Curse of the Dream Witch

by Allan Stratton
Scholastic Canada
978-1-4431-1937-5
266 pp.
Ages 8-12
September, 2013

While Allan Stratton has demonstrated a craft for social justice fiction writing with Leslie's Journal (Annick, 2000), Chanda's Secrets (Annick, 2004) and Chanda's Wars (HarperCollins, 2008), last year's The Grave Robber's Apprentice (reviewed here) has grounded the author's writing feet firmly on middle-grade turf.  With Curse of the Dream Witch, Allan Stratton has secured himself a position in MG youngCanLit.

In the Kingdom of Bellumen, it is the twelfth year of the Great Dread, a time in which parents fear for their children's safety, with boys and girls disappearing at night or in the woods.  All is blamed on the Princess Olivia, whose parents King Augustine and Queen Sophia had sought the help of the Dream Witch in having a child.  The Dream Witch had only asked for a small keepsake which she demands at their daughter's christening: the heart of their daughter, Princess Olivia.  But, Olivia is protected by a dozen pysanky (decorated eggs) gifted to her from Ephemia, the court wizard, and the Dream Witch angrily curses them,

"By the morning of the princess's thirteenth birthday, these twelve pysanky will be destroyed and I will have her heart. Until it beats in my hand, none of your children will be safe." (pg. 11)

So the Great Dread began, with curfews and restrictions placed on the children of the Kingdom, including Olivia, so that they may be kept safe from harm, though many children do go missing and their family homes burned.  By the time Olivia is 12, there is only one of the delicate pysanky left unbroken and she is locked in a turret cell with it and only her books and pet mouse, Penelope. 

Milo, a farmer's son born on the same day as Olivia, is desperate to leave his tedious life of corn farming by day and locked in the house at night.  Accidentally, Milo ventures into the woods and is taken by the Dream Witch, awakening in a glass jar, one of many with children from which she takes gratings for her spells. Using a drawing to transport Milo to the armoire in Olivia's turret, the Dream Witch threatens Milo with his parents' lives if he does not bring Olivia to her.  It is fortuitous that Milo is there in the armoire when Olivia decides that she must runaway rather than going with the disgusting and arrogant Prince Leo of Pretonia and his uncle, the Duke of Fettwurst, ostensibly to keep her safe but ultimately for marriage.

So the adventure begins, with everyone tackling their fears, Olivia trying to evade Leo and the Dream Witch, Milo struggling with his need to save his parents but not get Olivia harmed, Penelope showing herself to be...(you'll discover this when you read the book) and Leo and the Dream Witch manipulating everyone with lies and magic.  For Olivia, Milo and Penelope, it's a perilous escapade through repugnant heaps of earthworms, demon dolls, deceiving look-alikes, and other beasts, with only fear, friendship and courage to guide their actions.

Curse of the Dream Witch is a cautionary tale that illustrates, as the Dream Witch so aptly recognizes, "Dreams can become nightmares" (pg. 4) with Allan Stratton's imagery so visual that the nightmare is almost tangible. From the Dream Witch's nose that was,

"Longer than an elephant's trunk, and twice as wrinkled, its base spanned the width of her forehead, descending between her eyes to her waist, where it coiled around her body and looped itself into a belt." (pg. 4)

 to Leo who was "... slimy, with spots. Sweat dripped from his pasty cheeks, while his pimples glistened like ripe cherries" (pg. 59) and a beast with, "Claws attached to tentacles with suckers the size of plates." (pg. 152-3) Yuck, right? In the true spirit of folktales and fairy tales, children's stories that include supernatural elements such as the magic of the Dream Witch, Curse of the Dream Witch does more than teach about perseverance and self-respect and caring for others (that's the teacher in me talking): it entertains with humour, irreverence and surrealistic repugnance, without the violence.  I can already hear the laughs and "Yucks" soundtrack that is sure to accompany any reading of Curse of the Dream Witch.

