Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts

by Esta Spalding

Illustrated by Sydney Smith

Tundra Books (Penguin Random House)

978-1-770498761

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2016

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts because they’re here now and I’m sure they’re going to be around for a while (I’m already anticipating a follow-up book), even if they don’t have anyone really looking out for them.   The four Fitzgerald-Trout children-Kim, 11; Kimo, 11; Pippa, 8; and Toby, 5–are an odd assortment of children conceived through different combinations of fathers and mothers which include the wealthy and greedy Maya (mother to Kim and Pippa), the vain singer Tina (Kimo and Toby’s mother), the missing-at-sea Johnny Trout (father of Kimo) and mammalian research scientist Dr. Fitzgerald (father of Kim, Pippa and Toby).

They had different mothers and different fathers.  But they knew that didn’t matter.  They were a family because if you aren’t a family, you don’t live together in the same little car.  They knew they were brothers and sisters, even if when they made a new friend at school they had to take out a stick and draw in the dirt to explain just how they were related. (pg. 31)

And they all live in a small green car, which has gotten too small for them all to sleep in comfortably at night.  Kim, who wishes she lived in a house like the Perfects in her favourite book (a two-books-in-one The Perfects and The Awfuls),  keeps their little family on track with her to-do lists (which often includes "Find a House"), ensuring they go to school, do their laundry at Mr. Knuckles’ laundromat, and purchase food essentials and ice for their cooler from the loose coins Maya would give them or the money Tina dropped off for them.

When Maya is arrested for defrauding her investment clients, Kim almost finds them a home in Maya’s empty mansion, until it is seized to help repay investors.  Also thwarted is Kim's plan for them to hide away in the staged bedrooms of the massive furniture store MARRA.  It’s not until Kim decides that the Perfects whose lives are just too ideal are not the best of role models and that the Awfuls, who have endured and survived a variety of challenges, might be able to help guide them, that the Fitzgerald-Trouts find a home, far off the beaten path.

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts may read like a handbook of how NOT to parent your children but it’s a celebration of family, unconventional as it may be, and the drive to find a home and meet challenges with creativity and perseverance.  Esta Spalding has produced a set of widely-different characters who don’t always get along but at heart are everything to each other.  They are strong and weak, and childish and mature, and selfless and inconsiderate, and they are children who have adventures and suffer all manner of adversity and stick together. Middle-grade readers and proficient early readers will enjoy the journey on which Esta Spalding’s story takes them, all the more beguiling for its tropical island setting, its diverse and over-the-top characters and the ruts and potholes along the way.  And, though the illlustrations are rarely a subtantial component of any novel, Sydney Smith’s black-and-white line drawings help give substance to the Fitzgerald-Trouts and their story.  Look out for Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts on reading lists everywhere very soon.

Kim from Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts 

by Esta Spalding, illus. by Sydney Smith

Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

Great Plains Teen Fiction

978-1-927855-39-3

232 pp.

Ages 13+

May 2016

Someone was pounding at the front door at 10:30 p.m., and common sense said not to answer.  Then again, I see the dead, live with a ghost, and was dating a supernatural being who transported souls.  Common sense may have been in my neighbourhood, but it wasn’t on any street I lived. (pg. 7)

Natasha Deen grabs readers and thrusts them into Gatekeeper with this opening, not unlike her opener to its prequel Guardian (Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2014),  in which 17-year-old Maggie reveals her knack for seeing the dead and helps solve the murder of Serge Popov with whom she now has become a guardian to help the dead transition into the next world.  Along with supernatural boyfriend Craig, a ferrier of the dead, and her best friend Nell, as well as her caring father Hank and his girlfriend, Sheriff Nancy, who all know of her gift, Maggie has found herself at the centre of more than one mystery in their small town of Dead Falls.  And Gatekeeper places her in the role of sleuth and ghost-communicator once again.

