From Lands of the Night

by Tololwa M. Mollel

Illustrated by Darrell McCalla

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-498-4

32 pp.

Ages 7+

January 2014

An ill child is great cause for concern and worthy of a heroic pursuit for a remedy. But, after fruitless hospital visits, futile treatments and prayer, the only potential help may come From Lands of the Night where the ancestors reside.  In fact, a joyful celebration of family, friends and neighbours with music, food and drink is deemed necessary to save the life of the young narrator's baby brother, Samson.

An angel, sent by God–Mola–to request they turn down the music, actually heralds the arrival of more angels, moved to dance to the rhythmic sounds.  That is, until the brilliant light of Mola draws the celebration to a stunning silence.  But the young girl invites Mola to be their guest, and soon the ancestors resplendant in colourful and unique regalia appear.  Samson's parents and other relatives greet their ancestors with respect and gifts, hopeful that they may help.

A new picture book from Tololwa M. Mollel is always cause for celebration.  Though illustrators may change, the text will always be powerful and inspired and immersed in his African heritage.  From Lands of the Night is no different, depicting the joy of community and tradition, culture and history.  Though the story may reflect Tololwa M. Mollel's African (Tanzanian) heritage, the colours and vibrancy of Darrell McCalla's illustrations definitely have a warm Caribbean flavour.  As such, From Lands of the Night may be more universal than initially thought, reflecting the similarity of stories told across regions.

There will be some (there always are) who will question the inclusion and appropriateness of angels and spirits and even a God in a children's book.  Tololwa M. Mollel, ever the sensitive statesman, addresses this potential concern in his poignant author notes, which should be read by all for greater understanding.  But I see the global nature of From Lands of the Night by including common elements of faith and belief systems to which so many turn when crises of body or spirit arise.  The reassurance that our world extends beyond the here-and-now and includes a rich support system of ethereal entities is both reassuring and hopeful.

Cover Reveal: Tomorrow's Kingdom

Author Maureen Fergus 

first introduced us to

Persephone and Azriel

in

 The Gypsy King 

by Maureen Fergus

Razorbill

978-0-14-318315-0

434 pp.

Ages 12-16

2012

Reviewed here 

Their adventures continued and 
became more complicated in

 A Fool's Errand 

by Maureen Fergus

Razorbill

978-0-670-06765-7

528 pp.

Ages 12+

October, 2013 

Reviewed here

Now

the cover of the upcoming and 
exciting (I'm sure)

conclusion to the trilogy
has been revealed

 Tomorrow's Kingdom 

 by Maureen Fergus

Razorbill

978-0670067664

448 pp.

Ages 12+

For release July, 2014

July seems a long time to wait to learn whether the evil Mordecai will succeed in his nefarious plans, whether Azriel will forgive Persephone once again for her deceit and whether there will be a happy ending.  But, as I'm sure all my questions will be answered by Maureen Fergus in Tomorrow's Kingdom, I will just have to wait a few more tomorrows.

Norman, Speak!

by Caroline Adderson

Illustrated by Qin Leng

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-322-3

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

Release April, 2014

It takes a big heart to adopt a stray at a shelter because he's been there the longest.  And the joy he exudes, wagging his whole rump, is so clear that the young boy and his parents are sure that they've made a good choice.  Norman is funny, he's friendly, and he's happy.  However, his lack of responsiveness to their commands have them thinking that, "He just wasn't very smart."

But an incident in the park reveals that smartness isn't what Norman lacks: it's English.  His language of understanding is Chinese!  Admirably, mom, dad and son sign up for Chinese classes at the local church.  Surprisingly, "We didn't feel very smart the next Saturday morning in the basement of the church.  Or the Saturday after that.  All the other kids were smart."

Fortunately, Norman loves them anyway.

With Norman, Speak!, award-winning author Caroline Adderson has expanded her repertoire from early readers (Very Serious Children, Scholastic Canada, 2007), middle-grade fiction (Middle of Nowhere, Groundwood, 2012), young adult fiction (Film Studies, Annick, 2010) and adult fiction (The Sky is Falling, Thomas Allen Publishers, 2010) into picture books and we're so glad she has.  Her versatility has provided her the skills to tell important stories in age-appropriate media.  And with Qin Leng's familiar colourful, but never bold, fountain brush and ink illustrations, the message of "smartness" not being equal to understanding is told without judgement or fear.

This message is an important one for children to learn, especially if they perceive that they themselves are not regarded as smart.  This would be especially hard to deal with if that impression is given by a parent or teacher or other respected individual.  Too often, we misjudge and attribute lack of comprehension to lack of intelligence.  Wrong!  Caroline Adderson brings this revelation to Norman's people slowly but they get it in the end. They may have been quick to judge Norman but they learn soon enough that understanding has nothing to do with "smarts" but rather familiarity and regular opportunities for practice. Thankfully Norman doesn't hold their lack of Chinese against them.  Ultimately they are a perfect match, like Caroline Adderson's text and Qin Leng's illustrations, but one based in acceptance, not achievement.