Book Rapport: WordFest (Calgary)

WordFest is a literary festival held in Banff and Calgary, bringing readers and writers together through readings, performance, panel discussions and interviews.  A part of WordFest is its educational program, First Calgary Financial Book Rapport, when children and youth will have the opportunity to experience the power of stories.

Welcome to Book Rapport!

For five days each October, Book Rapport hosts an eclectic mix of talent, bringing the ideas and words of great writers alive and up close to youth in Calgary and Banff. In 2012, over 6,600 students experienced these fun and engaging events in various cultural venues in Calgary and in schools.

This year's list of authors for children and young adults includes both youngCanLit authors and illustrators (names in colour) and those from outside Canada:

• Marie-Louise Gay, author and illustrator of Read Me a Story Stella, When Stella Was Very, Very Small, Caramba and Henry

• Eric Walters, picture book and middle-grade fiction author of My Name is Blessing, The Matatu, Camp X, and Between Heaven and Earth

• Monica Kulling, children's fiction and non-fiction of Lumpito and the Painter from Spain, Going Up: Elisha Otis's Trip to the Top, Mister Dash and the Cupcake Calamity, and Making Contact: Marconi Goes Wireless

• Teresa Toten, YA author of The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, The Taming, and Me and the Blondes

• David Ward, author of picture books and children's fiction including One Hockey Night, The Hockey Tree and Escape the Mask

• Barbara Reid, plasticine illustrator and author of Perfect Snow, Read Me a Story and Fox Walked Alone

• Alan Silberberg, author of illustrated middle-grade books Milo and his newest The Awesome Almost 100% True Adventures of Matt and Craz

• Cary Fagan, children's fiction author of Oy Feh So?, Mr. Zinger's Hat, The Boy in the Box and The Fortress of Kaspar Snit

• Rhéa Dufresne, l'auteure de Arachnéa

• Wallace Edwards, illustrator and author of Uncle Wally's Old Brown Shoe, Alphabeasts and Monkey Business

• Hélène Koscielniak, l'auteure de Filleul et de Marraine

• Glen Huser, young adult author of The Runaway, Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen and Stitches

• André Jacob, l'auteur de Le Journal de Guerre d'Emilio

The Spotted Dog Last Seen

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press

978-1-55498-387-2

196 pp.

Ages 8-11

August 2013

The Spotted Dog Last Seen may focus on a cemetery and headstones and the dead, but it's really a story about buried secrets and making things right. And with a motley crew of characters led by our narrator Derek (whose passion is collecting sayings to put on t-shirts e.g., Change is good.  You go first.) and the cotton-ball eye-browed Mr. Creelman, The Spotted Dog Last Seen takes the story from grave (pun intended) to middle-grade perfection.

Imagine having Grade 6 students volunteer once a week for the last three months of the school year and getting the assignment of helping the Twillingate Cemetery Brigade tend to the grave markers.  Along with Pascal Bender and Merrilee Takahashi, Derek gets lessons from the trio of elderly men, led by the emphatic Mr. Creelman, about reading numbers, symbols, epitaphs, shapes, and composites of stone, all with the aim of helping them clean the markers. While Derek reacts strongly to stone-carved hands and his recurring nightmare about an orange rubber ball, he starts to enjoy their Wednesday afternoons together.  Pascal is entertaining and asks quirky questions, Merrilee engrosses them in a mystery involving codes linked to some library books, and Derek finds himself learning so much that his fear of cemeteries is diminishing.

"Creelman had been showing us all along that cemeteries were much more about the living than they were about the dead." (pg. 118)

The Spotted Dog Last Seen is a mystery at its heart so I can't give much more away except to say that it involves a school's time capsule, a Mystery Book Club, hidden memories, guilt and much more work in the Twillingate Cemetery. 

