Nutshimit: In the Woods

Written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis

Illustrated by Elise Gravel

English text by Gaëlle Mollen

North Winds Press (Scholastic Canada)

978-1-0397-0180-9

88 pp.

Ages 6-8

August 2023 

 

Told in the first-person perspective of Melissa–author Melissa Mollen Dupuis–Nutshimit: In the Woods is an introduction to the natural world of the forest as seen through her Innu eyes. She relates how she experiences the forest, activating all her senses and thus taking a "forest bath."

 

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

Melissa teaches about the different types of forests based on the composition of trees, their ages and more, but also recognizes that forests are communities that include other species and elements like fungi, rocks and people. As such, the bulk of Nutshimit: In the Woods is an exploration of forest elements that are important to Innu culture. From the birch tree and its uses for baskets, canoes and biting art to the wolverine, called kuekuatsheu, a trickster important in Innu stories, Melissa Mollen Dupuis describes forest elements as they appear, as they relate to the Innu and what they mean for the environment. Young readers will learn about the sugar maple tree (upueiashkᵘ), lichen (uipatsheushkamikᵘ), the goose (nishk) and other birds and land and marine animals, as well as weather elements like winter (pipun) and snow (kun). Melissa Mollen Dupuis isn't just stating the facts that could be in any non-fiction book about forests; she's finding the heart of forest communities for what they are, what they offer and what we need to know to ensure their continuation.  At 88 pages, Nutshimit: In the Woods is beyond a picture book story and more of a reflective compendium that teaches, illustrates and entertains.

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

With procedurals for making maple syrup, braiding sweetgrass and cooking bannock, Melissa Mollen Dupuis also takes young readers from the forest and into an interactive learning experience, and goes beyond telling and into doing. That's her way of sharing her own experiences as an Innu child–now she is an Innu activist and CBC Radio host–and getting children to really see what she always did. 

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

Melissa Mollen Dupuis's ideas could have been a dry recounting of her cultural experiences with the forest, but they are not and, with the illustrations from Elise Gravel, there is a playfulness of characters and settings that shift the book from information to true storytelling. The forest becomes a character, not unlike Melissa herself, and Elise Gravel makes them all whimsical, from trees with eyes, a wolverine annoyed by humans, or a hibernating bear asking to not be bothered until spring. She keeps her cartoons mischievous while illuminating, and for a book loaded with cultural and personal significance, that is an achievement.

Take a walk in the woods with Melissa Mollen Dupuis and Elise Gravel and learn about those woods from an Innu perspective. It's revealing, it's heartfelt and it reminds all of us to open our senses to the natural world

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳

A French-language edition, Nutshimit: Un bain de forêt will also be available in August.

 

The Starlight Claim: Book launches (Perth, Toronto, Ottawa and Kingston, ON)

It's not a sequel but it shares commonalities with

Tim Wynne-Jones's
Governor General award-winning novel

The Maestro

Written by Tim Wynne-Jones
 Groundwood
231 pp.
Ages 11+
1995

and it is launching this fall.

Join author Tim Wynne-Jones

for multiple launches of his new #YA psychological thriller

The Starlight Claim

Written by Tim Wynne-Jones

Candlewick Press

978-1-5362-0264-9

240 pp.

Ages 13+

September 2019

on

Sunday, September 15, 2019
1-3 p.m.

The Book Nook and Other Treasures
60 Gore Street East
Perth, ON

•••

Monday, September 16, 2019

 6 -8 p.m.

Ben McNally Books
366 Bay Street

Toronto, Ontario

•••

Thursday, September 19, 2019
7-9 p.m.

Books on Beechwood
35 Beechwood Avenue
Ottawa, ON

•••

Thursday, October 3, 2019 
7-9 p.m.

Novel Idea Bookstore
156 Princess Street
Kingston, Ontario

Fast-paced, evocative, and intensely suspenseful, Tim Wynne-Jones’s latest psychological thriller finds a teenager setting his wits against the frigid wilderness and a menacing crew of escapees.