Underground Soldier

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2437-9

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

January, 2014

OK–I admit it.  I love everything Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch writes.  Maybe it's because she writes to inform and touch, eloquently accomplishing both without teacher- or preacher-speak.  Maybe it's because we're both Ukrainian, though not all her stories have a Ukrainian focus.  Maybe it's just because she writes great books.  I suspect it's the latter but I would never deny the others.  I knew that I would appreciate Underground Soldier, as I did its prequels: Stolen Child (Scholastic Canada, 2010) and last year's Silver Birch Fiction award winner Making Bombs for Hitler (Scholastic Canada, 2012), reviewed here.  See if I'm not right.

Stolen Child focused on Larissa, a young Ukrainian girl, who struggles to deal with confusing memories before her adoption by a Ukrainian family in Brantford.  Her older sister, Lida, is the primary focus of Making Bombs for Hitler, as an enslaved Ostarbeiter taken by the Nazis.  Another Ukrainian, Luka Barukovich, becomes an ally of Lida's, though his escape from the camp hospital leaves her wondering and worrying about his fate.  Underground Soldier is Luka's story, from his escape to his desperate need to return to Kyiv (the largest city in Ukraine) and reconnect with his father who was taken to Siberia by the Soviets.

Sent to the camp hospital from whence most leave dead, Luka is encouraged by Lida to find a way out which he does, hidden in a truckload of dead bodies.  His escape from the truck is just the beginning of a tortuous journey towards the mountains that he knows will link with the Ukrainian Carpathians and home.  It's not surprising that, with the Nazis taking his mother and enslaving him while the Soviets arrested his father and oppressed the people of his homeland, Luka is cautious and suspicious of anyone he encounters on his journey.  The enemy is everywhere and everyone.  A Ukrainian-speaking German couple, Helmut and Margarete, are one of his first allies, though he has much to fear when he learns that both their sons are Nazis.  As he continues his trek, Luka is reminded of the many incidents, both personal and national, that have shaped his distrust of both the Nazis and the Soviets.  With the repeated and horrific losses of life and whole-scale destruction, Luka realizes Ukraine and its people are spoils of war, to take or destroy as need be.

His journey is helped when he meets Martina Chalupa, a Czech girl, whose skills in tracking, evading detection and survival are superior to his.  After they are helped at an underground hospital of the Ukrainian Red Cross, Luka and Martina join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to help protect and defend against both the Soviet Red Army, the NKVD (the brutal Soviet law enforcement agency) and the Nazis, both from targeted attacks, death camps, and large-scale destruction.  Even after Hitler commits suicide in 1945, UPA is still committed to fighting Stalin and his NKVD, as Luka is to finding his loved ones: his father, his mother and Lida.

Underground Soldier is not an action war story; it is a sobering tale of a people wedged between two evils with no "winning" possible.  Those who seek the thrill of an enemy-laden, gun-fighting game between good guys and bad guys will not find it here.  The horrors of war are evident as is the compulsion to save loved ones and survive.  But Underground Soldier is a more involved story, obviously painfully researched by Marsha Skrypuch, to include all aspects of World War II and its aftermath as endured by Ukrainians such as Luka, Lida and Larissa and by so many others.  The story revealed information that I could link to my own family's history, as I'm sure it will for many Ukrainians whose parents or grandparents lived through WWII in Ukraine and environs.

In this emotion-laden plot-driven story, Marsha Skrypuch will touch new readers to this trilogy and provide closure for those who've read Stolen Child and Making Bombs for Hitler.  There is no happy ending for any of war's victims, but by providing clarifying details and authentic experiences of those whose stories are embedded here, Marsha Skrypuch honours both the past and the future of Ukrainians and other victims of World War II everywhere.  Informing and touching, Underground Soldier is Marsha Skrypuch through and through.

Moon at Nine

by Deborah Ellis

Pajama Press

978-1927485576

224 pp.

Ages 14+

For release April 2014

When the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979 and an Islamic republic ruled by the Ayatollah was established, it was initially seen by many as replacing an extravagant, secular, westernized regime with one based in Shia faith and clerical rule, albeit with an anti-Western sentiment.  But for a fifteen-year-old girl, Farrin, it means being extremely cautious about revealing her wealthy family's support of the Shah and her own enjoyment of American television and creative writing.  Though Farrin doesn't approve of her mother's parties with excessive food and prohibited drink, music, dancing and cigarettes, knowing that many Iranians were suffering, she worries for their safety should the Revolutionary Guard learn of their indiscretions.

