2021 Summer Reading Lists of the Forest Kid and Teen Committees

On May 4-6, 2021, selected young readers who'd applied to participate on the fifth annual Forest Kid Committee (for ages 9-13) and the third Forest Teen Committee (for ages 14+) came together online to talk books.  From their discussions, which were interspersed with visits from award-winning Canadian authors (Eric Walters, Colleen Nelson, David A. Robertson, Paul Coccia, Vikki VanSickle, Mahtab Narsimhan, Tom Ryan, Brian Francis and Pam Withers), these young people produced three extraordinary lists of recommended titles to keep everyone reading Canadian over the summer.  These are their recommendations for their peers in the Silver Birch, Red Maple and White Pine reading programs of the Forest of Reading®.

Happy summertime reading!

•••

Silver Birch Readers 
(Ages 8-12, Grades 3-6)

Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Body Under the Piano    

Written by Marthe Jocelyn    

Tundra    

Ages 9-13

Don't Stand So Close To Me    

Written by Eric Walters

Orca Book Publishers    

Ages 9-16

Elvis, Me, and the Lemonade Stand Summer

Written by Leslie Gentile    

DCB    

Ages 9-12

  

 

The Fabulous Zed Watson!    

Written by Basil Sylvester and Kevin Sylvester    

HarperCollins Canada    

Ages 8-12

Firefly    

Written by Philippa Dowding    

DCB    

Ages 9-12

Genie Meanie    

Written by Mahtab Narsimhan

Illustrated by Michelle Simpson    

Orca Book Publishers    

Ages 7-9

Girl of the Southern Sea    

Written by Michelle Kadarusman    

Pajama Press    

Ages 8-12

The Lost Scroll of the Physician (Secrets of the Sands #1)    

Written by Alisha Sevigny    

Dundurn    

Ages 8-13

Louder than Words (Heroes Quartet #3)    

Written by Kathy Kacer    

Annick Press    

Ages 9-12

My Name is Konisola    

Written by Alisa Siegel    

Second Story Press    

Ages 9-12

Peter Lee's Notes from the Field    

Written by Angela Ahn    

Tundra    

Ages 9-12

Red Fox Road    

Written by Frances Greenslade    

Puffin Canada   

Ages 10-14

The Sun Will Come Out    

Written by Joanne Levy    

Orca Book Publishers    

Ages 9-12

Unplugged    

Written by Gordon Korman    

Scholastic Canada    

Ages 9-13

War at the Snow White Motel and Other Stories    

Written by Tim Wynne-Jones    

Groundwood Books    

Ages 9-12

 

Red Maple Readers
(Ages 12-14, Grades 7-8)

Alice Fleck's Recipes for Disaster
Written by Rachelle Delaney
Penguin Random House
Ages 10-14

Barry Squires, Full Tilt
Written by Heather Smith
Penguin Random House
Ages 12+

The Case of the Burgled Bundle (The Mighty Muskrats Mystery #3)
Written by Michael Hutchinson
Second Story Press
Ages 9-12

The Do-Over
Written by Jennifer Honeybourn
Swoon Reads / Feiwel & Friends
Ages 13-18

Dreaming in Color
Written by Melanie Florence
Orca Book Publishers
Ages 12+

Finding Home: The Journey of Immigrants and Refugees
Written by Jen Sookfong Lee
Illustrated by Drew Shannon
Orca Book Publishers
Ages 12+

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass
Written by Adan Jerreat-Poole
Dundurn
Ages 13+

Hatch (The Overthrow #2)
Written by Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins Canada
Ages 10-14

Heart Sister
Written by Michael F. Stewart
Orca Book Publishers
Ages 12+

My Long List of Impossible Things
Written by Michelle Barker
Annick Press
Ages 14+

The Player
Written by Paul Coccia
Lorimer
Ages 13-18

The Stone of Sorrow (Runecaster #1)
Written by Brooke Carter
Orca Book Publishers
Ages 12+

Tremendous Things
Written by Susin Nielsen
Penguin Random House
Ages 12+

War Stories
Written by Gordon Korman
Scholastic
Ages 8-12

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life
Written by Dani Jansen
Second Story Press
Ages 12-18

 

White Pine Readers
(Ages 14-18, Grades 9-12)

A Dark and Hollow Star
Written by Ashley Shuttleworth
Simon & Schuster
Ages 13-17

