The Secret of White Stone Gate (Order of Black Hollow Lane, Book 2)

Written by Julia Nobel

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

978-1-7282-2003-1

304 pp.

Ages 8-14

March 2020

After a tumultuous first year at Wellsworth boarding school in England (see my review of The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane), Emmy is both excited and apprehensive about returning after summer holidays. She is glad to be reconnecting with her friends Lola and Jack but she knows that her intention to find her long-missing father may put her and her friends in danger, again, with the mysterious and treacherous secret society known as the Order of Black Hollow Lane.

Several things make this year at Wellsworth a little different. First, twelve-year-old Emmy has been instructed to have her mom’s cousin Lucy, a snarky woman who breeds Chinese crested dogs and aspires for her and husband Harold to be in every posh club in London, including the Thackery Club, act as unofficial guardian.  Secondly, she hides the all-important Order's medallions–though the Order has been told they were all destroyed–in a safety deposit box at the Royal Bank of London. Thirdly, new schoolmates at Wellsworth include Jack's new roommate Sam, for whom Emmy is feeling a little fluttery, and Jack's little brother Oliver who is having a hard time fitting in.

After the funds from the Wellsworth Annual Charity Supper and fundraiser are discovered in Lola's dresser and she is expelled, Emmy learns that the Order has set up Lola and will continue to do harm unless Emmy tells them where her father is. Sadly, Emmy does not know where Thomas Allyn is and worse yet, Lucy is hearing rumours about Emmy and her friends from her club acquaintances that suggest the young people are troublemakers. Sam agrees to go undercover and befriend Brynn, Lola's nasty cousin and Order member, to help Emmy and Jack. But after two violent assaults on her friends, Emmy wonders if she can find her father and save her friends before it's too late.

Before Wellsworth, Emmy may have lived with her mom, a parenting expert, but she lacked family. Her mother is far too wrapped up in her career and purporting to always know what's best for her daughter, including connecting her with a selfish cousin who cares little for Emmy, but who fails to listen to Emmy, particularly in regards to her father. (It's easy not to like Emmy's mom and Lucy.) It's not surprising that Emmy wants to learn more about her father, though when she discovers he is alive, she has mixed feelings about the man who seems to want to protect her at all costs but who chose to leave years ago. Because of the confusing relationships with her parents, Emmy inevitably finds the family she needs with her friends at Wellsworth. And she has mystery upon mystery to solve with her allies.

Julia Nobel's first book in the Order of Black Hollow Lane series, The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane, is a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and a nominee for the Forest of Reading's Silver Birch Fiction award so young readers will be pleased to know that The Secret of White Stone Gate is available to continue Emmy's story. There's a new mystery, new characters, and more nefarious actions perpetrated by the Order but Emmy is getting closer to her father and helping him while making a real life for herself at Wellsworth. Fortunately, the mystery must continue with a third book if we are to learn whether Emmy and her friends will be able to keep the treasures of Black Hollow Lane from falling into the hands of the Order. No news yet on Book 3 but I'm sure it won't be a secret for long.

The Mystery of the Black Hollow Lane (Order of Black Hollow Lane, Book 1)

Written by Julia Nobel

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

978-1-4926-6464-2

320 pp.

Ages 8-14

2019

For a parenting guru, Emmy Willick’s mom seems to relinquish much of her responsibilities, telling her daughter that she always knows what’s best for her (does she?) when sending her an English boarding school, Wellsworth.  But before Emmy heads out, she uncovers a metal box with 12 medallions with a note from her father, Thomas Allyn, who’d left when Emmy was three. As her parents met in England, Emmy is determined to use the opportunity at Wellsworth to learn as much about him as she can.

At Wellsworth, she meets Lola Boyd, her housemistress’s daughter, and Jack Galt with whom she becomes fast friends. Because she has had no schooling in Latin, she is encouraged by Madam Boyd to join the Latin Society, a club headed by Master Larraby.  When the trio begin to study the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and learn that Wellsworth Hall used to be Blacehol Abbey, Emmy discovers a secret society called the Order of Black Hollow Lane using the same symbol as the Latin Society, a skull with a cross and dagger. But Jack tries to dissuade her against learning about the Order to which his father and older brothers, as well as Lola’s nasty cousin Brynn, belong and which Jack believes is dangerous.