Attending a school for gifted girls (transformed from one for wealthy families only), Farrin meets a new student, Sadira, who has been out of school caring for her father after the rest of her family was killed in a bombing.  Because Sadira's father, a cleric, had been imprisoned and tortured by the Shah's secret police, Farrin is apprehensive about sharing her family with Sadira, though she is drawn to Sadira's compassion and fearlessness, and her pro-woman views.

"...your girls need to go to school.  Men have run this world long enough, and they have made a mess of it." (pg. 65)

Recreating themselves as the "Demon-hunting Girls of Iran" (pg. 84) in keeping with Farrin's forbidden allegory about a girl fighting Iranian demons and beginning to feel the power of their friendship, the two girls make a pact that they would look at the moon at nine o'clock nightly so they could be together in spirit if not physically.

A visit to the Tomb of Hafez, the great Persian poet, and partaking in faal-e Hafez (fortune-telling based on randomly-selected text in the book of Hafez) intimates the course of Farrin and Sadira's relationship.

"No death invades a heart that comes alive in love:
Our immortality is etched in the book of life." (pg. 118)

While Farrin revels in the realization that she is in love with Sadira, their world begins to implode, with school spies informing on them, angry parents vowing to arrange marriages for each girl, and the Revolutionary Guard arresting them for deviancy.  Yet, through ensuing lies, interrogations, threats, assaults and imprisonment, Farrin and Sadira still have their Moon at Nine and the hope that they will be together again.

Deborah Ellis is Canada's most modest and accomplished author of social justice stories for young people, and Moon at Nine can be added to that auspicious collection.  Based on a true story, the girls' relationship in Moon at Nine is personal and precious but never explicit, unlike the merciless response of others to it.  Prohibited love may be ill-fated, but in the 1980s Iran of secrets, surveillance and suppression,  it was perilous.  Still, in Moon at Nine, Deborah Ellis thoughtfully embeds a sliver of chaste love into that dispiriting world and, without contriving an unrealistic happy ending, offers a glimmer of possibility.

The Worlds We Make: Book Launch (Toronto)

Join 

author Megan Crewe

for the launch 

of the final book 

in 

The Fallen World Trilogy

that opened with

The Way We Fall 

(Disney Hyperion, 2011)

 Reviewed here

and 

was followed by the second book

The Lives We Lost 

(Disney, 2013)

 Reviewed here

 The final book

The Worlds We Make

 by Megan Crewe

Disney Hyperion

978-1423146186

288 pp.

Ages 12+

February, 2014

will be launched on

Saturday, March 8, 2014

at 3 p.m.

at Bakka-Phoenix Books

84 Harbord St.

Toronto, ON

There will be books sold and signed, 

refreshments to consume, 

swag to grab, and 

Megan will happily answer and questions.

When Children Play: The Story of Right To Play

by Gina McMurchy-Barber

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-154-5

56 pp.

Ages 8-12

2013

Non-fiction books about organizations such as Right to Play can be incredibly tedious reads.  Their stories may be important and their messages undoubtedly need sharing, but good work does not always translate to good writing.  Many such books are poorly organized, heavy in text and light on non-fiction features of text like information boxes, maps, graphs, captioned photographs or illustrations and differentiated fonts that can enhance the message. With its well-organized format and text that informs as well as personalizes the story of Right to Play, Gina McMurchy-Barber's When Children Play hits all the marks.

A humanitarian organization that supports the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to engage in play and recreational activities, Right to Play "uses sports and play to educate, improve health, and build confident youth who want to give back to their communities." (pg. 7) Derived from the earlier Olympic Aid group, Right to Play goes beyond fundraising to the development of programs that support its motto, "Look After Yourself, Look After One Another." (pg. 18) By evolving into an NGO that uses play to normalize the difficult lives of children, mentors and coaches are able to spread the important messages of staying healthy, resolving conflicts, gaining self-esteem, developing physical skills and improving mindfulness.  Just as the Olympics have their 5 rings, Right to Play has five coloured rings to represent their 5 key areas of focus: mind, body, spirit, peace, and health.

By telling the stories of children and adults, from Uganda to Thailand and Mali and Toronto, both volunteers and game participants, from refugee camps to impoverished communities to those willing to extend their help, Gina McMurchy-Barber provides a global approach to the story-telling of When Children Play.  Right to Play is not about children who need relief and aid.  It's about everyone caring enough about everyone else to improve their lives.  Help others and you help yourself.  And, with the inclusion of instructions for games to try, like Batter Up and Tunnel, When Children Play becomes less of an educational non-fiction book and more an intermutual one that will engage readers and inspire them to play.