2014 Canadian Children's Book Centre Literature Awards: Finalists announced

Today, the Canadian Children's Book Centre, our nationally-renowned authority on all things related to youngCanLit, announced the finalists for the 2014 Canadian Children's Book Centre Awards. (Press release available here)

The seven major children's book awards, which will be awarded at two invitation-only galas in October and November, include:

1. TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award ($30,000) Sponsored by TD Bank Group;
2. Prix TD de littérature canadienne pour l’enfance et la jeunesse ($30,000) Sponsored by TD Bank Group;
3. Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award ($20,000) Sponsored by A. Charles Baillie;
4. Norma Fleck Award For Canadian Children's Non-Fiction ($10,000) Sponsored by the Fleck Family Foundation;
5. Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People ($5,000) Sponsored by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Bilson Endowment Fund;
6. John Spray Mystery Award ($5,000) Sponsored by John Spray; and
7. Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy ($5,000)  Sponsored by HarperCollins Canada.

Here are the short lists for each award category, as announced by the Canadian Children's Book Centre today:

TD Canadian Children’s 

Literature Award

Branded by the Pink Triangle
by Ken Setterington
Second Story Press

In the Tree House

by Andrew Larsen

Illustrated by Dušan Petričić

Kids Can Press

The Man with the Violin
by Kathy Stinson
Illustrated by Dušan Petričić
Annick Press

Once Upon a Northern Night

by Jean E. Pendziwol

Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault

Groundwood Books

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B
by Teresa Toten
Doubleday Canada

  Prix TD de littérature canadienne 

pour l’enfance et la jeunesse 

Destins croisés
par Élizabeth Turgeon
Les Éditions du Boréal

Le lion et l'oiseau

par Marianne Dubuc

Les Éditions de la Pastèque

Ma petite boule d'amour
par Jasmine Dubé
Illustré par Jean-Luc Trudel
Les Éditions de la Bagnole

Le Noël de Marguerite

par India Desjardins

Illustraté par Pascal Blanchet

Les Éditions de la Pastèque

La plus grosse poutine du monde
par Andrée Poulin
Bayard Canada

Marilyn Baillie 

Picture Book Award

Fox and Squirrel
by Ruth Ohi

North Winds Press/Scholastic Canada

How To

by Julie Morstad

Simply Read Books

The Man with the Violin
by Kathy Stinson
Illustrated by Dušan Petričić
Annick Press

My Name Is Blessing

by Eric Walters

Illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes

Tundra Books

Where Do You Look?
by Marthe Jocelyn and Nell Jocelyn
Tundra Books

Norma Fleck Award For 

Canadian Children's Non-Fiction

Branded by the Pink Triangle
by Ken Setterington
Second Story Press

A History of Just About Everything: 180 Events, People and Inventions That Changed the World

by Elizabeth MacLeod and Frieda Wishinsky

Illustrated by Qin Leng

Kids Can Press

The Last Train: A Holocaust Story
by Rona Arato
Owlkids Books

Looks Like Daylight: Voices of Indigenous Kids

by Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books

My Name Is Blessing
by Eric Walters
Illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes
Tundra Books

Geoffrey Bilson Award for 

Historical Fiction for Young People

Brothers at War

by Don Cummer

Scholastic Canada

Graffiti Knight

by Karen Bass

Pajama Press

Little Red Lies
by Julie Johnston
Tundra

The Manager

by Caroline Stellings

Cape Breton University Press

Me & Mr. Bell

by Philip Roy

Cape Breton University Press

John Spray 

Mystery Award

The Further Adventures of Jack Lime
by James Leck
Kids Can Press

The Metro Dogs of Moscow

by Rachelle Delaney

Puffin Canada

The Spotted Dog Last Seen
by Jessica Scott Kerrin
Groundwood Books

Whatever Doesn’t Kill You

by Elizabeth Wennick

Orca Book Publishers

Who I’m Not
by Ted Staunton
Orca Book Publishers

Monica Hughes Award 

for Science Fiction and Fantasy

Curse of the Dream Witch
by Allan Stratton
Scholastic Canada

Rush (The Game, Book 1)

by Eve Silver 

Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

Sorrow’s Knot
by Erin Bow
Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic

The Stowaways

by Meghan Marentette

Illustrated by Dean Griffiths

Pajama Press

Slated (Slated Trilogy, Book1)
by Teri Terry
Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin Young Readers Group

Hosted by the Canadian Children's Book Centre and TD Bank Group, the Children's Literature Awards will celebrate great Canadian children's books and present the winners of the awards on the evenings of October 28 and November 6, 2014 in Montreal and Toronto, respectively.  Look for my announcement about the winners then.

Rabbit Ears

by Maggie De Vries
HarperCollins Canada
978-1-44341-662-7
222 pp.
Ages 13+
March, 2014
 
Don't be deceived by the innocuous, seemingly innocent, title. Rabbit Ears is neither.  It is a tough story, and it's based on a true story which is devastating. 

Kaya is only 13 but life has not been kind to her, though almost no one knows what she has and continues to endure.  Her sister Beth, 16, watches out for her as best she can but she doesn't understand what motivates Kaya, and their mom continues to want to save Kaya from herself, sending the police out for her, excusing her adopted daughter's attitude, and giving her opportunities to recover from her troubled times.  It's an endless cycle of running away to unsafe situations, returning home, trying to stick with the "normal" life, and then abandoning it yet again.

Told in the alternating voices of Kaya and Beth, Rabbit Ears takes readers into the unseemly and dangerous dark side of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, to which Kaya is introduced by another student, Michelle, who rescues Kaya from a beating at school.  Though she enjoys the freedom of hanging with street kids, taking pot and avoiding school, Kaya tries to do the right thing, knowing that her sister and mother have her best interests at heart.  But, with school feeling more and more impossible, especially after a girl, Diana, whom Kaya obviously knows, starts going to her high school, and home not feeling like the right place for her to be, Kaya goes downtown with Michelle again. This time, though, Michelle trades sex for heroin and Kaya meets a sex trade worker, Sarah, who tells her to go home.  But Kaya returns and begins her own descent into heroin use and prostitution.

Though Kaya is gone for weeks, and her mom and sister continue to search for her, there is a trip to Kamloops which rekindles Beth's fascination with magic and reminiscences of her dad's passing. It's those memories that help Beth put together the fragments of Kaya's life that may explain her sister's thinking and feelings.

Just like the toy rabbit in Beth's box-to-box trick–in which it is made to appear in a different box from the one in which it originated–there is much that is mysterious about Kaya's disappearances and reappearances.  Her thinking is unpredictable, based on circumstances unknown to her family, even to herself.  She knows that home is the better place to be, but it continues to feel wrong to her.  No child should ever feel that, especially when the option is to find consolation on the streets at age 13.  Like those rabbit ears, barely poking out of the box, Kaya tries to stay put and on her mom and Beth's radars, but sometimes going elsewhere is her only choice.

As I plainly announced in the introduction, Rabbit Ears is a tough read.  There are drugs, violent sex, rape, swearing, assault, and painful emotional trauma. Maggie De Vries does not minimize the horror, though she does create a less horrific ending than the one that her sister sadly experienced. Kaya's very existence is so vulnerable, so fragile; it's able to splinter with a single word.

"Diane has shattered a very, very fragile thing.  And no claws, needles, or paid-for sex acts are going to piece it back together." (pg. 168)

But never deny the fragility of the whole family, finding ways to deal with that shattering, with food, magic, work, therapy, anger.  This is Kaya's story but Beth and their mom are taken along, nay, join her in it, as the significant supporting cast that they are.  Rabbit Ears is the gnawing heartache that no child or family should ever endure, but Maggie De Vries tells it as it needs to be told and she tells it very well.