After being slipped several old messages ostensibly from the files of Thomas Allyn, Emmy realizes that her father, the school and the Order of Black Hollow Lane are all tied together. But what Emmy doesn’t know is how and why.

Boarding schools are a favourite location to set mysteries, just as English countryside villages are home to so many cozies. Schools like Wellsworth are ripe with a myriad of characters, good and bad and some misunderstood, from among their student and adult populations. There are roomies, classmates, teachers, administrators, custodians and more in these enclaves of apparent decorum. Their relationships are a tangled web of support, bullying, distrust, affection and malevolence. For Emmy, whose self-absorbed mother loves to dictate but not engage and without a father present in her life, Wellsworth offers her an opportunity to find family. She may be driven to find her father and have him become part of her life, if she can, but with Lola and Jack and a gaggle of other characters who may be of assistance in their own ways, Emmy is able to make a new life and solve a mystery or two.

•••••••

Tomorrow I review The Secret of White Stone Gate, Book 2 in the Order of Black Hollow Lane series.

Music for Tigers: Guest review

Today's review was written by teacher-librarian Elizabeth Cook.

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-054-3

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2020

As an avid traveller, I love stories that help me relive fabulous trips I have taken in the past.  While I never made it all the way to Tasmania when adventuring around Australia, where Michelle Kadarusman’s Music For Tigers takes place, I felt as though I had.  Her description of the Tasmanian rainforest is breathtaking.  Michelle Kadarusman weaves her words in such a way that makes the world down under come alive.  The best way I can describe it is that she not only created a beautiful story, it felt like she created a melody with her words.  I could feel the rhythm and cadence of the eucalyptus trees and all of the animals contained on the island of Tasmania.

Music is all that the main character, Louisa, can think about when she arrives in Tasmania after a long flight from Toronto.  Clutching her violin, she would much rather be rehearsing for her upcoming audition for the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra than bushwhacking her way to a remote cabin with her Uncle Ruff that she has only just met.  At her cabin, Louisa finds solace in making her violin fill the emptiness around her with melodies to help her feel as though she were at home in Toronto.  Louisa can’t help but feel she is being watched from outside her window...and this time it isn’t the Huntsman spider that previously inhabited her cabin. 

When Louisa learns to live in the present and embrace her time in Tasmania she learns the true beauty of nature: the sound of cicadas among the gum trees, locating the Southern Cross in the dark night sky, and watching small wallabies bouncing along the forest floor.  Unfortunately, this is all under attack as Louisa learns that the camp of her great-grandmother, a safe haven for endangered animals in the wild, is soon to be bulldozed to make roads to the nearby mines.  Has Louisa learned the true value of what is important in life too late to make a difference?

Michelle Kadarusman’s Music For Tigers is a beautiful novel that is a captivating read.  It weaves in themes of animal stewardship, environmental protection, family, and friendship into one heartwarming book.  This novel would be an excellent read for adults as well as students in Grades 4 and up.  If you love protecting animals in their natural environment, you will love this book...just be sure to watch out for those bunyips!

~ Elizabeth Cook is a teacher-librarian in the Halton District School Board. She is an avid reader and fan of Canadian literature. 

Alien Nate

Written and illustrated by Dave Whamond

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-0209-1

64 pp.

Ages 6-9

April 2020

It all started with a pizza. A pizza that NASA scientists had accidentally left on board Voyager 1 in 1977 and which a ship from Vega found. Now the Vegans want more of that pizza. (Pizza is pretty great.)

Alien Nate was chosen for the mission. When he crashes his space-ship on Earth, he is discovered by kindly Fazel who, when approached by two Men in Beige suits, grabs Nate and makes a run for it, with a little help from a mysterious figure. 

From Alien Nate by Dave Whamond

Fazel decides to take the purple alien to school, covering his antennae with Dad's back-up toupee. Nate is enamoured with learning, rather than just having knowledge plugged into his head, and he loves all earth food but pizza is his favourite, except "the pineapple one. Who puts pineapples on a pizza. I mean, that's just...odd."

From Alien Nate by Dave Whamond

After his boorish classmate Frank discovers Nate is an alien, Fazel creates the Secret Alien Society to keep him quiet. Together they learn much about Vega, which Nate misses terribly, regardless of its technological brilliance and lack of imagination, and is desperate to find a way back to it.