That knocking at the door is the wealthy Mrs. Pierson, frantic over the disappearance of her and Dr. Paul Pierson’s six-year-old daughter, Rori, and looking for Sheriff Nancy.  Maggie, Serge and Craig with Rori’s babysistter Nell go to help in the search and help locate the little girl on the brink of death.  But after Serge uses his energy to get her heart beating, he and Maggie meet the newly-dead ghost of Kent Meagher, former all-around amazing Dead Falls student and current med student at the University of Alberta who is oblivious and confused about his death.  And this is the murder mystery at the heart of Gatekeeper.

But Gatekeeper is more than a whodunit because no one knows Kent is dead, not the least of which are his separated parents whose antagonistic relationship destroyed the family and left them financially ruined.  Kent’s concern for his mother is overwhelming and brings back a lot of memories for Serge about his own family dynamics, his mother and his death, but demonstrates the newly-developed empathy that makes Serge such a key and now likeable character.  By way of some careful research and snooping, Serge and Maggie discover that a lot of people are keeping secrets, including Kent, and that Kent’s determination to be a doctor may be at the heart of a series of mysteries, including his own death and rampant vandalism in Dead Falls.  And, of course, there’s the dead people that add a suprisingly humourous and horrifying combination of subplots to Natasha Deen’s story.  (Be prepared for a nasty legion of souls called The Family who cannot find peace and is looking for additional souls to ingest.)

Gatekeeper, like its predecessor, is completely an edge-of-your-seat read, though I found that I looked forward to the witty dialogue as much as the paranormal elements which Natasha Deen flawlessly embeds in her plot.  I’ve always thought Norah McClintock was the queen of YA crime fiction but I think Natasha Deen has developed into a princess of YA paranormal murder mysteries.  With her multifaceted plotlines and great, great characters who are neither perfect nor surreal (though they may be otherworldly), Natasha Deen has become one of my go-to YACanLit authors for spooky whodunits with a smidgen of romance.  Consider them the young adult equivalent of Scooby-Doo: fun sleuthing with the ever-helpful Maggie and Serge and the gang. Gatekeeper is one more mystery solved, and I look forward to more.

Pinny in Summer

by Joanne Schwartz

Illustrated by Isabelle Malenfant

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-782-5

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

May 2016

Pinny in Summer is as delicate as a summer breeze and as subtle as sun-bleached driftwood, yet mighty in its four-chaptered summer day adventures.

Joanne Schwartz has eloquently written Pinny in Summer as an early reader, with lengthier texts all the better for exploring Pinny’s motivations and actions.  In Pinny, the first chapter, Pinny makes looking for a wishing rock into an exploration for all the senses, feeling the warmth, enjoying the natural world’s colours and shapes, and listening to the squawking birds.  In Cloud Watching, Pinny is on her way home when she encounters friends Annie and Lou who invite her to go blueberry picking. Before they reach Blueberry Hill, they partake in some imaginative cloud watching, fortunately as the  skies open up and the rains fall just after their berry-picking.

Curling up at home to read a book and dry off, Pinny is visited by a large seagull in the chapter titled The Seagull.  Communicating with her by delicate head movements, the seagull engages the little girl in the most subtle of tête-à-têtes.  Finally, in the culminating chapter Pinny Has a Party, all the wonderful elements of Pinny’s summer day are brought together.  Having made her blueberry cake for her friends and deposited it on the picnic table outside, her seagull returns to indulge in the sweet treat, leaving a little gift as a thank-you. But Pinny sees these circumstances as just a beginning for another ideal summer day.

From Pinny in Summer by Joanne Schwartz, 

illus. by Isabelle Malenfant

Joanne Schwartz, who co-wrote Grandmother Ptarmigan (Inhabit Media, 2013) with Qaunaq Mikkigak, gets the promise of summer spot-on with text that reflects Pinny’s wide-eyed wholesomeness and wonder at everything she experiences. Isabelle Malenfant’s illustrations echo those sentiments exactly.  Isabelle Malenfant, who illustrated the highly-acclaimed Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress (by Christine Baldacchino, Groundwood Books, 2014), has a breeziness to her artwork: the colours are gauzy, as if bleached by the sun or seen through a fluttering sheer curtain, and her lines and shapes are as ephemeral as shimmering waves.  Pinny is Summer is a book of summer for every and any summer.