Author Event: Deborah Ellis (online)

On Friday, September 19, 2014

at 1 p.m. EST

youngCanLit author 

Deborah Ellis 

will be hosting an 

Ask Me Anything (AMA)

thread on

To participate

set up an account at reddit.com (it's free)

Then, at the designated time and date, 

go to

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA 

You can:

• ask questions

• upvote favourite questions that you see

• read answers

With over 20 outstanding books of fiction and non-fiction for young readers, including

The Cat at the Wall 

(Groundwood, 2014)

Moon At Nine

 (Pajama Press, 2014)

Looks Like Daylight: Voices of Indigenous Kids

(Groundwood, 2013)

No Ordinary Day

(Groundwood, 2011)

The Breadwinner

(Groundwood, 2000)

Deborah Ellis will certainly inspire great discussions about her writing and important social justice issues.

Don't miss this great opportunity to speak to one of Canada's award-winning authors for young people!

The Cat at the Wall

Written by Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-491-6

154 pp.

Ages 8-12

For release September, 2014

Many people believe that we are each put on this earth for a specific purpose: to love, to suffer, to teach, to battle, to learn humility, to help others find their voices.  But, if one is placed here to learn a lesson that doesn't get learned, the consequence might be reincarnation to try again. I suspect that's why thirteen year old Clare from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has returned as a scrawny cat in Bethlehem on the West Bank. And judging by her attitude, she still has a lot to learn.

Clare the cat becomes immersed in a situation in the West Bank that has her reflecting on the circumstances that led to her death and her return as a feline struggling for food and shelter and avoiding skirmishes with other cats, including the king tom and his bunch.  Her past human life and current feline existence are told in parallel lines, allowing comparisons between her role in her own demise and in helping to resolve a conflict in which she is essentially an observer.

After being chased from the wall at a checkpoint from the West Bank to Israel, the cat sneaks into a small house when two Israeli soldiers break in, planning on setting up a surveillance on another residence.  Happy for the safety, shelter and opportunities for food and the occasional scratch, the cat makes herself quite at home, even creating some of the same mischief she enjoyed in her previous life.

When she exposes a young boy hidden under a toy city constructed of boxes and cans and other garbage, the two soldiers first restrain him as a potential threat before coming to his aid with an inhaler for his asthma and food. Sadly, the two Israelis do not understand the child as he chants and rocks himself back and forth.  However, Clare the cat has the distinct ability to understand all languages spoken by humans and animals and recognizes the boy's repetitious murmurings as the famous poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (1927), words that she despises because of their negative association with a teacher, Ms. Sealand, whom Clare blames for her death.  Aaron, the more seasoned soldier, a commander from Tel Aviv, is more intuitive about the boy than Simcha, the gun-happy young American private who came looking for a chance to fight and who is suspicious of everything including the scared little boy.  Even while they wonder about the young boy's family, Aaron is able to empathize with the youngster, seeming him as vulnerable and as scared as any of them.

Meanwhile, the cat watches and judges all those around her: Aaron, Simcha, the boy, and others who later become players in the situation, all the while recalling events involving her younger sister Polly, her parents, Ms. Sealand (rudely called Ms. Zero)–everyone.  Her own refrain seems to be "Not my fault.  Not my problem." (pg. 24), acknowledging that "Being kind doesn't lead to anything good." (pg. 63) 

But even the cat (who understands all linguistically) could never have imagined that the life lessons shared with her before she'd died as a thirteen-year-old girl would be others' salvation.  Not that Deborah Ellis ever writes anything that contrived or convenient.  Clare the cat doesn't just, bang, recognize how she can help resolve conflicts; Clare the girl never did.  The cat is still essentially the brash female who absolves herself of any responsibility for the consequences her actions bring about.  It's almost impossible for her to look beyond herself, to see the big picture, the context in which she experiences life.  That is, until she realizes she must do something quite extraordinary.