Don't get me wrong...I love it here on Earth. I mean, you're only a one-star planet on Galaxy Advisor, but you've timed your rotation around the sun to match your calendar year. Unheard of! Plus, you have penguins, and they're so cute...

From Alien Nate by Dave Whamond

After a tasty "corn as fuel" misstep and a whole lot of brain power, plus a secret agent with girl power and booster cables, Nate evades the Men in Beige and finds his happy ending. 

Alien Nate may be classified as an early-reader graphic novel but this little pizza-craving alien has been sent by Dave Whamond to make us all laugh and appreciate imagination and pizza. The same chuckles that have drawn me to Dave Whamond's Reality Check cartoons and his earlier picture books (such as Nick the Sidekick, Rosie's Glasses, and Oddrey) will tickle those funny bones with the puns, the play on popular culture (like the blandness of Vegan food, the Men in Beige, and Galaxy Advisor ratings) and commentary on creativity, learning, always being plugged in, dealing with bullies, and diversity. The text is clever and sweet and readers will rise to support Alien Nate and Fazel in their growing friendship, in their sharing of cultures and more. 

Of course, being a graphic novel, Alien Nate does not disappoint with its illustrations. Dave Whamond's pen and ink with watercolour art is as cheeky as the story, vivid in its colours (his trademark pink-purple-periwinkle always make me smile) and inviting readers to see a story from different perspectives like front, back, above, background and up-close. It's all in good fun and in good taste too. (I can smell the pizza, and doughnuts and popcorn...)

Meet Alien Nate for a giggle or twenty and do some honest learning about the value of creativity to develop a real world of friends.

2020 Forest Kid and Teen Committees: Applications due April 17, 2020

Here's something to look forward to!

Do you 💚💚💚💚💚 reading?

Are you in Grades 4-8 or in high school?

Do you live in Ontario?

Do you want to help choose books that other kids will want to read?

Then

the Ontario Library Association's

Forest of Reading

has a committee for you!

For the past several years, the Forest of Reading Kid and Teen Committees have brought readers in Grades 4 through 12 together to talk books and produce exceptional summer reading lists for those readers of the Silver Birch (Gr. 3-6), Red Maple (Gr. 7-8) and White Pine (Gr. 9-12) reading programs.

This year the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading program is again asking students to apply to be on the 2020 Forest Kid Committee and Forest Teen Committee.

Who can apply?
For the Forest Kid Committee (Silver Birch): Ontario students in Grades 4-6
For the Forest Kid Committee (Red Maple): Ontario students in Grades 7-8
For the Forest Teen Committee: Ontario students in Grades 9-12

What will you do?
Tentatively, the committees will be meeting virtually via video conferencing to select 10-20 titles for a summer reading list. (Check out last year's Kid Committee and Teen Committee reading lists.) Meet online with your committee to share some great Canadian books, connect with other lovers of Canadian books for young people, and compile fantastic lists of recommended titles for summer (or anytime!) reading.

When will you meet?
Meetings will take place at the end of May.

Applications are due April 17, 2020

and are available online here

Details about the program are found at the OLA website 

at http://www.accessola.org/web/OLA/Forest_of_Reading/Volunteering/OLA/Forest_of_Reading/Kid_Committee.aspx

Don't miss this great opportunity 

to share your 💚 of Canadian books!

The Forest Kid Committee and Teen Committee are a huge success.

Now it's your chance to become a committee member on the 

2020 Forest Kid Committee or Forest Teen Committee

and help your peers find great books to read.

Apply before the April 17th deadline 

for your chance 

to be part of something great! 

Posters of books recommended by last year's Forest Kid and Teen Committees

Music for Tigers

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-054-3

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2020

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. (Cicero)

There is art within the pages of Music for Tigers. It's the art that comes from seeing and hearing and knowing a place and its people. Just as she did in her earlier books, The Theory of Hummingbirds (2017) and Girl of the Southern Sea (2019), Michelle Kadarusman delivers us with her art, this time to the island of Tasmania, a land rich with stories, of history, of landscape and of life.

This vacation is getting stranger by the day. Uninvited campers. Extinct bandicoots that aren't extinct after all. Scary-looking spiders that I'm not supposed to be scared of. Odd noises and stranger smells in the night. And what exactly is the real story with the Tasmanian tigers? (pg. 44)

Louisa just wants to play violin and rehearse for a spot with the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. Instead she is shipped off to a bush camp in the remote Tasmanian rainforest to spend six weeks of the Canadian summer with Uncle Ruff, her mother's brother. Everything is new and strange and Louisa fears the animals, the smells, and a place that offers her few comforts.