Four months after his best friend, Dodge, disappeared near their families’ camp in a boat accident, Nate is still haunted by nightmares. He’d been planning to make the treacherous trek to the remote campsite with a friend — his first time in winter without his survival-savvy father. But when his friend gets grounded, Nate secretly decides to brave the trip solo in a journey that’s half pilgrimage, half desperate hope he will find his missing friend when no one else could. What he doesn’t expect to find is the door to the cabin flung open and the camp occupied by strangers: three men he’s horrified to realize have escaped from a maximum-security prison. Snowed in by a blizzard and with no cell signal, Nate is confronted with troubling memories of Dodge and a stunning family secret, and realizes that his survival now depends on his wits as much as his wilderness skills. As things spiral out of control, Nate finds himself dealing with questions even bigger than who gets to leave the camp alive. 

Retrieved from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/611957/the-starlight-claim-by-tim-wynne-jones/9781536202649 on July 15, 2019.

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

Written by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Razorbill

978-0-425-28759-0

368 pp.

Ages 13–17

February 2017

After, I stand for a few moments looking out over the water, the moon reflecting off its glass-like surface.  It's beautiful, yes.  But the beauty doesn't reach me the way it's supposed to because I feel like it's been shoved down my throat.  I register the stark gorgeousness of the dying day, and what it fills me with is unease, and an ominous sensation of cracking inside–of cracking open, of a corresponding excruciating pain I have kept at bay by incredible discipline beginning to seep toward the surface. (pg. 87)

Ingrid Burke must feel like she's been deposited in another world, and one not of her choosing.  In fact, not even one like in the brochure her mother, retired opera singer Margot-Sophia Lalonde, had shown her of Peak Wilderness, an outdoors camp in northern Ontario, to which Ingrid has agreed to go so her mother would permit her attendance at a prestigious music school in London England.  Worse yet, Ingrid, who perceives herself to be “a model citizen and paragon of stability” (pg. 53) compared to the miscellany of other troubled youth campers, must survive three weeks of hiking, canoeing, roughing it, and sharing under the supervision of leaders Pat and Bonnie who seem to enjoy the group’s failures at near impossible tasks.

What happened that led Ingrid to this challenging and repeatedly dangerous situation is told in alternating chapters, organized by Ingrid's age, that speak to her life before Peak Wilderness.  They tell of her life travelling the world with her famous mother and then, after damage to Margot-Sophia’s vocal chords leads them home to Toronto,  the reversal of roles when Margot-Sophia is overcome with depression.  Revealed slowly but with ease are Ingrid’s experiences at school and home, feeling vulnerable and frustrated, fearful and positive, and her attempts to achieve normalcy and some happiness. Eventually we also learn what led her to Peak Wilderness.

My words cannot do justice to the depth of Danielle Younge-Ullman's characterizations and story-telling.  There is so much to share with readers that my words seem sparse and ineffective. But I can tell you that Danielle Younge-Ullman weaves Ingrid’s present and past into a fabric of ordinary and extraordinary, creating a life of tenacity to which most of us could aspire.  Though Ingrid doesn’t want to acknowledge the vulnerabilities that brought her to the camp, Danielle Younge-Ullman provides hints throughout the story–Isaac, an axe and an injured leg–that there is more to the teen’s story than she reveals to others and even to herself.  Her go-to survival mechanisms include a strained positivity —“How exciting, and what a magnificent opportunity to get in touch with my inner savage” (pg. 29)— and silence with a dose of denial.  But beyond Ingrid’s inner turmoil are the relationships the teen has with her mother, her new father, a boy with whom she has a connection, and all the campers.  These relationships drive Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined.  They ebb and flow, both serene and passionate, not unlike the music of a great opera that Margot-Sophia might have performed.  Though Ingrid might think she knows the music of her life really well, she’s just learning to perform it with passion so that she can make it successfully to the triumphant finish. And Danielle Younge-Ullman makes sure that we want to stay for the whole performance without ever nodding off.

****************

On May 6, 2017, Danielle Younge-Ullman will be speaking at the Stratford Writers Festival Young Adult forum along with numerous other YA authors.  I'll post about it here soon but you can get details at http://digiwriting.com/stratford-writers-festival-young-adult-2017/

I'll be there and you should be too!