Knowing author Jessica Scott Kerrin from her Martin Bridge early-reader series from Kids Can Press, I am familiar with her capable writing with boys as protagonists.  With The Spotted Dog Last Seen, Jessica Scott Kerrin can now add middle-grade writing to her skills.  Boys will enjoy the irreverence of Derek's t-shirts, Pascal's lack of self-control and the grim aura of the Twillingate Cemetery Brigade of Mr. Creelman, Mr. Peeble and Mr. Wooster.  While I felt that there were too many dangling subplots at one point, and I could not keep track of how they were related, I just needed to be patient.  Jessica Scott Kerrin entwines the subplots almost effortlessly.  For me, it's the crisp dialogue, usually between characters but just as effectively in Derek's head, that says much more than a few words normally can that enriches the story beyond a mystery to a personal journey of understanding and growth.

Kenta and The Big Wave

Written and illustrated by Ruth Ohi

Annick Press

978-1-55451-576-9

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

July, 2013 

Most Canadian young readers will recognize Ruth Ohi's distinct style of illustration which blends softness with gravity and whimsy. (I know, how is that possible?) Check out Hazel Hutchins' Nicholas at the Library (Annick Press, 1990) and The Sidewalk Rescue (Annick Press, 2004) and Joy Kogawa's Naomi's Tree (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2010) and Naomi's Road (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2005) to see how Ruth Ohi has taken others' text and magnified it into astounding stories.  With her own books, including Chicken, Pig, Cow (Annick Press, 2008) series, Clara and the Bossy (Annick Press, 2006) and Me and My Sister (Annick Press, 2005), Ruth Ohi has found the means to share compassionate stories that teach about getting along with others. While focusing on a historical event, Ruth Ohi brings these same virtues to her newest Kenta and The Big Wave.

Based on the tsunami that hit the coast of Japan in 2011, Kenta and his family are part of the population that responds to the sirens and evacuates to higher ground and the shelter of the school gym.  With each step of Kenta's family's journey to safety and in dealing with the aftermath of the devastation, Kenta's beloved soccer ball travels across the turbulent ocean.

While Kenta and The Big Wave may seem a simple story with a happy ending with regards to a boy's lost soccer ball, it has far greater depth in its story-telling and illustrations.  Ruth Ohi ensures that the reader understands the breadth of the tsunami's destruction and the effects on Kenta's community first and foremost. The overwhelming waves on double-page spreads fully engulfing the soccer ball are reminder enough.  But, although she never trivializes the context of Kenta's soccer ball story, she tenderly demonstrates how important that ball is to him.

I know that Kenta and The Big Wave will touch many readers, though I suspect there will be many a teacher who will recognize the multitude of teachable moments in the book: perspective, compassion, loss, grief, generosity and tsunamis.  Here is a story that explains, with kindness, that which seems almost inexplicable.

Big Top Otto: Book Launch (Toronto)

Author and illustrator Bill Slavin

well-known for illustrating 

Linda Bailey's Stanley picture books 

and Good Times Travel Agency non-fiction series, 

among many other books,

launched

his Elephants Never Forget graphic novel series with

Big City Otto

(Kids Can Press, 2011)

and is ready to launch

the second book in the series

 

BIG TOP OTTO

written and illustrated by Bill Slavin

Kids Can Press
978-1554538065

88 pp.

Ages 7-11

August 2013

on

Saturday, September 28, 2013

1-3 p.m.

at

Little Island Comics

742 Bathurst St.

Toronto, ON

In Big Top Otto, Otto, the elephant, and his parrot friend, Crackers, search for Otto's childhood friend, Georgie, the chimpanzee.

In addition to launching the book, Bill Slavin will provide a special opportunity to view and purchase original artwork from both Elephants Never Forget volumes.

