2022 Forest of Reading Forest Kid and Teen Committees: Applications due by April 1

 

Just before children and teens head out for March break, get them thinking about applying to the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading's Forest Kid and Teen Committees. Young readers from Grades 3 to 12 are invited to apply to be on one of three committees who will meet via Zoom in early May to talk books and recommend Canadian titles for their peers. These summer reading lists will then be shared to inform young people's reading of recent books by Canadian authors.

 

Here's what you need to know:

 

Committees:

There are 3 committees:

    Silver Birch Kid Committee (for students in Gr. 3-6)

    Red Maple Kid Committee (for students in Gr. 7-8)

    Teen Committee (for students in Gr. 9-12)

Applications:

Applicants will be asked to fill out an application here and share favourite Canadian authors and their books, both recently published and of all time. (It is a must that readers are familiar with Canadian authors.)

 

Deadline:

April 1, 2022

 

Zoom Meetings:

Selected applicants will meet via virtual Zoom meetings from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM EST on the following dates:

    Silver Birch Kid Committee:    Monday, May 2, 2022

    Red Maple Kid Committee:      Tuesday, May 3, 2022

    Teen Committee:                       Thursday, May 5, 2022

 

Complete details are available from the Forest of Reading Kid and Teen Committees here.

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For past reading lists (always helpful for teachers and parents to suggest books to young readers), check out the Forest of Reading site at https://forestofreading.com/kid-teen-committees/. Here are images of last year's recommended titles from the Silver Birch, Red Maple and Teen Committees.

Good luck to all students who apply. 

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The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher (A Gumboot Kids Nature Mystery)

by Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford

Firefly Books

978-0-2281-0337-0

32  pp.

Ages 3-6

November 2021

 

If your children are familiar with Scout and the Gumboot Kids, a CBC Kids' TV series, then you're already aware of the show's exploration of nature for young children. To date, creators Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford have transferred those stories into 8 picture books, all based on investigations into the natural world. The latest, The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher, has young readers joining mice Scout and Daisy in the field as they amass clues to solve their newest mystery.

From The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher by Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford

As Scout checks out his fall pumpkins, Daisy declares that she nearly walked into a hanging food catcher. Together they note the clues that might help them understand. The clues include the gate, silky thread, and a fly, leading them to a beautiful spider web as it catches a fly. In keeping with the education aspect of the series, Scout and Daisy do their own research on spider webs and ties it into their own appreciation of the natural world and some delicious food of their own.

From The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher by Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford

I don't know who creates the felted mice or their woollen sweaters, hats and scarves, but that labour-intensive work has paid off in charming characters and scenes. (Not surprising that there are plush toys of Scout and Daisy available.) By wrapping very simple nature stories for young children in these characters and scenes, Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford are speaking to children at their level without talking down to them. They take a basic scientific method approach to exploring nature, embed it in an uncomplicated plot, and enhance that learning and entertainment with some science–notes on the spider's morphology and behaviour are included–and a nature craft of weaving. The Gumboot Kids Nature Mysteries may not be intricate and highly detailed but they shouldn't be for this age level. They provide meaningful introductions to a variety of topics based in the natural world by captivating youngsters with delightful characters and inspiring creativity and an interest in that outside world. With The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher, children will probably never look at a spider or its web in the same way again, and instead be inspired to organize their own explorations of the natural world.

 

• • • • • • •

 

Gumboot Kids Nature Mystery series

The Case of the Vanishing Caterpillar (2019)

The Case of the Story Rock (2019)

The Case of the Wooden Timekeeper (2019)

The Case of the Growing Bird Feeder (2019)

The Case of the Singing Ocean (2020)

The Case of the Buzzing Honey Makers (2020)

The Case of the Shrinking Friend (2021)

The Case of the Hanging Food Catcher (2021)

Step

Written by Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-815-2

150 pp.

Ages 8-12

March 2022

For many of us, our days are spent stepping out and stepping in and stepping around. These are our everyday lives of going to school or work, dealing with peers and family, and returning home. But there are milestone days. For many children, those days include their birthdays. And, for the children of Deborah Ellis's ten stories in Step, the milestone day of an 11th birthday brings with it a new opportunity to step. 

