-6

310 pp.

Ages 13+

October 2019

"...her words have stayed with me, just like Jonah's. Words do that. Words spoken and words in books. Words you write. They start to breathe and live and just take over. And right now, I've been taken over by the words of other people–people talking–and I can't find myself or my own words." (pg. 221)

After she is traumatized by something that happened with a boy, Jonah, and ejected from a moving car, sixteen-year-old Larkin Day is sent from her home in Toronto to stay with her grandmother Granne in Tuttle Harbour, Nova Scotia for the summer.  Larkin had managed to finish her Grade 10 exams but the gossip and social media about what happened have left her feeling isolated and unsafe and contemplating the relief of suicide. Her dad decides his mother, a retired principal, would be the best bet for his daughter while he heads to Vancouver to deal with Larkin's mom, a woman addicted to painkillers and bouncing between the unsafe streets and rehab. 

But for Larkin, Granne and Tuttle Harbour are unfamiliar and she must learn to assess every person she meets for sincerity and safety. That includes neighbour Will Greenfield who is helping his dad Billy renovate an old house for Granne into the Tuttle Harbour Café and Reading Room. As Larkin helps Granne with the book donations for the reading room, she deals with her anxiety which tempers her interactions with others, even with nice-guy Will. But when Will takes her to a local campfire with his peers, Larkin meets the gregarious Casey Henwood, his girlfriend Beth and others, and overdoes the drink when "...it tastes so good and goes down easily." (pg. 70). Could she be putting herself in harm's way?

When a fire destroys the back of the café, Casey and Beth and others are quick to point fingers at Will's dad, a recovering alcoholic, who'd apparently once burned down a shed he was building at the Henwood's farm. Hearing the gossip about Billy as well as about Will from Beth, and reflecting on the talk that went on about her after she was injured, Larkin is perplexed about whom to believe or to trust. What's worse is the news coming from her dad about her mother's health situation.  Walking out into the water until the darkness envelopes her or trying to swim out to Prince Edward Island, knowing she'd never make it, continue to overshadow her regular visits to the shore until she starts to live beyond others' words.

Jean Mills, who wrote the Red Maple-nominated Skating Over Thin Ice (Red Deer Press, 2018), knows how to tell a story about dealing with expectations from family, school and self. She gets what it's like to trust and not trust your own feelings and to be confused about how those you care about conduct themselves around you. From an addicted mother to an unfamiliar grandmother and peers that are both charming and deceptive, Larkin must look at every interaction as a potential disaster and possibly harmful. Sadly this is probably not unusual for teens who are trying to understand a world in which they are expected and allowed to take on greater responsibilities but may be unsure whether they have the strength or understanding to meet them. For Larkin, it may not always be evident which is the safe world or the dangerous one, not unlike a shore that borders land and water, but she is developing the courage to choose her heading and a solid intuition about good people that will guide her.

Breaking Faith: Book launch (Burlington, ON)

Join

E. Graziani

author of

War in My Town

(Second Story Press, 2015)

for the launch of her new young adult novel

Breaking Faith

by E. Graziani

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-024-7

248 pp.

Ages 13-17

March 2017

Review here

on

Sunday, April 2, 2017

2 p.m.

A Different Drummer Books

513 Locust St.

Burlington, ON

In addition to a book reading and signing, 

youth mental health expert Dr. Vimala Chinnasamy will give a talk.

From Second Story Press' website about the book:

Faith Emily Hansen just wants to be loved and to live without the weight of addiction. But the lure of drugs is strong. The relief that she gets from being wrapped up in the cozy little cotton ball of heroin is impossible to ignore.

Faith’s story starts in her earliest days, before drugs, before her family falls apart. Before her mother leaves. Before her sister betrays her, taking away Faith’s last connection to home. She eventually becomes consumed by the need to “chase the dragon” – the heroin addiction that seems to keep the Darkness at bay, but leads her to live on the street. The determination to find love and comfort that lures Faith to drugs is ultimately the same stubborn force that can drive her to recover.

Retrieved from https://secondstorypress.ca/teen/breaking-faith on March 13, 2017.

Breaking Faith

Written by E. Graziani

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-024-7

328 pp.

Ages 13+

March 2017

Reviewed from advance reading copy

For most people, turning points help define them in terms of before and after.  They are sparks of tragedy or ecstasy that depress or elevate, twisting the trajectories of lives onto paths unpredicted.  For Faith Emily Hansen, her turning points began with those of her mother, Lacey, but when her own begin to accumulate, they lead her down paths that are both random and dangerous, and sadly all her own.

