Never Let You Go: Book Launch (Toronto)

Join

author and illustrator 
Patricia Storms 

for

the book launch

of

Never Let You Go

Scholastic Canada
978-1443119894
32 pp.
Ages 0-5
October, 2013

Sunday October 27, 2013

2:30-5:00 p.m.

at

Redfish Bluefish Creative Café

73 Harbord Street

Toronto, ON

Check out Patricia Storms' website to see the numerous books she's illustrated and those she's authored and illustrated.

Home Ice Advantage

by Tom Earle
HarperCollins Canada
978-1-44340-904-9
224 pp.
Ages 8-13
September 2013

Shame, embarrassment and fear often keep us from exposing our psychological baggage and, in Tom Earle’s newest middle-grade Home Ice Advantage, it’s evident that those in the limelight are especially keen to shun its unveiling. Jake Dumont, 12, may be an outstanding centre for the North York Penguins of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, but the physical and emotional abuse he endures from his father and the vague support he gets from his fearful mother has him giving it all up one night and running away. With very limited funds and supplies, Jake heads to downtown Toronto and finds shelter in the abandoned Maple Leaf Gardens, closed in February of 1999.

But the Gardens already has a resident, an older homeless man named Scooter. Over daily meals at a local soup kitchen, an occasional donut at Tim Horton’s, and regular readings of The Toronto Star, Jake and Scooter share just enough about themselves to realize the complexity of their situations. There is no predictable outcome here when the two find the means to help each other live beyond just surviving.

While details of hockey games and plays, courtesy of teacher Tom Earle’s extensive experiences as a Triple A, college and pro hockey player, provide the background for Home Ice Advantage, it’s the vulnerabilities of the players, too often seen as athletic heroes, that give the story its layering. Underneath the brilliance of game-winning goals, historical blocks and memorable wins (sure to interest young hockey fans) are boys and men with apprehensions, desires and pride. But even deeper they have the instinct to survive. Jake and Scooter may seem to be all about the hockey but Tom Earle’s solid storytelling demonstrates that, when it all comes down to it, their heroics are off the ice, finding the means to prevail when everything is working against them.

(This review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2013, November). [Review of the book Home Ice Advantage, by Tom Earle]. Quill & Quire, 79 (9): 36.

The Opposite of Geek

by Ria Voros

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-0484-5

224 pp.

Ages 11+

September, 2013

Don't let the pink on the book cover fool you: The Opposite of Geek is not chick lit. It's not light and comedic and romantic.  Yes, there are some light moments and some humourous t-shirts and a first love for our protagonist, sixteen-year-old Gretchen, but The Opposite of Geek is more about cliques and friendship and grief and poetry and the toils of being human and being a teen.

Three things you'll learn very quickly about Gretchen Meyers are: 1) her best friend is the brilliant Nemiah Hershey; 2) she's failing chemistry (which is disastrous considering her parents expect her to go into medicine); and 3) she loves reading and writing haiku and poetry (a passion she shares with Ms Long, a guidance counsellor at school).  When Nemiah joins the swim team and its clique, and Gretchen gets seventeen-year-old James Tarden to tutor her in chemistry, her world begins to fracture and reconfigure itself.  

James, who suffers from an embarrassing skin condition and is regularly victimized by a couple of jocks, wears his heart on his t-shirts (e.g., Geeks Rule the World) and has deep philosophical discussions with Gretchen about being a geek.

This is the problem with the social community of high school.  No one understands the value of geekdom.  How come what I love makes me a geek, but what Henry Gladstone (basketball star) loves makes him a stud? (pg. 42)

He takes her to his uncle's deli where she meets James' cousin Dean (18), and the three start hanging out together, giving Gretchen the sense of togetherness she's lost with Nemiah. Unbeknownst to James, Gretchen and Dean start dating.  But after a night of bowling and brawling, Gretchen and Dean go off to be alone and James is in a car accident, and everything becomes broken again, reconfiguring itself into a new social structure.

Gretchen's coming-of-age story is very much linked to her friendships and her ability to recognize what she really wants, and Ria Voros reflects this in the form of The Opposite of Geek's text. Initially, in prose with the occasional haiku by Gretchen or her favourite poets Bashō, Issa and Buson, Gretchen's life seems dense and stilted with infrequent breaths of lightness.  But as James and Dean become part of her life and she joins The Foodies group (cooking club) at school, Gretchen's voice is more expressive and thoughtful, emulated by the richness of the free verse text and poetry she shares with others.  

While the ending of The Opposite of Geek is not a happily-ever-after, it is fulfilling.  Gretchen begins to accept and advocate for herself, and find the courage to see the superficiality of others and reject their attitudes as anything other than meaningless. 

