Happy Halloween Everyone!
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. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next.
I'm still working on a blog post highlighting the Canadian Authors I have read since the last I Read Canadian Day. I'll have it ready for this one! The links below will take you to earlier lists. I tried to read only Canadian books last week, but I ended up substitute teaching and given that it's Halloween season, I dragged a couple of appropriate titles from my collection to bring along for back up activities. They both got used.
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.
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| 5 stars |
Mina by Matthew Forsythe February 15 2022 🍁
Mina is pretty much unflappable. She isn't bothered when her father brings home a tin can to make his jokes louder, or by his collection of antique art, or even by the band of musicians. Still, when he brings home an animal he is certain is a squirrel, she's not sure. She worries and has trouble sleeping, but everything seems fine until the new creature stops eating. Then her father brings home more of these animals. None of them want to eat. The doctor is called and as soon as he identifies them as a different species entirely, trouble erupts.
I really liked this one. The gorgeous illustrations and the quirky story are just perfect. I appreciated the message about trusting your instincts.
As soon as I finished it I downloaded Pokko and the Drum.
Pokko's family have made mistakes before: getting her a slingshot, a llama, and the balloon, but giving her a drum was the worst. It was so loud her parents couldn't hear one another talk. They sent her outside to play her drum, but told her take it easy and not draw attention to herself. They were after all, just a little frog family who lived in a mushroom. Pokko tries, but ends up leading a huge noisy band of forest animals.
I adore the art and the humour in both of the books by Matthew Forsythe. Each one has an important message. In this case I think it's about the power of practise, of not giving up. Maybe it's also about getting your children inappropriate gifts and letting them grow into who they will become.
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| 5 stars |
One Dark Night by Edna Mitchell Preston & Kurt Werth (Illustrator) September 15, 1969
This is a cumulative Halloween tale with rhythmic, repetitive language. It follows a group of Halloween trick or treaters as they head off into the night. Then they hear a terrifying squeak. In their haste to get away from the sound they fall over each other scaring themselves even more.
I wish more teachers would work with books like this. I wish we had more books like this. I brought it along with me to read to individual students when I was substitute teaching. I listened to one girl read from the levelled text she had been assigned. Then we read this together. Well she mostly read it and I helped out if she needed it. The difference between the two readings was profound. The first was stilted, dry and boring. Not long after she started the second she was into the pattern of the language and reading with expression. You can download it and read it at the Open Library
I own a copy of this book and have read it many times with children of all ages. The younger ones need a bit of help following the story line, but all of them were in awe of Tor Lokvig's paper engineering.
This pop out book takes us through different rooms in a haunted house. We follow a couple of mice as they make their way to the attic. Readers must depend on inference to follow the storyline as they integrate it with the fabulous artwork. A lot is going on, so it's easy to lose the narrative. I'm not sure it really matters.
The small groups I read it to on Friday appreciated it as much as every other group has.
Mary Ann Shad was the first woman publisher in Canada and the first black woman to publish a newspaper in North America. She was born in 1823 in Wilmington Delaware. Slavery was still legal but her family were not slaves. Her parents were involved with the Underground Railroad as station masters. In 1850, the law was changed to make it legal for any black person, free or not, to be snatched by slave catchers. Their family moved to Canada soon after that.
In what is now Windsor, Ontario, Marianne started an integrated school where skin colour didn’t matter. She wrote numerous letters to the editor about her opinions but these were either not printed or edited so that her meaning was obscured. In 1853 she started her own newspaper. She had to work hard to raise money for it. They sold subscriptions but had to fund raise in other ways: holding fares, bazaars, and tea parties. The newspaper was a forum to talk about the discrimination Black people, both men and women, faced. By1860 the paper had run out of funds and had to close.
Over the years Mary Ann Shadd travelled back and forth from Canada to the United States to try and make life better for Black people. She was also very involved in the women’s suffrage movement fighting for the rights of Black women at a time when many white suffragettes didn't want Black people to have the right to vote.