Life for Faith’s family has never been easy.  Her mother had been devastated when her husband Simon had died, leaving her with a two-year-old daughter Constance.  She tried to get on with her life, moving back in with her criticizing and argumentative mother Dot, and even getting involved with two different men and having Faith a year later and Destiny two years after that.  Still Lacey’s life is tenuous at best, and out of control at worst.  Although her love for her children is evident–including coming to Faith's rescue when the four-year-old becomes an innocent victim in a horrific act of violence–she leaves them when Faith is just seven, moving to Toronto and making promises she'll never keep.

When Constance moves in with her other grandmother, the affluent Josephine, Faith is left to mother her younger sister and navigate her own Darkness, ever difficult as she is overwhelmed with sadness and anger, hurt and loneliness.  And she is just a child.  As they all deal with Lacey’s spiral into drug use, Faith yearns for normal but is unable to make choices that support that.  Even some counselling and making friends with Norma and Ishaan in middle school can't keep Faith from eventually breaking and heading to a life on the streets of Toronto and into using heroin, eventually hitting rock bottom.

"And my soul was broken–I'd lost Faith.  Lost hope. Lost my belief in my own destiny." (pg. 264)

The story that E. Graziani tells with heart-breaking power and poignancy is devastating in its sadness and bleakness.  Though Faith's reactions are her own, the circumstances of her life were thrust upon her by a mother with her own addiction and mental health issues, by a random act of violence and by familial circumstances which burden her and for which she, as a child, was unprepared emotionally and physically.  Even happiness was a burden.

"And the feeling of constantly being on edge, walking on eggshells, and feeling guilty (though outlandish as that may seem) if I felt a positive emotion." (pg. 17)

But, though Faith sees little positive in her life, she is the poster child for the Bob Marley quote she repeats throughout: "You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice."
The reader may be hopeful that, since it is a nineteen-year-old Faith who is writing about the events and conditions that led her to a point where she needs to be rescued, Breaking Faith must have a happy ending i.e., she survives to write her story.  But I don't think there are any happy endings here.  As the Afterword by psychiatrist Dr. Vimala Chinnasamy states, Faith's story is not an uncommon one, one in which mental illness and addiction are perceived as emotional weaknesses and for which inadequate support, both within the family and outside, is provided, thus contributing to the tragedy.  And Breaking Faith is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.  The only saving grace is that Faith survives these chapters of her life and that E. Graziani provides a deep look into a life we need to witness so that we might walk with the Faiths of this world before we need to pull them up and rescue them or worse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Check out the next post for details of the book launch for Breaking Faith this Sunday at A Different Drummer Books in Burlington, ON

My Beautiful Birds

Written and illustrated by Suzanne Del Rizzo

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-012-3

32 pp.

Ages 6-10

March 2017

In My Beautiful Birds, author-illustrator Suzanne Del Rizzo offers a poignant story of a Syrian child refugee traumatized by leaving his cherished pigeons behind.  It is a tale of sorrow and suffering and promise, and beautifully rendered in Suzanne Del Rizzo’s distinctive art.

From My Beautiful Birds 

by Suzanne Del Rizzo

Sami is a little boy who delights in caring for his pet pigeons.  When the family must escape their war-torn home and trek endless days to the Za'atari refugee camp, Sami worries for his birds’ safety, though he filled their bowls with food and saw them escape into the skies above. As life unfolds tenuously at the camp, first with shelter and then with the restoration of household routines and school, Sami worries and longs for his birds.

I wish it were like it used to be, just me and my pigeons up on our rooftop with the wind and the boundless sky.   Happy.  Free. (pg. 13)

Even a painting activity that starts out well enough, with Sami painting his “beautiful birds, knowing each wispy feather by heart” (pg. 15)

From My Beautiful Birds

by Suzanne Del Rizzo

becomes a disaster of blackened paint, not unlike the darkness in the sky and worries in the little boy’s heart.

Now, when the smoky nightmares boom, I watch the clouds. Sometimes, fluffy cloud-pigeons take shape.
Spiraling.
Soaring.
Sharing the sky. (pg. 19)

From My Beautiful Birds

by Suzanne Del Rizzo

Everything changes when four birds–a canary, a dove, a rose finch and a pigeon–reach out to Sami, painting “the sky with promise, and the hope of peace.” (pg. 22) The boy in the blue hoodie and yellow boots reaches right back, and finds a way to look to a tomorrow where he can help others.