I'll have to break it to them that I am not,
maybe never was, whatever normal means–
there was a geek inside me all the time. (pg. 169)

As she did in Nobody's Dog (Scholastic, 2012), which is a 2014 nominee for the Silver Birch Fiction award, Ria Voros has presented a survivor's story without the heroics or refined sugar of happy endings.  In The Opposite of Geek, the heroes are the geeks, like it or not.

The Vancouver Writers Fest 2013 (Vancouver)

As it has for the past 25 years, the Vancouver Writers Fest will revisit Granville Island for six days in October to share books, readings, thoughts, perspectives and self.  This year from October 22 to 27, the Vancouver Writers Festival will host over 100 Canadian and international authors of adult, children's and young adult books.  For more details, check out their website at http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/

Below I've listed most of the children's and young adult authors scheduled to appear during the upcoming festival:

• Dan Bar-el, author of Dream Boats, That One Spooky Night, Things are Looking Grimm, Jill
• Rachelle Delaney, author of The Metro Dogs of Moscow, The Ship of Lost Souls, and The Lost Souls of Island X
• Rhéa Dufresne, l'auteure de Arachnéa
• Frank B. Edwards, author of Bug, A Dog Called Dad, Frogger and a biography of Robert Munsch
• Deborah Ellis, author of fiction and non-fiction, including Looks Like Daylight: Voices of Indigenous Kids, My Name is Parvana, The Heaven Shop, and The Breadwinner
• 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 
• Julie Flett, author of Wild Berries/Pakwa Che Menisu, Owls See Clearly at Night/Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: A Michif Alphabet/L'Alfabet Di Michif
• Tomson Highway, author of Caribou Song, and numerous adult books
• Shar Levine, non-fiction author of Scary Science: 25 Creepy Experiments, Snowy Science, and Hockey Science: 25 Winning Experiments
• Elizabeth MacLeod, children's non-fiction author of A History of Just About Everything, Bones Never Lie: How Forensics Helps Solve History's Mysteries, Royal Murder: The Deadly Intrigue of Ten Sovereigns and Everything But the Kitchen Sink
• Ashley Spires, author and illustrator of Larf, Small Saul, Binky the Space Cat and Binky Under Pressure
• Kathy Stinson, author of The Man With the Violin, Highway of Heroes, and What Happened to Ivy
• Meg Tilly, children's author of A Taste of Heaven and Porcupine  
• Teresa Toten, YA author of The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, The Taming, and Me and the Blondes 
• Eric Walters, picture book and middle-grade fiction author of My Name is Blessing, The Matatu, Camp X, and Between Heaven and Earth 
• Frieda Wishinsky, picture book and non-fiction author of A History of Just About Everything, Everything But the Kitchen Sink: Weird Stuff You Didn't Know about Food, Give Maggie a Chance, Canadian Flyer Adventures series, and Where Are You Bear?

Just So Stories (Volume I)

Written by Rudyard Kipling

Illustrated by Ian Wallace

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-212-7

64 pp.

Ages 5+

September 2013

It would be absurd to review Rudyard Kipling's famous Just So Stories For Little Children, first published in 1902.  A hundred years of reading easily secure these stories in the realm of classics.  But having Ian Wallace put his artistic genius to work in this new interpretation of Kipling's work is worthy of note.

Ian Wallace, who has authored a number of books and illustrated over twenty picture books including The Sleeping Porch (Groundwood, 2008), Chin Chiang and the Dragon's Dance (Groundwood, 1990), and The Mummer's Song (Groundwood, 2009), allows each of the six Just So Stories here to stand alone with respect to their illustrations, while still providing a filament of similar artistry in them.  The soft textures and colours of the jungle or the ocean or the desert all suggest the dream-like lyricism of Kipling's words. No illustrations are so bold in colour or outline that they overwhelm the stories.  Ian Wallace astutely illustrates to enhance and complement the stories, never to overtake them. 

While I have neither the expertise nor direct knowledge of Ian Wallace's techniques, I consumed his thorough "Illustrator's Notes" appended to the stories.  Here he discusses his work with watercolour, pencil crayon, pastel pencil and chalk in different combinations.  The melding of media under Ian Wallace's careful eye and hand affect the alarm of the crocodile pulling at the elephant's nose (in The Elephant's Child);  the dry, sandy desert in How the Camel Got His Hump; or the Mariner's ruckus inside the Whale in How the Whale Got His Throat.  The illustrations are detailed and comprehensive, as well as evocative and whimsical, exactly as Rudyard Kipling wrote his stories.  Ian Wallace has done great justice to Kipling's Just So Stories and created an exquisite edition that will be cherished as a classic in itself.

Just So Stories, Volume II is scheduled for release in April, 2014.