The Night Has Claws (The Magdeburg Trilogy, Book Two)

by Kat Kruger
Fierce Ink Press
978-0-9917937-5-4 (pb)
978-1-927746-02-8 (ebook)
269 pp.
Ages 14+
Release September 24, 2013
Reviewed from advance release ebook

When Kat Kruger ended her award-winning first book in The Madgeburg Trilogy, The Night Has Teeth (reviewed here on January 13, 2013), it was bloody mayhem.  Really.  Seventeen-year-old Connor Lewis had learned that he is a pure werewolf whose "nature" was only revealed after born-werewolf Amara had accidentally bitten him.  His special nature had drawn the attention of Henri Boguet, one of the bitten "monsters", whose biotech company has developed an antivenin for werewolf bites as well as a cure he calls Wolf Bane.  And Connor's school friends, Madison and Josh, had revealed that Josh had bitten Madison, condemning her to a life as a monster too. Even though Josh is still in love with Madison and desperate to make things up to her, Madison and Connor have an affinity for each other. With the nature of one's werewolfness determining the allegiances one has, Connor is confused understandably about whom to trust.

The Night Has Claws begins with three different story lines which will ultimately converge.  First, with Boguet being captured, he is remanded to custody to stand trial before the High Court of Madgeburg, the werewolf court.  Secondly, Madison who has shot Boadicea, Boguet's associate, believing she was going to harm Connor, focuses on what she has done, what is on the USB stick Boadicea tried to give Connor, and how she feels about Connor and Josh.  Lastly, born-werewolf Arden, Amara's mate, who'd appeared to die by Boguet's hand (teeth, actually), had been buried along with Boadicea by the Hounds of God (a society of the bitten).  But Arden had not died, though he desperately wished he had, becoming human instead, getting Boguet's cure through his venom. 

So we've got Connor sticking close to Arden and helping him survive as a human while learning from Arden how to live as a werewolf.  But through it all, Connor must decide to whom he will ally himself:  Roul (Rodolfus de Aquila), leader of Arden's former pack, or the Hounds of God to which Josh and Madison belong. 

In Quedlinburg, Germany, where the High Court of Madgeburg officiates, all gather for the prosecution of Boguet by Heaven's Hand, the organization that governs werewolves.  In addition to Connor, Roul, Arden, Amara, Madison, and Josh and their related groups, the Luparii (marked by white armbands) who act as an intergovernmental European task force to limit and maintain control of the werewolf populations show a strong presence.  On the surface, the court and Heaven's Hand profess to protect all life with the singular law of condemning to death any who bites a human but, as with many organizations in which individuals carry their own emotional baggage and opinions, hypocrisy creates exceptions and thus friction.  While Boguet may be the official defendant, Connor and Arden become targets for the judge, Breber. While Madison may come to their aid with surprisingly revelations about Boguet, instead of quelling both judicial and physical attacks, her news launches a new barrage hitherto unknown.

Hold onto your book or device because The Night Has Claws may start with the emotional and physical clean-up of story-lines from The Night Has Teeth but it ends on an even messier closing. I don't mean messier as in confused but rather in terms of catastrophic ruin.  It breaks apart with secrets revealed, relationships and alliances exposed and shattered, and upcoming hostilities and combat forecast. The reader may still be hopeful for reconciliation between Connor and Madison and Arden and Amara but surprisingly Kat Kruger has you cheering for the motley band of protagonists and even laughing along at times. (Honestly, how often can a writer use the admonishment "Bite me" as a double entendre?) And there's even more action, surprises and affairs of the heart coming because we know that where The Night Has Claws leaves off, Book Three will launch and continue to thrill.

The Pocket Mommy: Book Launch (Ottawa)

Join singer, actor, music director and 

author Rachel Eugster

for the launch of

her new picture book

The Pocket Mommy

Written by Rachel Eugster

Illustrated by Tom Goldsmith

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-300-1  

32 pp.

Ages 4-6

August, 2013

at

Kaleidoscope Kids’ Books 

1018 Bank Street

Ottawa, ON 

K1S 3W8
 

 on

Sunday, September, 22, 2013

4:00 pm - 7:00 pm