Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret

Written by Vicki Grant
HarperTrophy Canada
978-1-55468-182-2
324 pp.
Ages 12-16
2011

Everyone has secrets.  Sometimes we know they're secrets and try to keep them hidden, in closets and in diaries.  Sometimes we don't even know we have secrets, because they're in our repressed memories or not fully realized yet.  Betsy Wickwire, seventeen, has had a betrayal kept secret from her and, upon its revelation, she hides herself away in her Halifax home.  But, to really hide herself away, she needs money.  Everything comes together one day when: 1) she learns of the need for cleaning ladies, who are paid relatively well; 2) she goes to an obscure cafe to avoid people she knows; and 3) meets a former classmate, Meghan, now called Dolores, a green-haired, audacious girl who loves the idea of setting up a cleaning business.  With indifference, Becky goes along with headstrong Dolores' enterprise, Lapins de Poussière (Dust Bunnies) Cleaning Service, and finds herself getting more out of the job than just the money.

While still tormented daily by the loss of her boyfriend and best friend and trying to work out how to deal with it, Becky is discovering a new life for herself, with Dolores and Murdoch, a client's son who Becky met in an intimate bathroom tussle.  She also discovers that the prevalence of secrets amongst their clients (e.g., the need for anti-depressants, hidden alcohol, marital affairs, trashy reading, etc.) make it easier for her to clean their homes.  But the realization that everyone has secrets, even Dolores, ultimately helps Betsy to understand herself, which makes her capable of being a better friend.

Vicki Grant has always successfully merged humour while looking at human behaviour.   In Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret, the focus is on how secrets make us human but can impede understanding.  From Lapins de Poussière's pink, fluffy branding, to Dolores' clever repartée with Betsy, Murdoch and their elderly client, Frank, to the shopping trips to Giant Tiger and Value Village,  Grant makes Betsy's new circumstances seem fuller, almost larger than life or, at least, larger than her former life as a popular girl.  The old Betsy, though perhaps considered better dressed, more popular and in with the in-crowd, was an insubstantial version of her true self, and it was fulfilling to share in the transformation with her.

If you're interested in enjoying more of Vicki Grant's wit and well-plotted stories, my recommendations would include these titles:

• The Puppet Wrangler (Orca, 2004)
• Quid Pro Quo (Orca, 2005) Winner of Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Novel
• Pigboy (Orca, 2006)
• Not Suitable for Family Viewing (HarperTrophy Canada, 2009) Winner of the 2011 Red Maple Fiction Award

Wellington's Rainy Day

Written by Carolyn Beck  

Illustrated by Brooke Kerrigan

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-55469-284-2

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

2011

Wellington is a hound who enjoys a good life with Master Horace.  And even though Master Horace seems to be having an exceptionally deep and long nap today, Wellington is clever enough to arrange for his needs to be met.  His bowl may be empty but he knows where there's always a deep porcelain bowl filled with water.  As for his food, Wellington can smell a delicious meatloaf on the table.  Though a short hound, he finds creative ways to reach this food, and to eat "every last gorgeous, every last worgeous, every last squorgeous bit." He even cleans up, though more to hide the evidence than for housekeeping purposes.

But, Honey, the marmalade cat (with a mouse as a sidekick), has been watching Wellington and, like any younger sibling, would delight in Wellington's downfall.  But, as every child who has every tattled knows, "telling" doesn't always work out the way one anticipates. 

Carolyn Beck must love animals and dogs especially, with three of her five picture books based on canine critters: The Waiting Dog (Kids Can Press, 2003), Dog Breath (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2011) and now Wellington's Rainy Day (Orca, 2011).  The rhyme and rhythm of Carolyn Beck's text support the sweeping nature of Wellington's day, enhancing the mundane (e.g., trash in a garbage can) to extraordinary (e.g., "The garbage was a poem").  Brooke Kerrigan's pencil and watercolour drawings are light but evocative of the important aspects of Wellington's life with Master Horace and Honey.  Although Master Horace's face is never evident, the important parts, like his legs (for walking) and finger (for pointing) and voice (for snores and calling), are definite.  The details in Kerrigan's illustrations add charm and whimsy, and children will delight in looking for small details including the little mouse.

After reading Wellington's Rainy Day, it would seem that Sir Winston Churchill was correct when he declared that, "Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us."  And for that reason, the book's ending seems a justifiable and fair one.  (By the way, the end of Churchill's quotation, "Pigs treat us as equals", offered his explanation for liking animals of the porcine variety.)

Family Literacy Day: January 27, 2012

ABC Family Literacy Day

Family Literacy Day was established in Canada in 1999 to promote the importance of reading and literacy for all family members.  ABC Canada initiated this national day of celebration with the production of a made-for-TV movie, "Penny's Odyssey", a story about a young girl who hides her illiteracy from her family. 

Now renamed, ABC Life Literacy Canada, this non-profit organization promotes literacy through a variety of programs and activities including Family Literacy Day and Good Reads^®
where great Canadian authors (for adults and youth) publish short books for adults to help improve their learning skills. A quick glance shows works by celebrated Canadian authors Deborah Ellis, Maureen Jennings and Frances Itani.