Annaka
Written by André Fenton
Nimbus Publishing
Ages 14-17

Bruised
Written by Tanya Boteju
Simon & Schuster
Ages 14+

Drone Chase
Written by Pam Withers
Dundurn Press
Ages 12-15

The Glass Hotel
Written by Emily St. John Mandel
Penguin Random House
Ages 17+

The Grey Sisters
Written by Jo Treggiari
Penguin Random House
Ages 12+

Hench
Written by Natalie Zina Walschots
HarperCollins
Ages 17+

I Hope You're Listening
Written by Tom Ryan
Albert Whitman & Co.
Ages 15-18

Kill the Mall
Written by Pasha Malla
Penguin Random House
Ages 17+

Shut Up You're Pretty
Written by Tea Mutonji
Arsenal Pulp Press
Ages 17+

Sisters of the Snake
Written by Sarena Nanua and Sasha Nanua
HarperCollins
Ages 13-17

Thrive (The Overthrow #3)
Written by Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins
Ages 10-14

When You Ask Me Where I'm Going
Written by Jasmin Kaur
HarperCollins
Ages 14+

When You Get The Chance
Written by Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson
Running Press Kids
Ages 12+

You Were Never Here
Written by Kathleen Peacock
Harper Collins
Ages 13+

 

 

The book lists are posted on the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading website:

• For Silver Birch readers: https://accessola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Kid-Committee-List-Silver-Birch.pdf
• For Red Maple readers: https://accessola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Kid-Committee-List-Red-Maple.pdf
• For White Pine readers: https://accessola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Teen-Committee-List.pdf

And there are lovely posters too (Forest Kid Committee: https://accessola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Kid-Committee-Poster.pdf; Teen Committee: https://accessola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Teen-Committee-Poster.pdf) to help keep everyone reading Canadian this summer.

Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story (10th Anniversary Edition)

Written by David A. Robertson

Illustrated by Scott B. Henderson

Colours by Donovan Yaciuk

HighWater Press

978-1-55379-975-7

48 pp.

Ages 14-18

May 2021 

In my family, silence has been the currency of injustice.

~ Senator Murray Sinclair, Foreword to Sugar Falls

 

Too many of the truths about injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples have been hidden, suppressed and ignored. With the original publication of Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story in 2011, some of those truths were told, based on the true story of Betty Ross, Elder at Cross Lake First Nation. Today with the release of this tenth anniversary edition of Sugar Falls, I hope even more readers are ready to hear those truths.

 

When a present-day class is given an assignment to look at the residential school system, with strict instructions to approach Elders with respect and an offering, Cree student April offers to introduce Daniel to her Kōkom, an Elder who survived it but whose story even April had not heard.

From Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, illus. by Scott B. Henderson, colours by Donovan Yaciuk

April's Kōkom takes them into her round room "with all the sacred medicines and within the star blanket of the four directions" (pg. 4) where she would be safe. She prepares by wearing traditional attire, holding an eagle feather and doing a cleansing before she begins her story.

Abandoned at age five into the winter's cold by her own mother who had survived the residential school system, she is found and brought up as a daughter and sister in a loving family. A few years later, after he has a vision of darkness in her future, her father takes her to Sugar Falls where he teaches her to feel the beat of their hearts as drums in rhythm with that of the falls, and that "The beat of the drum represents the strengths of our relationships, between our ancestors, our traditions with Mother Earth, and with each other" (pg. 13) and that remembering this would keep her strong.

From Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, illus. by Scott B. Henderson, colours by Donovan Yaciuk

Strength is what she will need when soon a grim priest comes and drags her away from that love and comfort to an ominously-large institution where Sister Marie scrubs at her skin and cuts her long hair. There Betsy meets Flora and begins an endless routine that includes prayer and chores and classes. Sadly there is also the abuse, a crack against the knuckles, a slap or a kick for speaking Cree, and the sexual abuse by the priest to whom the girls would close their minds and numb their bodies and pretend the visits were nightmares to be left in the night.

From Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, illus. by Scott B. Henderson, colours by Donovan Yaciuk

Though Betsy can see across the water and envision home, she has made a promise to her father to be good and listen, so when Flora and a couple of other girls escape across the water, she remains behind. But Flora's death steels Betsy until one day "All I wanted to see was my family again, to wake up from the nightmare and have them by my side." (pg. 34) She walks into the water and remembers Sugar Falls. She is dragged back from the water but her resolve has returned and "no matter what they did to me, I held onto myself, my language and my spirit." (pg. 38)

 

From Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, illus. by Scott B. Henderson, colours by Donovan Yaciuk

Betsy endured that place for several more years, and later attended high school in Winnipeg. She also changed her name to Betty to honour her friend Helen Betty Osborne who would be murdered.