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

Join author

Danielle Younge-Ullman

for the launch of her new young adult book

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

Written by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Razorbill

978-0-425-28759-0

368 pp.

Ages 13-17

February 2017

on

  Sunday, February 26, 2017

2-4 p.m.

at

Another Story Book Shop

315 Roncesvalles Avenue

From Penguin Random House website at http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535860/everything-beautiful-is-not-ruined-by-danielle-younge-ullman/9780425287590/

Wild meets The Breakfast Club in this story of a girl who must survive an extreme wilderness experience to prove to her mother that she has the strength to pursue her dreams. 

Then
Ingrid traveled all over Europe with her opera star mother, Margot-Sophia. Life was beautiful and bright, and every day soared with music.

Now
Ingrid is on a summertime wilderness survival trek for at-risk teens: addicts, runaways, and her. She’s fighting to survive crushing humiliations, physical challenges that push her to her limits, and mind games that threaten to break her.

Then
When the curtain fell on Margot-Sophia’s singing career, they buried the past and settled into a small, painfully normal life. But Ingrid longed to let the music soar again. She wanted it so much that, for a while, nothing else mattered.

Now
Ingrid is never going to make it through this summer if she can’t figure out why she’s here . . . and why the music really stopped.

#CanLitChoices: Alternatives for Hatchet

Hatchet
by Gary Paulsen
Bradbury Press
195 pp.
Ages 11+
RL 6.3
1987

Hatchet, recipient of the 1988 Newbery Honor Book and winner of the William Allen White Children's Book Award for 1990, as well as the basis for A Cry in the Wild film, is a favourite novel read by young people across Canada and the U.S. It is the story of thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson who must learn to survive in the northern Alberta wilderness after the pilot of his small plane has a heart attack and dies, crashing the plane.

Themes upon which teachers focus lessons include the following:
• survival (man vs. nature)
• perseverance
• attitude
• fear

But we have a plethora of youngCanLit that can fill the same novel study bill and, of course, I would like to promote them here.  Each one of these deals with the same themes but in different ways and are all the better for the variety of storylines covered.  This listing includes classics and hi-lo reads, as well as middle-grade and YA titles.  There’s something for every reader who wants an adventure story set in the wilderness, many in the wilds of Canada.

Camp Wild
by Pam Withers
Orca Book Publishers
104 pp.
Ages 10-14
RL 3.8
2005
Fourteen-year-old Wilf runs away from summer camp to stay alone in the woods but ends up with a couple of unwanted followers and a fight for survival.
Teachers guide available at http://digital.orcabook.com/teachersguides-campwild-teaching-strategies/

Chocolate River Rescue
by Jennifer Kent McGrath
Nimbus
122 pp.
Ages 8-12
RL 3.9
2007
Three boys rough housing on the ice of the Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick face danger when the ice breaks away, sending them out towards the Atlantic.

Cut Off
by Jamie Bastedo
Red Deer Press
340 pp.
Ages 12+
RL 4.0
2015
Teen Indio McCracken is sent to a wilderness-based rehab camp, which includes a 50-day canoe trip, to help him with his tech addiction.



The Darwin Expedition
by Diane Tullson
Orca Book Publishers
128 pp.
Ages 12+
RL 2.5
2007
After going off run when snowboarding, two boys must deal with an accident, a bear tracking them, impending weather dangers and hunger to survive.

Frozen Fire: A tale of courage
by James Houston
Aladdin
139 pp.
Ages 12+
RL 5.9
1977/1992
Determined to find his father who has been lost in a storm, Mathew and his Inuit friend Kayak brave wind storms, starvation, wild animals, and wild men during their search in the Canadian Arctic.

The Hill
by Karen Bass
Pajama Press
256 pp.
Ages 12+
RL 4.1
March 2016
After a plane crash, a privileged teen is helped by a Cree young man when his decisions have the two pursued by Wîhtiko, the legendary Cree monster.

Island: Shipwreck, Survival, Escape
by Gordon Korman
Scholastic Canada
144 pp., 144 pp., 160 pp.
Ages 8-13
RL 4.6, 4.9, 4.8
2001
Six kids must survive after they are shipwrecked on a deserted island with no food and very few supplies.