The sadness and trauma in this little boy’s life is so palpable, from the family’s departure to their adjustment to the refugee camp and to the despondency that permeates Sami’s new life.  Through use of colour and the texture of her art–here polymer clay with acrylics–Suzanne Del Rizzo balances the shadows of war and trauma with the bright colours of youthful exuberance and pastels of hope for a future.  There’s the tumultuous skies and the ordinary days, and the anger of loss with the chirpiness of birds and children at play.  I know the excellence of her art, complex in the depth of detail and its ability to evoke emotions.  But Suzanne Del Rizzo has demonstrated a new depth to her writing.  Perhaps it’s the tragic circumstances of the story but Suzanne Del Rizzo has put heart and hope into her words, giving breath to a staggering situation, suffusing it with some degree of optimism where there is so little.  My Beautiful Birds provides a promise that all the the darkness from that Syrian skyline of smoke is behind Sami and remains open to a bright sky of birds and lightness, the landscape of his future.

From My Beautiful Birds 

by Suzanne Del Rizzo

Honouring differences in families' lives: Cultural competence with diverse youngCanLit

Today's post is the sixth in seven posts related to my recent presentation at the  Ontario Library Association's Superconference in Toronto.  The presentation, titled Becoming Culturally Competent with Diverse YoungCanLit, included booklists of youngCanLit to help individuals, schools and other institutions become culturally competent.

Today's post focuses on...

250 Hours
by Colleen Nelson
Coteau Books
152 pp.
Ages 12+
2015
Métis, small town, discrimination, arson, independence
Review here

Asha’s Mums
by Rosamund Elwin and Michele Paulse
Illus. by Dawn Lee
Women’s Literary Press
24 pp.
Ages 5-9
1990
Same-sex parents

The Biggest Poutine in the World
by Andrée Poulin
Annick Press
160 pp.
Ages 8-12
2016
Abandonment, community, dysfunctional family
Review here

Dear Baobab
by Cheryl Foggo
Illus. by Qin Leng
Second Story Press
24 pp.
Ages 4-8
2011
Home, Africa, Canada, grief
Review here

Elliot
by Julie Pearson
Illus. by Manon Gauthier
Trans. by Erin Woods
Pajama Press
32 pp.
Ages 4-8
2016
Foster parents, dysfunctional family, adoption
Review here

A Family is a Family is a Family
by Sara O’Leary
Illus. by Qin Leng
Groundwood Books
32 pp.
Ages 4-7
2016
Diversity, family, parents
Review here

The Finding Place
by Julie Hartley
Red Deer Press
244 pp.
Ages 10-14
2015
International adoption, China, orphanages, self-acceptance
Review here

Fostergirls
by Liane Shaw
Second Story Press
256 pp.
Ages 13-16
2011
Foster children, group homes, learning disability
Review here

Four Seasons of Patrick
by Susan Hughes
Red Deer Press
80 pp.
Ages 7-10
2013
Blended families
Review here

Jakeman
by Deborah Ellis
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
201 pp.
Ages 10-13
2007
Prison, convicted parents, bus trips

Looks Like Daylight: Voices of Indigenous Kids
by Deborah Ellis
Groundwood Books
256 pp.
Ages 12+
2013
Indigenous communities, heritage, residential schools, ostracism, abuse
Review here

Missing Nimâmâ 
by Melanie Florence
Illus. by François Thisdale
Clockwise Press
32 pp.
Ages 8+
2015
Missing indigenous women,  Aboriginal Peoples
Review here

My Beautiful Birds
by Suzanne Del Rizzo
Pajama Press
32 pp.
Ages 6-10
2017
Syria, refugees, refugee camp, pigeons

My Book of Life By Angel
by Martine Leavitt
Groundwood Books
246 pp.
Ages 14+
2012
Sex trade workers, missing women, drugs
Review here

One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way
by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Pajama Press
128 pp.
Ages 8-12
2012
Vietnam War, airlifts, adoption, immigration, non-fiction
Review here

Outside In
by Sarah Ellis
Groundwood Books
208 pp.
Ages 10-13
2014
Home, homelessness, dysfunctional family
Review here

Pandas on the Eastside
by Gabrielle Prendergast
Orca Book Publishers
192 pp.
Ages 9-12
2016
Vancouver, East Van, poverty, community
Review here

Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey
by Margriet Ruurs
Illus. by Nizar Ali Badr
Orca Book Publishers
28 pp.
All ages
2016
Refugees, Syria, dual-language, Arabic, immigration
Review here

We Are All Made of Molecules
by Susin Nielsen
Tundra Books
246 pp.
Ages 12+
2015
Blended families, gay parents, grief
Review here

Downloadable booklist available here