Because of the remoteness of the family camp, just an assortment of crumbling cabins beside a river, Uncle Ruff takes her to the nearby Eco Lodge for Wi-Fi. Here she meets proprietor Mel and her son, Colin. Colin, a boy whose ASD makes social interactions more challenging, is a superb bushwalking guide, knowing everything about the Tarkine, this remote area of northwest Tasmania. He tells her about the devils and the seemingly-extinct thylacine a.k.a. the Tasmanian tiger, which is not a tiger at all but a carnivorous marsupial that looks more dog-like with stripes on its back. He also shares stories of Tasmania's history as a convict colony, and rumours that Convict Rock, in the middle of their local river, is haunted. Coupled with readings of her great-grandmother Eleanor's journal from 1939 and 1942 and discussions with her Uncle Ruff, Louisa starts to learn what a special place the Tarkine is. Even more extraordinary is that her violin playing may be drawing a thylacine in to listen.

Michelle Kadarusman brings two worlds together in Music for Tigers and shows that they can work in unison. Louisa didn't want to leave the city for the bush, determined that she would not leave her dreams of playing the violin behind, and Uncle Ruff is happy enough to do without the amenities his sister left to enjoy in another country and in the city. Both change.

For once, I don't have my violin. I want to hear the music of the forest instead. I sit and listen to the currrawongs sing their Vivaldi chorus and the rhythmic swish and sway of the towering giants above me. I close my eyes, breathe in the lemon myrtle, and listen carefully. (pg. 168)

Together Ruff and Louisa, with a little help from their friends, work to do good, though sadly they have to do so because of the encroachment of human activities, such as mining and logging, on the natural environment. Music for Tigers is a statement, albeit a songful one, of our impact on the natural world for our own purposes, destroying critical habitats and species. It implores us to step up and put conservation and preservation measures in place before it's too late, when even the music of our efforts won't be enough to save ecosystems and their species.

With Music for Tigers, Michelle Kadarusman reminds us, again, that being human requires much of us but the dividends from benevolence to others, human and not, may be unforeseen but boundless.

West Coast Wild Babies

Written by Deborah Hodge

Illustrated by Karen Reczuch

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-248-8

36 pp.

Ages 3-7

April 2020

With West Coast Wild Babies, the sequel to their West Coast Wild: A Nature Alphabet (Groundwood, 2015), author Deborah Hodge and artist Karen Reczuch bring an abundance of baby animals to herald the spring, offering hope for a new generation and a whole lot of cuteness.

Whether you are familiar with the Pacific West Coast or not, West Coast Wild Babies will transport you to its magnificent rainforests and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Whether from "high in the trees, low on the forest floor, inside burrows and dens, and deep in the waters of this wild and beautiful place," the diversity of the region's ecosystems, populations and climate are on full display.

From West Coast Wild Babies by Deborah Hodge, illus. by Karen Reczuch

In each double-spread, Deborah Hodge introduces us to an animal on the west coast, describing the young and their behaviour such as camouflage, foods eaten or prepared, movement and more. Her text may be information but it is poetic and perfectly accompanied by Karen Reczuch's watercolour and coloured pencil illustrations of an adult or two with the babies in their habitat.

From West Coast Wild Babies by Deborah Hodge, illus. by Karen Reczuch

The animals presented in West Coast Wild Babies include the gray wolf, black-tailed deer, bald eagle, black bear, orca, rufous hummingbird, harbor seal, chum salmon, pelagic cormorant, northern Pacific tree frog, black oystercatcher, sea otter and gray whale, although a few additional animals including the raccoon and human also turn up on the pages.

From West Coast Wild Babies by Deborah Hodge, illus. by Karen Reczuch

Though West Coast Wild Babies is at its heart an information book, Deborah Hodge and Karen Reczuch elevate the book beyond just a compendium of facts. They have created a spring journey into the wilds of the Pacific coast to take a sneak peek at families growing and playing, living and feeding, and welcomed us into their homes. West Coast Wild Babies is the best of so many worlds, not the least of which is seeing into those environments without disturbing them and without travel which is currently prohibited.