The concept of karma is well-illustrated in The Cat at the Wall, as is the idea of a purposeful life. But Deborah Ellis does not belabour these themes to teach responsibility or gratitude.  She simply tells an extraordinary story of conflicts that can spiral out of control and be resolved by adherence to some simple truths. The Cat at the Wall is a touching allegory that should remind us all to live a life of goodness and honesty.  It will be well worth it in the end.

<><>><><><><><><><><><<><><><>

Here, for context, is Max Erhmann's famous poem:

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and 

remember what peace there may be in 

silence. As far as possible without surrender 

be on good terms with all persons. 

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen

to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too 

have their story. 

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are 

vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself

with others, you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser 

persons than yourself. 

Enjoy your achievements as well as your 

plans. Keep interested in your own career, 

however humble; it is a real possession in the

changing fortunes of time. 

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for 

the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind

you to what virtue there is; many persons

strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is

full of heroism. 

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. 

Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of

all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as

the grass. 

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth. 

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in

sudden misfortune. But do not distress

yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are

born of fatigue and loneliness. 

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with

yourself. You are a child of the universe, no

less than the trees and the stars; you have a

right to be here. And whether or not it is clear

to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it

should. 

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever

you conceive Him to be, and whatever your

labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion

of life keep peace with your soul. With all its

sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still

a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 © Max Ehrmann 1927

Swimmers

by Amy Bright

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-513-4

216 pp.

Ages 12+

July, 2014

Amy Bright burst onto the youngCanLit scene with Before We Go (Red Deer Press, 2012), a novel that did not shy away from tough issues like cancer, death and grief, and she felt no compunction to bring it all to a happy conclusion.  As such, I expected another emotionally-engaging story in Swimmers, and I was not disappointed.

Hunter Ryan is returning home to Victoria after spending the past 3 months in Lethbridge, living with his Aunt Lynne and being home-schooled with a twelve-year-old girl, Poppy, by her mother.  When his friend Lee arrives delivering news about Hunter's friend Niall, they board a Greyhound bus to return home, surprisingly bringing Poppy along with them, without her mother's permission.

The events and discussions on the journey home in December are juxtaposed with Hunter's recollections of events primarily from the previous two school years when he'd become close friends with Niall Black, a guy with a lot of issues and always on some drug or another.

"He didn't like the way things were when they weren't blurred around the edges, stretched out and slow." (pg. 17)

And, though a lot of other teens found Niall to be dangerously enigmatic, never knowing what might set him off, Hunter saw something different in Niall.

"The big Niall thing, the one that kept him golden even when everyone started turning on him, was that he was like no one else." (pg. 15)

But, about a year before the trio travel from Alberta to BC, something happens that will change everything for both Niall and Hunter. Much later, Hunter recognizes that,

"You take that step forward and lose the way back" (pg. 91)

Not the same teen who left three months earlier, Hunter proves that sometimes a step forward is just that, hopefully bringing clarity where there was none.  Amy Bright brings Hunter and Poppy through the confusion of misunderstandings about others' actions and their own roles in those choices, burdening themselves with more than just guilt. What's worse is when others attribute that same blame, such as in Hunter's situation.  While Hunter attempts to make sense of his confusion, through interactions with a school counsellor, friends, and family, Poppy suffers in silence, just ruminating about it, wrapping it up in a tight bundle of resentment.

How we see others' flaws and accept responsibility for their choices is a basic theme of Swimmers, a novel in which young people are just trying to keep their heads above water, even attempting to save those who cannot.  Not surprisingly, there are those who should take some responsibility for others' actions, including Hunter's family, Niall's family and Lee, but Hunter and Poppy are not two who should accept it.  They have not only accepted it, they have chosen to carry that burden themselves, never realizing how that load could have been  lessened sooner.  Drowning in it did not have to be an option.