 

Each of the ten stories within Step is titled with a single and powerful word.  They are Smash, Alone, Rock, Rubber, Shoes, Ride, Laundry, Free, Nails, and Supper. Some take place in familiar North American settings, like Smash in which Connor takes his sister's rejected and fearful dog for a walk and both see and become something different. Or Ride, in which Aislyn is taken to the county fair by her older sister and deserted to spend time with her boyfriend. But there are other stories that take us to the unfamiliar. In Rubber, Oma and her family are escaping on a rubber raft for Europe, and in Free, a child and her mother and sister leave the gangs and deaths of their homeland to walk days into the land of the free. Perhaps the most disparate in setting is Laundry in which Masud shares a cell with twenty-one men at a prison-like Libyan detention facility. Their cell is a community of unrelated persons who have come together to work as family for everyone. Most unusual is the story of Rock. While its setting will be familiar to young readers, Rock is wholly different in that it includes a supernatural element that links our world with another to highlight a social injustice halfway around the world.

 

From the pen of Deborah Ellis always comes brilliant writing but also profound attention to social justice and the courage of children to step up. This is the same in Step. From neo-Nazis, an inhumane detention center, gang violence, poverty, bullying and those seeking refuge, Deborah Ellis lets young readers see from the perspective of eleven-year-olds who are leaving their childhoods behind and looking at people and places with fresh eyes. For many, that one day of transition from 10 to 11 has given them clarity for flawed family members, for right and wrong, and for their own place.

I love that there has been a resurgence of short story collections, especially themed ones such as Deborah Ellis's latest collection, a companion book to her earlier Sit (2017). In Step, eleven-year-olds are stepping into, stepping up and stepping away. And sometimes doing what is actually another, like Lazlo in Shoes who by stepping away is actually stepping up. These children from around the world are dealing with big issues in their own homes, in their communities and in foreign lands. They must deal with their families, with their peers, with strangers, and with authorities. And each time they must decide what they will do in their steps. They could step back or around. They could do what they might have done at age ten and taken the familiar course. Ah, but they have all just turned eleven. That milestone moves them forward to step differently. These children have come of age, some in common circumstances and some in horrific struggles. Each has stepped into their new maturity in their own way, thinking beyond themselves and instead of others and the greater good. They have attained the wisdom that many of their elders have not.

I Can See You

Written by Rosemarie Avrana Meyok

Illustrated by Michelle Simpson

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-420-2

28 pp.

Ages 0-4

February 2022

 

Concepts books, i.e., those that teach concepts such as the alphabet, colours and numbers, are always valuable resources for parents and teachers. These books introduce young children to early learning but, if handled well, will entertain while that learning is happening. With bright illustrations, a simple rhythm of repetition and a unique cultural foundation for that learning, I Can See You will teach, delight and enlighten.

From I Can See You by Rosemarie Avrana Meyok, illus. by Michelle Simpson

In I Can See You, mothers and grandmothers endearingly play with babies, based on the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and even tasting. Embraced with obvious adoration, a baby, always called "my little sweetheart" is experienced fully by the parent or caregiver.

 

From I Can See You by Rosemarie Avrana Meyok, illus. by Michelle Simpson

From playing peek-a-boo to giggles, hugs and kisses and cuddles, each baby is well-loved and the basis for readers, and undoubtedly young listeners, to understand how the five senses can be the vectors for that love.

From I Can See You by Rosemarie Avrana Meyok, illus. by Michelle Simpson

 

 

Born in NWT and residing in Nunavut, author Rosemarie Avrana Meyok speaks from experience both of people and place. As a great-grandmother, she has undoubtedly done her fair share of baby cuddling and nurturing. Her words are simple, as appropriate for a concept book, but never shallow. Rosemarie Avrana Meyok gives depth of feeling to those words but also experience with their message. From the baby in an amautik (parka with a hood for a baby) receiving kunik (nose kisses) from her mother to an Arctic landscape of cottongrass and saxifrage or northern lights–depending on the season– I Can See You takes young readers to the far north. In her joyful artwork, Niagara Falls illustrator Michelle Simpson brings that landscape to life, in its people and its place. The vegetation is distinctly that of the tundra, the stilted houses are raised above the permafrost, the stuffies include walrus, narwhal and snowy owls, and there are earrings that are beaded or resemble the ulu. Everything speaks to an Arctic community and an Inuit culture at its heart. And more at its heart is the love of mother or grandmother, perhaps aunt or sister, for babies who are seen, heard, touched, tasted and smelled with tenderness, knowing all the love that every child deserves.

Funny Pages Festival: April 22 (Halifax and Online)

It's time to get kids laughing again by celebrating books that crack them up with the hope "to laugh low literacy rates right out of existence." 

This brainchild of author Vicki Grant is the aim of Canada's first and only festival dedicated to children's books of humour.

For parents, teachers and kids interested in participating here are some of the details:

Date:                 Friday, April 22, 2022

Participants:     Kids of Grades 4 to 8

Events:             Author presentations, writing workshops, book signings and online fun. Plus there will be the awarding of the first Funny Pages Readers' Choice Awards.

