Welcome! It's #IMWAYR time again, when bloggers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme at Book Date. Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next!
One of our sons and his two daughters were here last weekend to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with us. As wonderful as it is to have the whole crew around, it's lovely to get to spend intimate time with a smaller group.
This September I joined the local choir. Many years ago I spent a short sojourn in a jazz choir. I quit when the focus became perfection for performance and singing no longer brought me joy. After that I joined a couple of drop in choirs. We showed up, learned to sing a couple of songs, sang our hearts out and then came back the next week. I always sang soprano, but these days, my voice just can't hit the high notes, so I decided to join the alto group. I am loving meeting new people and singing with them, but it has been, and continues to be, a steep learning curve! I am having to learn to read music. Thankfully our choir conductor has recorded all the different vocal parts and posted them in a google folder. I downloaded them, turned them into an ITunes playlist and instead of listening to audiobooks, I've been listening to and singing along with this. We have our first performance this coming Saturday, and I am not confident. I am hoping that that this will change after our rehearsal Monday night.
I am missing my audiobooks.
Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian or Indigenous Canadian Author and or Illustrator.
Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.
FICTION PICTURE BOOKS
This is set in the world of The Barnabus Project. Barnaby is part elephant, part mouse, with a dash of flamingo and fully trained! He waits on the shelf for ages before a young girl purchases him. His life is ideal for quite a while until a newer, rainbow striped Barnaby comes onto the market. His girl mostly abandons him. Then when Barnaby is out on a walk with the girl's father, he ends up getting separated and lost. He narrowly escapes from being eaten by a cat before connecting with other abandoned pets. Then he lives in the local park with squirrels for almost a year. It turns out that his girl has been searching for him all that time and eventually they are reunited.
The fan brothers bring nothing but joy into my life, so I was excited to share this with my two granddaughters before they went to bed. The littlest one fell asleep while I was reading, but her 7 year old sister and I had a conversation after finishing it. At first she was only going to give it 3 stars because there was so much sadness in this book. I agreed with her about the sadness. It is heartbreaking when Barnaby is abandoned, lost and runs away. Then we talked about what he learned while he was in the wilderness. I liked that in the beginning of the book Barnaby didn't like the squirrels, but in the end, they brought him into their homes and treated him as one of them. His girl also seemed to learn to appreciate him more when he was gone. We went back and looked at the gorgeous artwork. In the end she gave it 4 stars, but I am firm with my designation of 5+.
 |
| 4 stars |
How to Party Like a Snail by Naseem Hrab & Kelly Collier (Illustrator) September 13, 2022 🍁
Snail likes to party - sort of. He likes his friends, but finds that their usual kinds of parties are too loud and too much for an introvert like himself. In the end he figures out how to have his own kind of party with like minded creatures.
 |
| 5 stars |
On a Summer Night by Deborah Hopkinson & Kenard Pak (Illustrator) May 14, 2024
This book overflows with beauty. The text and the illustrations alone are gorgeous, but together they are magnificent.
A child is woken in the middle of a hot summer night. They creep downstairs and step outside in the night world. As I read this beginning, I too felt the oppressive heat of a summer night when it's too hot for crickets to sing. We get a lot of that here.
I adore the pattern in the words and the cumulative refrain ending with, Who has woken the cloud? Was it the air? Was it the tree? Was it the rabbit? Was it the dog? Was it the cat? Was it you?
Thanks to Linda Bai for sharing this on her blog @ Teacher Dance.
My 4 year old granddaughter and I loved the updated version of this book. Both of us were fascinated by the gorgeous illustrations. We really appreciated all the details and labels. We loved learning about the ladybug life cycle. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of Ladybugs!
This is a new version of the original book. I wish I could compare the two. I suspect from other Gail Gibbon's nonfiction, that this one has more text features.
MG/YA/ADULT GRAPHIC NOVELS
 |
| 5 stars |
Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow by James Sturm & Rich Tommaso (Illustrator)
I thank Linda Bai @ Teacher Dance for the introduction to this graphic novel.