In 1869 she started night classes at Howard university to become the first Black woman to to attend law school. She was 60 years old when she graduated. Throughout her life she worked for the rights of her self and others.
This illustrated chapter book tells the story of Anne's tea party with her best friend, Diana. The two girls had a great time drinking raspberry cordial and pretending to be grown-up. Unfortunately, Marilla had mistakenly mixed up the raspberry cordial with the current wine, and Diana went home sick. Even though Marilla tried to explain, Mrs Barry, Diana's mother, was sure it was all Anne's fault and refused to let Diana have anything more to do with her.
Then one evening Diana flung open the Shirley's kitchen door. Her parents were away and her little sister was deathly ill. Matthew went for the doctor, but it was Anne who worked tirelessly all night to save Minnie May's life. Mrs Barry acknowledged that she was wrong about Anne's character and the two girls were allowed to be boon companions once again.
I love how this series captures the essence of the original books.
I am always content to read a Becky Citra novel. Not only does she create authentic characters, she places them in environments so real, readers experience a sense of having been there.
She does it again with Rachel Bird.
Rachel is a 14 year old teen with a 5 year old sister, Jane. Their mother died and as the story begins, they are spending time in Vancouver, BC, with an uncle they knew nothing about. During the summer holidays they are sent to live with Margaret and Wayne, grandparents they have neither met nor heard of. They end up on a ranch north of 100 Mile House in the Caribou region of British Columbia.
At first Rachel wants to just return to Vancouver, but eventually she makes connections to Margaret and Wayne; Magic, her mother's horse; new friends; and the land itself.
As a reader I couldn't help but wonder, why the mother left the family and had nothing to do with them afterwards?
Rachel wonders the same thing and as the story unfolds, secrets are forced into the open and we learn the answers.
Let me just get this on the table right off the bat. I hate books that end in cliffhangers. This one ends with a cliffhanger.
It's a good thing I was already hooked on this series or I might just refuse to read more on general principle.Ma takes Jaxon to Chicago to a Witch and Wizard convention, but when they are there, refuses to let him attend. Instead she sets him up with a guide who shows him around the city and teaches him about the history of Black people in the area. His guide reconnects Jaxon to Blue, a trickster from the previous book. Through them he learns that he has been summoned to attend a court case at the convention, but that Ma has hidden this from him. Of course Jaxon tried to keep his phoenix egg and now hatched phoenix from her.
In the end, Jaxon gets to the court session and ends up in a trap set by Blue and others.
This book compares the experiences of best friends growing up on the same cul-de-sac in Prince Rupert in the 1980's. Mia, the half Indigenous narrator, lives in poverty. Lara is a middle class white girl. Class and culture matter. You can read my full review here.
I am a hard core fan of cosy mysteries. If they are historical, I'm even happier. When the book is well written by a Canadian author and highlights a Canadian landscape, it's a dream come true.
It's 1946 and Lane Winslow, ex-intelligence officer, has left London and her war trauma behind her to settle in a small hamlet in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. She's just settling in, making new friends, and dealing with an unwanted suitor, when she and her cantankerous neighbour discover a body plugging up their water system. The discovery and following machinations have her past catching up with her, and puts her smack in the frame for the murder. In the process we are introduced to a handsome police detective who doesn't want to arrest her, but might have no choice. In the end, Lane comes up with a deadly plan to draw the murderer out into the open.
I can hardly wait to start the next in the series to see what Lane gets up to next, and how her relationship with the handsome detective unfolds.
Butt Sandwich & Tree by Wesley King 🍁
Science Comics: Crows: Genius Birds (Science Comics) by Kyla Vanderklugt 🍁Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Death in a Darkening Mist (Lane Winslow #2) by Iona Whishaw 🍁
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
READING GOALS
#MustReadFiction 22/24
#MustReadNonFiction 14/18 one in progress
Canadian Authors 65/100 two in progress
Indigenous Authors 16/25
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 248/250
2022 Big Book Summer Challenge 7Canada Reads shortlist 5/5