Lost in the Barrens
by Farley Mowat
McLelland & Stewart
244 pp.
Ages 12-16
RL 7.1
1956
Jamie MacNair and his Cree friend Awasin are separated from others during a canoe trip to the remote barrens and must find the means to survive the winter in the harsh environment.

Timberwolf
by Caroline Pignat
Red Deer Press
206 pp.
Ages 11-14
RL 4.5
2011

In this historical fiction, a young man awakens in the snow, knowing neither his name nor his story but find his way back to himself and survive, with the help of a young Anishnaabeg man.

Cut Off

by Jamie Bastedo

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-511-0

340 pp.

Ages 12+

June 2015

From Guatemala to Calgary and to the Yukon, Cut Off takes the reader on a nerve-racking journey from exploitation to addiction and reclamation and finally to self-acceptance.  It's a uncertain ride, with lots of disquieting edges that may look like safe shores and tortuous currents that need to be navigated.   But the destination, self-acceptance, is always evident, though not necessarily easily tenable.

Cut Off starts in Guatemala where teen Indio McCracken lives a privileged life courtesy of his Canadian father's position as a mining executive.  Though the boy also lives with his Guatemalan mother, younger sister Sofi, Great Uncle Faustus and best friend and dog Loba, it is his father that controls everything for Indio.  Edgar McCracken's zealousness–that Indio become a world-famous classical guitarist–is relentless and has him dictating Indio's tutoring, booking his performances, restricting his computer access, and constructing a fully-loaded practise room in which Indio is locked for hours daily. But everything changes when Indio turns 14 and begins to attend the Xela British School twice a week where he finds refuge on the computer and in a blog he starts at www.CagedGuitarist.blogspot.com.  The freedom to share his music and his thoughts, however, is tempered with learning how his father's company has been exploiting and persecuting the local people.  A particularly terrifying event leads the family to pack up and head to Calgary.

With the nasty media attention regarding the mine, and with difficulties he experiences at his new high-school, Indio–now 16– finds the need to reinvent himself so he asks to be called Ian and starts a second blog, BEIN'canadIAN.blogspot.ca.  But a series of episodes at school and at home, and an unforeseen tragedy and horrific car accident indicates Indio cannot free himself from his tech devices.

They just didn't get it.  How could something that felt so good be so bad?  The Internet was buena medicina for me, right?  It took my mind off the pain, off the loneliness.  It fought my depression.
Made me somebody.
They'd see.
There was no stopping me now. (pg. 193)

His family's response is to send him away to a wilderness-based rehab camp called Camp Lifeboat in the Yukon where the "campers" all suffer from some addiction or another.

Simply different poisons, same dead end. (pg. 210)

Through journaling, camping, and a 50-day canoe trip, Indio and the others are compelled to face the beast which they fear most.

Cut Off is a very full young adult novel.  There are the issues of exploitation and addiction and rehab and self-acceptance. There's tragedy across two countries and experiences in the big city, village and wilderness.  The characters include the indigenous peoples of both Canada and Guatemala, and the poor and very rich.  There's also a lot of self-examination, though not always enlightened, and complete oblivion to everything and everyone.  Jamie Bastedo packs a lot into Cut Off.

But, for me, the rampant exploitation, from the mine's impact on the Guatemalan people, to Indio's father's violent fervour regarding his son's musicianship, to Indio's dangerous overuse of his technology and Morris' bullying of Indio, is dismaying.  Compassion does not show up much in Cut Off–though the heart of a few individuals like Indio's Great Uncle Faustus offers some hope–but I guess that's the way Jamie Bastedo wrote it.  His sub-plots are persuasive, though perhaps somewhat incohesive.  And the duplicity and selfishness of a number of characters and the number of tragedies, including the death of several dogs, were hard for me to welcome.  But, Jamie Bastedo's writing is generally strong, allowing the reader to infer much, so perhaps I can attribute my perspective to recent health issues that have me seeking out more positive and inspiring stories.

That said, Cut Off is a worthwhile read as a cautionary tale of how focusing on one's own desires, irrespective of possible consequences on others, is jeopardous. And, given the landscape of the story, Cut Off takes the reader on an experience not soon forgotten.