I did it to keep her memory alive. My story, her story are stories that we should never forget, no matter who we are, they are important to all of us. (pg. 39)

Governor-General award-winning author David A. Robertson does so much in the telling of Sugar Falls. He honours Betty Ross by giving her story new life so that more will know of her courage and resilience and that of so many who endured and those who did not at the hands of a brutal system that never should have happened. Generations later, Indigenous people continue to live in the aftermath of that horrific injustice and with each story told, the silence is broken a little more, allowing an opportunity for justice to manifest.  By giving voice to Betty to speak of her past, from abandonment to loving family and residential school nightmare, and those of her granddaughter and non-Indigenous friend to hear her story from their own perspectives, David A. Robertson lets us see Betty as a survivor with heart, strength and compassion.

Because this is a graphic novel, less needs to be said in text and more can be carried by the artwork, and illustrator Scott B. Henderson and colourist Donovan Yaciuk take on their task with reverence and empathy. The despair of life at the residential school is clear in the starkness and gloom of the shapes, lines and colours of those scenes, with Scott B. Henderson and Donovan Yaciuk saving the brightness for outdoor scenes with family and the contemporary settings of school and Kōkom's home. It was clear where the lightness in Betty's life is, past and present.

Today, with the release of David A. Robertson's tenth anniversary edition of Sugar Falls, there is a new opportunity for the world to listen and see this story, to silence the silence and give survivors of the residential school system, both those who lived it and those whose legacy it is, a chance to tell their stories and have them remembered.

Rescue at Lake Wild: Guest review

 

This review was written by teacher Elizabeth Cook.

 

 

Written by Terry Lynn Johnson

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

978-0-358334859

208 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2021

I am a big animal lover.  My friends know to send me cute animal videos from the internet, my trips are often centered around animal experiences (e.g., diving with sharks, trekking with gorillas), and I volunteer for a local cat rescue organization. When I was young, our house was the stray cat and dog sanctuary of the neighbourhood.  It seemed that all local cats knew we couldn’t say no to helping them find forever homes (which usually was our own).  So, it should be no surprise that I was immediately taken in by Terry Lynn Johnson’s Rescue at Lake Wild. Between the cover image of a girl on a paddle board alongside two beavers and a boat with two boys and a dog, and the first page alluding to an animal whisperer, I was captivated. 

Twelve-year-old Madison Lewis and her friends Aaron and Jack, accompanied by Jack's tracking dog Lid, have been watching a beaver house where they'd earlier heard kits crying. Having found the adult beavers shot, the kids are worried that the adults may have been the kits' only family and are trying to decide if they should rescue the little ones. Madison, well known as an animal whisperer, knows it's best for wild animals to remain in the wild but, as night draws near, Madison follows her personal motto: "If you see something, do something.”  So she ends up diving down into the depths of the darkened beaver dam to save two orphaned beaver kits she affectionately names Cooler and Phragmites (Phrag). Together the trio of young people work to secretly save the beaver kits and discover those responsible for killing the adult beavers and for flooding the roadways in town, knowing the beavers weren't responsible for the damage seen around town. 

Using the knowledge she learned from her grandmother on raising and caring for beaver kits, Madison sets up a secret habitat in her clubhouse, determined to safely release the kits later into the wild. But Madison has to keep this secret from her older sister and mother, especially as her mother has told her that Madison could go and see her hero, Jane Goodall, speak only if she can resist rescuing more animals. Madison may dream of being the next Jane Goodall but she's already too dedicated to Cooler and Phrag to give up on them, and she's willing to risk it all to save them. Meanwhile, Aaron, Jack and Lid work to solve the mystery of the flooding around town, which is harder than expected because most adults won’t listen to a couple of kids who are sure that humans are responsible for the destruction, not the beavers.  

Terry Lynn Johnson’s Rescue at Lake Wild is a great novel for middle grade readers. The story focuses on how children learn to do what is right and help others while solving a town mystery. Because the theme of animal stewardship permeates the whole story, Rescue at Lake Wild is a great book for any animal lover you might know.  I especially liked the “Dos of Wildlife” at the back of the book which will help guide animal champions to properly care for wildlife and where to go for more reliable information on the topic.  This will be a great book to read during the upcoming cottage season!   

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