Spare Dog Parts

by Alison Hughes

Illustrated by Ashley Spires

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0704-4

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

January 2016

Spare Dog Parts is for every dog lover who knows that the perfect mutt may be a motley amalgam of odd and sods that others may pooh-pooh but she is the best of everything.

In this fun story, a lab coat-clad young girl seems to create her perfect pooch out of a miscellany of body, legs, paws, tail and facial features.  What could be a frightening prospect of manufacturing a living creature is instead a light-hearted look at how a little girl visualizes the conception of her loving and much-loved pet.

There were no more matching sets of legs left, so my dog got a spare brown leg, a black one, a white one with black spots, and one that couldn't make up its mind if it was white or not. (pg. 11)

From Spare Dog Parts by Alison Hughes, illus. by Ashley Spires

This dog may look a bit like a Frankenstein of a mutt, but she has a sweet disposition and “knows all the important things.  Like where the sunbeam falls. And the sound of food. And when someone needs her.” (pg. 21-25)

The message behind Alison Hughes’ whimsical story is one of acceptance and appreciation and one that true pet-lovers already know.

When my dog was made, they used leftover parts,
But somehow, when they fit them together
          like a big
             dog puzzle...
                ...they made a perfect dog. (pg. 28-31)

Teaming Alison Hughes’ story up with the artwork of Ashley Spires, creator of award-winning characters such as Binky and Larf and Small Saul, is inspired.  Ashley Spires knows about creating love from bits and pieces and about that which makes a pet so lovable.  I’m sure that this little girl is not unlike Ashley Spires herself, trying things out, analyzing the best combination and finally coming up with perfection.

Spare Dog Parts emulates its message that it’s not the parts that are important but the whole, and the whole is full and finished and flawless.

Spirit Level

by Sarah N. Harvey

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0816-4

233 pp.

Ages 12-16

February 2016

Spirit Level has nothing to do with spirits of the ethereal kind but it has everything to do with spirit of the attitude, strength and will variety. And with all the issues Spirit Level confronts–family, homelessness, donor conception and transgender youth–it is a young adult novel with a lot of guts.

Harriet a.k.a. Harry is seventeen, and the daughter of Della, a college sociologist, and honorary granddaughter of Verna, the widow who runs Verna’s Salon and took Della in and off the street when she was Harry’s age.   Now the three are essentially family and they continue to give back to their community.  Verna, with Della and Harry’s help, offers shampoos and hair styling for her “Sunday ladies”, an assortment of homeless and poor women who could not afford the treatment. Della is doing research on homeless girls, giving them voice about their circumstances. And Harry is working three summers jobs: dog walking, working at the salon, and transcribing her mom’s interviews with the girls who live on the street or couch surf.

There is no father in Harry’s life because her birth was by donor sperm.  After reading an article about a man who fathered 500 children, Harry decides she will finally check out the Donor Sibling Registry to learn about any siblings she might have. Within days she hears from and meets the exuberant Lucy, a fifteen-year-old dancer who also lives in Seattle and introduces Harry to two other half-sibs, Adam in Portland and Ben in Australia.  Lucy is ecstatic to make this connection, and even more so when another sister, Meredith, 18, who relocated to Seattle from Missoula with her best friend Alex, contacts them, hopeful of getting them on side to search for the donor himself.  Lucy, the consummate oversharer and all-in-girl is quite taken with Meredith, though Harry, the level-headed one, is reluctant to pursue this avenue and even more so to trust Meredith.  However, she does become involved with Meredith’s BFF Alex, displeasing Meredith.

As the siblings and friends and family meet and interact, the possibility of meeting the donor who helped conceive the three teens (and their far-away brothers) looms.  But, with the sensible Harry hesitant to agree to it and Alex pursuing Harry–though because he likes her or to get her on Meredith’s side is the question–Harry feels the need to do her Harriet the Spy routine and go in search of some answers, learning far more than she expected about Meredith, Alex and even herself.