Emmet Wilson, once a pretty good baseball player, narrates this story of Satchel Paige, an exceptional, almost larger than life pitcher. The story begins with Emmet, a rookie batter for the Negro leagues, coming up to bat against Satchel Paige. He managed to get off a hit, but on his slide into home base, he busted his knee and ended his career. Emmet ended up spending his working life as a sharecropper. The two white twins who owned the property did their best to make their black sharecropper's lives hell.
The intersection of both of these men's stories reveals a history of racism and segregation. It ends with Emmet taking his son to see Satchel Paige humiliate the all white team on which both twins were players. At the end, Emmet tells his son about his time as a baseball player.
American and Canadian history with respect to our Indigenous populations is dystopian. This book shows us the reality of living inside this dystopian existence from both historical and modern day perspectives. It is not an easy read. The end of the blurb about the book finishes with this: "Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people."
It's a heart wrenching read that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go for a long time after I finished the last page. My heart still aches for these fictional characters.
When I first started this, It took me a bit to get into this mystery because I was missing all those quirky characters from Osman's Thursday Murder Club series. It didn't take long though, and I was madly in love with these new characters. I love how Osman's manages to bring humanity to all his people and makes us laugh even in the worst of times.
I can't wait to read what Osman has in store next for the retired cop, Steve Miller; his daughter in law and private security officer, Amy Wheeler; and billionaire author, Rosie D’Antonio.
I don't like horror or thrillers, yet I adore everything Cheri Dimaline writes - and some of her work is absolutely terrifying.
This book is part of the Remixed Classics series, where authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens. This is a retelling of The Secret Garden. It has it's moments of darkness, but in spite of that, it's mostly full of love and light.
When I first started this, It took me a bit to get into this mystery because I was missing all those quirky characters from Osman's Thursday Murder Club series. It didn't take long though, and I was madly in love with these new characters. I love how Osman's manages to bring humanity to all his people and makes us laugh even in the worst of times.
I can't wait to read what Osman has in store next for the retired cop, Steve Miller; his daughter in law and private security officer, Amy Wheeler; and billionaire author, Rosie D’Antonio.
This book is part of the Remixed Classics series, where authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens. This is a retelling of The Secret Garden. It has it's moments of darkness, but in spite of that, it's mostly full of love and light.
When Mary Lennox's parents die, she ends up leaving Toronto and heading off to the Georgian Bay area to live with an uncle she didn't even know existed. When she first arrives, Mary is almost impossible to be around. She has no real social graces to speak of. But the Metis staff at the manor, Flora, Philomina, and Jean, take her under their wing and for the first time in her life, she begins to feel like she belongs. She discovers Olive, a sickly cousin, who has been kept hidden in the attic. The two of them bond and become close. All this changes when Aunt Rebecca, Olive's stepmother, returns home. The door to the attic is locked and the girls are separated.
Mary manages to convince her stepmother to let her leave the house to work in the gardens, a properly gentile pastime. She uses that time to secretly meet with Sophie, Flora's younger sister. The two girls end up falling in love.
Aunt Rebecca is a truly evil character. It turns out that she is actually poisoning Olive, who is becoming increasingly ill. The staff create a substitute medication for Olive to take and Mary writes a letter to her Uncle Craven, begging him to come home. When the letter is returned to the manor, Rebecca opens it. Things go from bad to worse for everyone. I was terrified for Mary, Olive, the staff, and Flora's whole family.
ADULT/YA NON FICTION
 |
| 5 stars |
How to Make Doll Clothes: A Book for Daughters, Mothers & Grandmothers by Emily R. Dow July 27, 1953
I was in the used bookstore searching for books on creating marionettes but after finding nothing, began perusing the doll section. I came upon this little jewel for $4. It's just brilliant! It shows how to make patterns to make doll clothes to fit any size of doll. It even includes making shoes! Of course, since the book was first published in 1953, the year of my birth, the fashions are somewhat out of date. It doesn't really matter though, the basics are all a person really needs. I've already got plans to make clothes for my mice from this!
The cover of my copy is simpler that this, but the title page shows the same subtitle.
CURRENTLY
Inciting Joy: Essays by Ross Gay October 25, 2022
Play Like a Girl by Misty Wilson September 27, 2022
real ones by Katherena Vermette September 3, 2024 🍁
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver January 1, 1994
UP NEXT (MAYBE)
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 178/200