2014 Forest of Reading® nominees announced

Young readers, their teachers, school-librarians, public librarians, authors, illustrators, and publishers have waited anxiously for this day–the day that the Ontario Library Association announces the nominees for the 2014 Forest of Reading® programs.  Now extending beyond Ontario, even more readers are enjoying new Canadian literature as part of the Forest of Reading® programs.

These readers' choice award programs invite teachers and librarians (school and public), as well as parents of home-schoolers, to sign up for these programs through the Ontario Library Association.  Once you've registered for the programs and purchase the books, young readers will be on their way to voting for their favourites in April.  

With over one hundred nominated titles, I have presented the nominees in multiple posts.  See the lists below for nominees for the different programs.

Blue Spruce and Silver Birch Nominees

Red Maple, White Pine and Golden Oak Nominees

Le Prix Tamarac and Le Prix Peuplier Nominees

Cursed by the Sea God: Odyssey of a Slave, Book II

 

Written by Patrick Bowman
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-186-3
204 pp.
Post Hypnotic Press (audiobook)
978-1-927401-63-7
Ages 10+
March, 2013

Trojan teen Alexi from Patrick Bowman's first book in his Odyssey of a Slave series, Torn from Troy (reviewed here on December 8, 2011), continues to serve the Greek commander Lopex (Odysseus) aboard the Greek ship, Pelagios. After the Greeks took Troy and escaped the Cyclops, their wish is to head home to Ithaca after years away.  Cursed by the Sea God follows them in their homeward travels, making stops to replenish supplies, to broker trades, and to make repairs as needed.  But, courtesy of Patrick Bowman's imaginative plotting and complex understanding of Greek mythology, their journey is neither direct nor easy, inviting the reader to accompany the motley crew from one adventure through some peril to another exploit.  There is little respite for the reader or Alexi as the Pelagios sails for Ithaca.

This instalment begins with the crew arriving on the island of Aeolia whose king keeps his people in order with threats of "polishings".  Sadly, the king has not been advised about the fatal nature of "polishing" by the winds.  To thank them for their candor, the king provides Lopex with a securely tied bag containing some energetic entity that would help them on their voyage.  For three days, Lopex holds tight to the neck of that bag, never sleeping.  But when the ships are only a day and a half away from home, Lopex falls asleep.  Though Alexi tries to rouse him and secure the bag closed himself, the Greek brute Ury grabs it and releases the wind within, allowing hurricane forces to push the ship almost back to the very island from which they'd come.  Lopex, seeing Alexi struggling to shut the bag that Ury had opened, accuses the boy of this traitorous act and deems him Ury's slave now, without the protection he'd enjoyed earlier.

Now with a still greater distance to travel home, the crews of Lopex's ships resume their journey, stopping at an island of ship-wreckers who serve a cannibalistic queen and then one inhabited by a sorceress, Circe, who both tricks and aids the Greeks.  Without revealing too much more (though a reading of Homer's Odyssey should provide more details), the crew of the Pelagios must delve into the hidden realm of Hades, home of the dead; attempt to resist the haunting songs of sirens;  avoid a six-headed monster; and endure starvation on the island of Helios.

Their travels are encumbered by so many obstacles that it's hard to believe that there would be opportunity for Alexi to continue to be victimized by Ury but, as one of Lopex's secondary leaders, the Greek bully finds the means to humiliate Alexi and plot his murder, believing Alexi knows something about the killing of Ury's brother at Troy.  But, Cursed by the Sea God is as much about trust and friendship as the voyages, with Alexi often wondering about others' motivations and needs.

Many middle-grade readers are currently enamoured with a series involving a boy named Percy who learns he is a demigod, but I believe that Patrick Bowman's Odyssey of a Slave series far surpasses it in the authenticity of dialogue and embedded perspective of the characters.  Never does the text seem contrived or hollow, nor do the characters demonstrate the traits of anything but victors, slaves, warriors, and strangers with whom Alexi has encounters.  Using time-slips to bridge across time periods demands that readers suspend disbelief but setting the story in an ancient civilization, as Patrick Bowman does in Cursed by the Sea God, as well as in Torn from Troy, and writing so evocatively and with complexity, there is no need for this suspension of disbelief.  I began to consider the possibility that there really were sea monsters, witches, and animated beef parts in Ancient Greece and that their gods and mythology were all based in reality.  That's an astounding accomplishment for a writer.  Moreover, without leaving readers hanging tortuously in anticipation of the next volume, Patrick Bowman agreeably encourages his readers to return to learn more of Alexi's story.  After the drama and the relentless adventures in Cursed by the Sea God, it may be difficult to wait for Book III, but wait I will, determined to know how Alexi's story gets resolved.