Presenters:      This year's presenters will include Kate Beaton, Sheree Fitch and Angela Misri. 

Location:         Halifax Central Library (public health guidelines permitting) and Online

 

Tickets:            Available to schools at www.funnypages.ca on March 1st, with only 25  tickets per school. As per public health guidelines, 250 free tickets will be available through Eventbrite.  (If public health guidelines permit, more tickets will become available closer to the event.  Also, several tickets have been set aside for marginalized groups and home-schooled students.)

 

 

 

Full details about the Festival, the presenters, tickets and more are posted at the Funny Pages Festival website.

The Chandler Legacies

Written by Abdi Nazemian

Balzer & Bray (HarperCollins)

978-1-06-303932-2

336 pp.

Ages 13+

February 2022

 

Through the voices of fourth-formers (sophomores) Beth Kramer, Sarah Brunson and Ramin Golafshar and sixth-formers (seniors) Amanda Spencer and Freddy Bello, readers will enter Chandler Academy in Connecticut, a microcosm of concentrated reality. All the good and bad of the outside world is focalized in that elite boarding school and readers are invited to view it from the multi-faceted perspectives of the story's protagonists.

The year is 1999 and Ramin is entering Chandler for his first time. He may have left behind his great love and the danger of being gay in Iran but he is now subjected to a new kind of homophobia and bullying. However, he finds a place of belonging within the Circle, an exclusive writing group under the guidance of Professor Hattie Douglas. Also invited into this group are Brunson, a driven young woman who writes for the newspaper, the Chandler Legacy; Beth, Brunson's former roommate, who is dealing with anxiety; wealthy, popular, and beautiful actor Spence; and athlete Freddy. Through their writing and Circle meetings, the five become friends and establish a support system that they may not have realized they needed. Their writing may allow them to explore who they are...

 

...even fiction is non-fiction, because it reflects the author's truth. (pg. 76)

 

...but it reveals what the others have been experiencing. And some of that is not good. In fact, some of it is abusive.

 

How these five young people, amidst their peers, teachers and families–good, bad and innocuous–grow into the extraordinary people of Abdi Nazemian's prologue and epilogue of 2008 is the legacy of their time together as Circle members at Chandler. Their legacy is what they learned, what they achieved and what they conquered. They are the Chandler legacies and these are legacies of which they should be enormously proud.

Author Abdi Nazemian jumped on the YA CanLit scene with Like a Love Story (2019), garnering much attention, including a White Pine nomination and selection as a Stonewall Honor Book. With The Chandler Legacies, he has again given voice to a diverse group of young people and exposed their vulnerabilities and strengths in dealing with the challenges of coming of age, including their sexualities, mental health, bullying, friendship, family and self-expression. Beth, Spence, Freddy, Brunson and Ramin each have their own stories, yet they come together to share one as students at Chandler and as young people who are trying to find their ways in a world that is not always just or easy. While there is an introductory comment from the author that some aspects of the story may be triggering–resources are provided if the reader chooses to seek outside help–Abdi Nazemian writes with sensitivity and without the motive of shocking readers. In fact, beyond sensitivity, he addresses the challenges the students are experiencing with compassion, leading them and the reader to understanding and grace.

 

There is a rawness to The Chandler Legacies which is not unlike the experiences endured by Ramin, Beth, Brunson, Spence and Freddy. They struggle with becoming the people they are destined to become, as they question, argue, learn and care. And still they thrive in their world within Chandler so that their legacy is one of hope and courage to do what's right for themselves and others.

DC Canada: One Story A Day Writing Contest

For teachers and parents who would like to get kids writing purposefully, here is a contest for children in Grades 1 through 6.

 

The Contest: 

• Submit a short story. (One submission per person.)

• Grades 1-2: 50 to 100 words
• Grades 3-4: 150 to 250 words
• Grades 5-6: 250 to 350 words

Eligible Participants: 

• Students who are in Grades 1 through 6 and reside in Canada

Submission deadline: 

• 12 PM (EST) March 31, 2022

 

Judging:

• A panel of judges will evaluate each story based:
    • Creativity (uniqueness of ideas, topics, objective of story)

    • Writing style (narration, word choice, description, figurative language, text organization/logic), and

    • Grammar (spelling, punctuation, sentence fluency).

Prizes:

• The top 3 winners in each category will receive a cash prize and be published in an illustrated storybook. 

• The school with the most participants will also win a prize pack of DC books!

• Approximately 30 stories will be published in the illustrated book.

Details:

Details about the contest including rules and regulations and how to submit are posted at https://www.dc-canada.ca/story-writing-contest-2022/