^{This year's Family Literacy Day will be celebrated in a wide variety of venues and ways, including:}

• ^{Journey to Learning Passport: a downloadable passport filled with activities to complete;}
• ^{Mississauga St. Michael's Majors vs. Peterborough Petes OHL hockey: discounted tickets for the game, include pre- and during game activities with prizes;} 
• ^{Colouring and Writing Contests;}
• ^{Free downloads of bookmarks, puzzles, and activities; and}
• ^{Hundreds of local events in libraries, schools, and other venues displayed on a Celebrations across Canada map}

Join in the celebration of reading and writing on Family Literacy Day!

I AM CANADA series

Scholastic Canada introduced the series I AM CANADA in 2010 for readers of ages 9-12.  The following compelling invitation (from www.scholastic.ca/iamcanada/videos) suggests why young readers have chosen to follow this series:

The following titles have been published in the series:

Prisoner of Dieppe: World War II, 
Alistair Morrison, Occupied France, 1942 
by Hugh Brewster
978-0-545-98594-9
2010

Blood and Iron: Building the Railway, 
Lee Heen-gwong, British Columbia, 1882 
by Paul Yee
978-0-545-98593-2
2010

Shot at Dawn: World War I, 
Allan McBride, France, 1917 
by John Wilson
978-0-545-98595-6
2011

Deadly Voyage: RMS Titanic,
Jamie Laidlaw, April 14, 1912  
by Hugh Brewster
978-1-4431-0465-4
2011

Behind Enemy Lines: World War II, 
Sam Frederiksen, Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1944 
by Carol Matas
978-0-545-99066-0
Feb, 2012



Additional information about the series, including relevant videos, discussion guides and activities can be found at the I AM CANADA website

N.B. I plan to review Deadly Voyage: RMS Titanic (Hugh Brewster, 2011) and the Dear Canada book, That Fatal Night: The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton (Sarah Ellis, 2011) in April, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Behind Enemy Lines : World War II, Sam Frederiksen, Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1944

by Carol Matas
Scholastic Canada
978-0-545-99066-0
196 pp.
Ages 9-12
2012

Scholastic Canada's new historical fiction series for boys, I am Canada, is a brilliant twin to their Dear Canada series, whose female protagonist and diary entry emphases are often tiresome for boys interested in historical fiction. Behind Enemy Lines: World War II is the fifth book in this series, due out in February.

Sam Frederiksen is an eighteen-year-old Canadian airman/gunner when his plane is shot down over Nazi-occupied France in 1944.  He and the injured navigator, Bill, are rescued by a French boy of the French Resistance who takes them to safety.  Sam joins other Allies, including James Thompson, a Brit, and Ben Webber, an American, at a local Resistance fighter's farm to help sabotage the infrastructure the Nazis use (e.g., railroads, etc.). When the farmer's daughter's fiancé is arrested, she betrays her parents and the Allies, hoping to secure his release. Luckily, the farmer anticipates the Germans' strategy and moves the Allied airmen to safety, though his own farm is burned to the ground.

Sam often thinks about his Danish family back in Winnipeg, believing in the generosity of people such as his father, the doctor, and finds it hard to believe the rumours of Hitler's assault on the Jewish people and the treachery of others in supporting their actions.  Sam is safely taken to Paris, where he meets up with Max, a Jewish member of his downed air crew,  but they are betrayed and handed over to the Germans, along with other French Resistance fighters and Allies.  Sam begins to really see the true circumstances of the occupation, especially after they are sent to Buchenwald, the concentration camp.  There Sam is witness to the emaciated prisoners in their blue and white striped pyjamas, and the cruel SS officers with dogs, and the vile smells coming from ever-burning chimneys, but Sam still holds some hope that they will be treated as POWs according to the Geneva Convention, just as POWs in Canada were being treated.

Sam's naiveté is not borne of ignorance but rather hope and honour.  He is relentless in adhering to the protocol that he only share his name, rank and service number, and in following the directions of the Allied officers they choose to lead them. When the prisoners in his cattle car are taken off and marched away at gunpoint, after an escape attempt, they are sure of their execution, but still do not cower or show shame, as they recognized the honour in following their orders to escape from the enemy.  By availing himself of the help of so many strangers and of the information they share with him, Sam gains both in wisdom and heart, during a time when many were abandoning both.

Surprisingly, there is a factual basis for this story, and Carol Matas, always a thorough researcher of history, provides extensive notes about it.  (An NFB documentary from 1994, titled The Lucky Ones: Allied Airmen and Buchenwald by Michael Allder also tells the story.) Matas provides additional notes related to the role of Canadians in WWII air operations, the work of the French Resistance fighters and the Holocaust, as well as images, of airmen and concentration camp prisoners.

Unraveling Isobel

by Eileen Cook

Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster)

978-1-4424-1327-6

290 pp.