There’s a lot going on in Spirit Level and I’ve barely touched on the homeless girls whose stories provide a different wallpaper from the family situations of Harry, Lucy and Meredith.  Their stories are integral to the book and to Harry specifically who begins to see her “problems” and family differently, taking wisdom from their challenges and attitudes, and ultimately she is able to make good for herself and at least one other homeless teen while continuing to evolve her own family circle.  

As I’ve mentioned, Sarah N. Harvey embeds a lot in Spirit Level, from homeless youth to mental health and donor conception and transgendering, but the message is still clear:  when life becomes uncertain and even chaotic, it is what it is and you begin as you mean to go on, go on as you began (two of Verna’s multitude of sayings).

Shooter

Written by Caroline Pignat

Razorbill Canada

978-0-143187578

320 pp.

Ages 12+

May 2016

Reviewed from advance reader’s copy

A whole lot can happen in one hour.  Ask those who tell Shooter’s story: Alice, Isabelle, Hogan, Noah, and Xander.  From the initial school lockdown at St. Francis Xavier High School which brings the five students barricaded together in a boys’ washroom to its dramatic, life-altering climax as the clock reads down to 00:00:00, Shooter is an unforgettable, heart-stopping story of heroes, written, read and made.

"This is real life. Not everything has a story."
Alice smiles. "But every person does."
I guess she’s right.  We all have one–even if it’s one we’d rather forget. (pg. 86)

There’s Hogan King, a hulking senior notorious for what he did to his older brother and who feels he is deservedly beyond redemption. There’s Alice, another senior, who is an incredible writer—accepted to UBC’s prestigious Creative Writing Program—who prefers her position of invisibility which allows her to read life and care for her older autistic brother Noah. uber-popular, egocentric and high-achieving student council president and go-to person for everything St. F-X, Isabelle Parks has her own issues, revealed in text messages with BFF Bri who is locked down in the office. And finally, there is the socially awkward Xander Watt, shooter of film images, who writes about himself as,

I think too much sometimes,
blurt the wrong things often, and
feel confused, always.” (pg. 48)

How these seemingly incompatible characters come together, and together they do come, in a complex plot of action, angst, and deliverance makes Shooter the extraordinary story that it is.  And storytelling, or rather writing, is a key foundation for Shooter.  With several of the students classmates in Writer’s Craft, it’s not surprising that elements of writing—plot, hero’s journey, characters’ fatal flaws, resolution—become part of the story. (Caroline Pignat is herself a high-school teacher of Writer’s Craft. Lucky students.)

I can’t possibly reveal the intricacies of the story and the role of each character in its resolution.  But suffice it to say, Caroline Pignat’s brilliant writing immerses the reader in the terror of a school in genuine lockdown and the anxiety of relating to those whose differences make you uncomfortable.  Beyond the drama, and there is much, Shooter is a story of empowerment, taken and accepted and relinquished, and a formidable tale told by one of Canada’s greatest writers.

Good Pirate: Book launch (Toronto's Centre Island)

Arr!  It's only 4 days away!

Join

Good Pirate
(Reviewed here)

author 
Kari-Lynn Winters 

and the scurvy crew 

at 

Pirate Life Toronto

(http://www.piratelife.ca)

on their 45-foot pirate ship 

setting sail from Toronto's Centre Island 

on 

Sunday, June 5th, 2016

12:30-2:15 p.m.

for the fanciest of book launches and pirate ship adventures! 

There will be: 
crafts
activities
a book reading and signing
&
a performance

all aboard a 45-ft pirate ship!



Just be sure to RSVP (rossstreetagency@gmail.com) 

for your place to help launch 

Good Pirate

by Kari-Lynn Winters
Illustrated by Dean Griffiths
Pajama Press
978-1-927485-80-4
32 pp.
Ages 5-8
May 2016