Ages 14-18

2012

No seventeen-year-old likes being yanked away from her friends at the beginning of her graduating year. That's pretty tough on Isobel, but she also has to deal with her mother's new husband, Richard (who Isobel insists on calling Dick) and her new gorgeous stepbrother, Nathaniel, who is still getting over the deaths of his mother and younger sister less than a year ago and seems less than welcoming. Plus, she has to move to an "estate" on a small island where the community's predominant gossip is related to her new family and home.  Isobel definitely finds it hard to keep herself together and even hold her tongue sometimes.  But, with her birth father having given up his career to become an artist (her own passion, though stifled by her mom) and suffering from schizophrenia (which is known to have a genetic component), Isobel starts worrying that the unraveling means she's going crazy.

She'd like to turn to someone, so she tries calling her best friend, Anita, but she seems pretty busy with new friends. Her mother is too gaga over her wealthy, new husband to do anything except chastise Isobel for not appreciating their new life.  Although her step-brother, Nathaniel, tries to be available to her, he is just a little too attractive for comfort.  At school, though, Isobel is taken under the wing of popular alpha-girl, Nicole, and her entourage of cheerleaders, and starts to feel like she's settling in a bit (even if Nicole insists she join the cheer leading squad).  Of course, there are the drawings that Isobel doesn't recall sketching,  and the recurring visions of a young girl, and things in her room being rearranged.

Given time, Isobel probably would have worked things out for herself, but with Dick and her mom insisting that she see a therapist, and Nicole's gossip and machinations making life just a bit more difficult, and Nathaniel starting to share his feelings with her while continuing to be so good-looking, everything just works against her.  Luckily her humour and nerve help Isobel unravel appropriately while keeping her whole.  Her snarky comebacks to the comments of others continued to keep me laughing and cheering for her, pleased with her strength of character. When Nathaniel questions how she could possibly see with her heavy, dark make-up (crap, he calls it), she fires back with, "How do you see with your head shoved so far up your ass?" (pg. 14).  She doesn't hold back, not even with the profanities.

Isobel's fear, that she is losing her mind and is not "normal", is indicative of the stigma that her mother, and too often society, attach to issues of mental health.  She even acknowledges that it would have been easier to tell others that her dad had leprosy or was a terrorist than that he was mentally ill.  But, even though frightened, Isobel continues to evaluate her mental health quite rationally, for example, recognizing that she didn't really have crazy thoughts because, "I didn't think I was Napoleon, or that my bagel was an alien," (pg. 48), relieving her tension, as well as that of the reader who could feel witness to a breakdown.  She regularly assesses the unnerving criticisms from her mother and Dick ("I love how when you have a opinion different from your parent's it's an 'attitude'"; pg.95) or to creepy sounds ("...was a wind chime, some type of sea glass and shell thing.  Fantastic.  I had been attempting to communicate with a home accessory"; pg. 47).

Although I thought Nathaniel came around a little too quickly, especially while still dealing with his grief and his father's prompt remarriage, I relaxed when Isobel found an ally in him and one who appreciated things about her that she did not recognize herself.  Any way, when you have to solve a mystery, it's always nice to have a sidekick, especially one with whom you could fall in love.  (Remember: they're only step-siblings, as Isobel constantly reminds everyone. No reason to chastise them.  It's legal.)

The Arthur Ellis Awards

For readers of crime, mystery, espionage and all manner of criminal doings, both fictional and factual, the Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing are the awards to check out for the newest and the best. (A bit of trivia: The awards are named for the pseudonym of the Official Executioner for the Dominion of Canada from 1913-1935, which explains the appearance of the award as seen to the right.)  Awarded annually by the Crime Writers of Canada since 1984, the Arthur Ellis Awards include the following categories:

For Published Works:

• Best Crime Novel *
• Best First Crime Novel *
• Best Crime Book in French
• Best Crime Nonfiction
• Best Juvenile/Young Adult Crime Book
• Best Crime Short Story

For Unpublished Work:

• The Unhanged Arthur Award for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel *
  

*Awards for which prizes are provided

This year's shortlist of works from 2011 will be announced in April 2012, and the awards presented at the Arthur Ellis Awards Banquet in Toronto on Thursday, May 31, 2012.

So, if you're looking for a great mystery or thriller, until the 2012 short list is announced, the books nominated for the  2011 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile/Young Adult Crime Book will provide you with a strong selection.

Short List:

• Borderline by Allan Stratton (HarperCollins Canada, 2010) 

• Pluto's Ghost by Sheree Fitch (Doubleday Canada, 2010)

• Victim Rights by Norah McClintock (Red Deer Press, 2010)

• The Vinyl Princess by Yvonne Prinz (HarperCollins Canada, 2010)

• The Worst Thing She Ever Did by Alice Kuipers (HarperCollins Canada, 2010)

Winner:

The Worst Thing She Ever Did  
by Alice Kuipers
HarperCollins Canada, 2010

While the title suggests a mystery to which the reader is not privy,  sixteen-year-old Sophie knows what she did and what it has cost.  After her sister's death, Sophie is instructed by a therapist to share herself, particularly her grief, in a journal. 


For more information about the awards, go to the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards