Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

#IMWAYR October 16th, 2023

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.

Our sons and grandkids visited for Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend. We all had a fabulous time. We got the feast over with on Saturday so they would be around to help eat the leftovers.We spent the rest of the weekend hiking around the country.


Halloween is drawing near and I've got a few books on my list today that fit the traditional kind of reading for this celebration. Yet, as I ponder other books on my list, as well as current events in the reality of the world today, I am reminded that there is really nothing scarier than real life.

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.

RECENT BLOG POSTS

FREE VERSE FRIDAY #10 October: Shadow

FREE VERSE FRIDAY #10 October: Shadow (Part 2)

CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS


In the third book of this series, Little Wolf has a dream that helps her address racism. She understands that when we hurt others because they are different, we end up hurting ourselves.

3 stars

Big by Vashti Harrison May 2, 2023

This book "traces a child's journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal."
I turned 70 this year and realized it was time to stop hating my body and just love and take care of it. I was never big like this girl, but I have friends who had to deal with the same kinds of crap the child in this book does. Hopefully having this book in the world will make a difference for children like them. 


I like this series from these two authors, but this book didn't do what I wanted it to. I was hoping for something that might help a six year understand more about saying sorry. Instead it's more about feeling sorry but not being able to say the words. It's still a great book that deals with what it's like when friends have an argument and how to make things better. 

I really wanted to love this, but it didn't work for me. The art work is spectacular though.

CHAPTER BOOKS


I loved this book from the very first page. It's spooky, has a formidable girl hero, and is about very different kind of people becoming best friends.
My mind was spinning with questions from the get go.
"One night,
in the middle of the night,
while everyone was asleep,
Otilla finally ran away."
As I read on, I was even more delighted. I couldn't wait to share it with my six year old grandkids.
I shared it with my granddaughter first. When we read that first page we wondered why she had to run away. Ada suggested that maybe she was running away from a residential school. (Kids know a lot these days.) A few times during our reading I had to tell her that everything would end up happily every after. After we finished it together, she picked it a number of times to read by herself. When her cousin finally arrived, he looked at the cover and was having nothing to do with the book. After a few days we convinced him to give it a try. Now he too wants his own copy of it.

4 stars

Charlie & Mouse Are Magic by Laurel Snyder & Emily Hughes (Illustrations)

My grandkids and I enjoyed this sixth book in the series as much as we like the earlier ones. It's like a peak into the lives of two ordinary boys and their parents. Charlie and Mouse are delightful brothers whose antics keep us smiling. In this one Mouse creates a magic potion. It might even work!

GRAPHIC NOVELS


This is a haunting graphic novel. The illustrations come from an animated short film of the same name. It's the story of a young woman discovering the darkness of Canada's colonial past at the same time as she learns about her family history and culture.
You can watch the film here.

I'm a Remy Lai fan so when I learned about this new book, I immediately ordered it from my library. 
July Chen is easily overlooked and forgotten. She can also see ghosts. During hungry ghost month her school holds a festival and her life gets really messy. She meets someone who she thinks is a ghost, but it turns out Will is someone who is in a coma in a hospital and his spirit is travelling. He's the first person to remember her and her name.
The story gets truly complicated as we learn more about how the two of them are connected and that July is the reason Will keeps having near fatal accidents. 
This book is perfect reading for this time of year. It has fascinating characters, well developed ghost mythology, is full of adventure. and the hungry ghosts are really creepy!

ADULT/YA NON FICTION

4 stars

The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug by Steffanie Strathdee &Thomas Patterson  🍁

The Good Virus was my comprehensive introduction to the world of phages. As soon as I finished it I started this. 
I thought that the danger of antibiotic resistant bacteria (superbugs) was at least a decade in the future, but Steffanie Strathdee's memoir opened my eyes to the reality of it today. 
On a vacation in Egypt, her husband picked up Acinetobacter baumanniione, one of the most dangerous of these. As he deteriorated, and nothing seemed to help she came to realize that he was dying and that he was, “quickly becoming the poster child for the dystopian future of the post-antibiotic age.”
Her search for a cure to save his life took her into the world of phages. She sent out emails to phage scientists who might help her find the right phage to destroy the bacteria. A number of them stepped up to search for a cure. Even when they managed to identify some that would work, meeting the FDA standards for emergency treatment turned out to be a whole new challenge. 
Today the two scientists are working on research to turn phage therapy into a viable treatment for antibiotic resistant bacterial infection. 

5 stars

Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation by Andrew Stobo Sniderman, Douglas Sanderson & Greg Rogers (Narrator) August 30, 2022 🍁

I thought I had read a lot of Canadian history from an Indigenous perspective, but after reading this book, I realized I had barely scratched the surface. What makes this one unique is that the authors provide a detailed account of how systemic racism has worked and continues to work here in Canada with regards to Indigenous people. They highlight specific historical individuals and show exactly how their actions led to policies that kept Indigenous people living in poverty. At the same time as they paint this large picture, they show what this means for ordinary people. By following the lives of different families in two communities who live across the river from one another: Rossburn, a town settled by Ukrainians; and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve; they provide intimate examples of what this looked like in real life.   

CURRENTLY

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
On Air with Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
Real Tigers by Mick Herron

UP NEXT 

Take Back The Fight: Organizing Feminism for the Digital Age by Nora Loreto
Mindy Makes Some Space by Nathan Fairbairn & MSASSYK (illustrator), 

I'm also going to continue to tackle a pile of picture books

READING GOALS 

#MustReadFiction 18/24

#MustReadNonFiction 14/20

Canadian Authors 42/75 

Indigenous Authors 20/20 

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 159/200 
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#IMWAYR October 31, 2022

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.

Tuesday, November 2nd is I Read Canadian Day!

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.

BLOG POSTS LAST WEEK

Weird Rules to Follow by Kim Spencer 🍁

PICTURE BOOKS 

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. 

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. 
 
CURRENTLY

Butt Sandwich & Tree by Wesley King  🍁
Science Comics: Crows: Genius Birds (Science Comics) by Kyla Vanderklugt  🍁
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

UP NEXT - MAYBE

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 7
Canada Reads shortlist 5/5 

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#IMWAYR November 1, 2021

Hello everyone. It's #IMWAYR time again, when readers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to in the past week. 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. Whatever you are looking forward to in your next great read, these are fabulous places to start your search.

Hope you all had a fabulous Halloween. Our tricker treaters got to choose between little chocolate bars or Hawkins Cheezies. My partner encouraged children to take the Cheezies while I encouraged them to take the chocolate. Americans reading this probably don't know about Hawkin's, but in the words of one of the little boys who picked them, " These are the best kind of cheezie and they are made in Canada!" I gave him and his friend two packages each. 

I finished my Olivier Dunrea wall hanging quilt, and am almost finished quilting the background on the second. The reason I say almost finished is that I washed it on delicate to clean up all the markings and discovered a bit I hadn't finished sewing. Whatever, it will be fixed in a minute. Here it is draped on our sofa. 

In the middle of these quilts, I started working on a couple of advent calendars for the grandkids. If you have ideas for things that fit into a pocket 3 by 3.5 inches, please let me know!

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.

PICTURE BOOKS

5 stars

Poultrygeist by Eric Geron & Pete Oswald (Illustrator) August 17, 2021

What happens when the chicken tries to cross the road, but doesn't make it? What happens when the 'other side' isn't where it planned to go?
Children probably won't get all the puns and humour in this book, but adult readers will. I wish I had a bunch of children to read this to.

NON FICTION PICTURE BOOKS

5 stars

The Frog Mother by Brett D. Huson & Natasha Donovan (Illustrations) April 27, 2021  🍁 

The Mothers of Xsan Series highlights the Gitxsan’s way of knowing the world by showing the integration of culture and nature. Each book introduces an animal significant to the people both ecologically and culturally. In this instance, it highlights the frog mother.

This takes the reader through the life cycle of the frog, a period spanning 5 years. It shows us that different aspects of the animal's development are connected to different times of the year and the actions of other animals. Frog Mother laying her eggs symbolizes a renewal of the land and return of the spring salmon. The Gitxzan revere Frogs as story tellers who, because of their long tongue, "speak all languages and truths of the universe."

The connection between people and frog is there in the use of the Gitxsan language in the text, but it’s integral to the illustrations. The images are gorgeously coloured in the shades of the rainforest. What brings it all together is the use of traditional art into these landscapes.

Like the others in the series, the text uses Gitxsan terms and doesn’t hesitate to use scientific vocabulary. Most of these words are explained in small text boxes on the same page.

The back matter has additional information about the Gitxsan people with a chart of the different moons. It also shows a map of their unceded territory.

NOVELS

4 stars

Hazel's Theory of Evolution by Lisa Jenn Bigelow & Kathleen McInerney (Narrator) October 8, 2019

There is a lot to like about this book because there is a lot going on. Hazel, a generally anxious young teen, has been forced to move in her last year at middle school. This has separated her from her best friend, Becca. Difficulty arises when Becca joins the cheer leading squad and kind of ghosts Hazel. At her new school Hazel slowly makes two new friends. At home one of her moms is pregnant again after two previous miscarriages.
Hazel is a smart nerdy girl who is interested in science, especially biology.
I really liked all the science incorporated into this through the pregnancy, the family's goats, and Hazel's writing about unloved animals.
I had a hard time with the ending when Mimi, who has already lost two babies, didn't pay attention to her health more as her pregnancy progressed. That near disaster with her and Hazel might have been a good plot device. As an adult reader, I just couldn't believe Mimi, who had already lost two babies, wouldn't have been more aware of her preeclampsia symptoms.


Ellen Hopkins knows how to tell the hard stories - stories about real people and real families going through hard times. Cal's mother died and his father is in prison. He now lives with his Aunt, Uncle and cousin Hannah. Their story of learning to become a new family is told through the voices of the two cousins. It takes a while, but eventually they come to appreciate and care for each other.

5 stars

Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani & Polly Lee (Narrator) September 21, 2021

I once took a course on how to develop critical thinking through fairytales. Ever since then I have been fascinated by different retellings of them. Soman Chainani's collection here are some of the finest I've seen, (barring the story of The Little Boy and the Three Evil Businessmen written by one of my grade 3 students.) Each version has all kinds of twists. Some are challenging, but honestly, I found some of the original stories more terrifying than these renditions. (Especially the ones of Hansel and Gretel and Beauty and the Beast)


I finished this a while ago, but misplaced my notes. I kept hoping they would show up, but renovation hell being what it is, I've abandoned that idea.
I enjoyed this book, but not as much as the first in the series.
Eli and Morgan travel back to Misewa, only this time, back in time. The Great Bear is a bully who harasses the people there. As they learn how to deal with Bear, they develop skills and strategies for dealing with bullies at school.


This is a reread for me.
Jazz musicians are dropping dead all over London. Autopsies show that their brains were fried with magic. Peter and Nightingale have to figure out who is responsible and put an end to it. The evil doers are nearer than Peter knows. There are some pretty intense, graphic sex scenes that would make me be mindful about who I recommend this too. 

CURRENTLY

I am continuing to read No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin. I am enjoying reading one essay at a time. 
I made no progress on Under Shifting Stars Alexandra Latos.
I've just finished Stealing Home by J. Torres and will write a review this week. 

UP NEXT 

Clash by Kayla Miller
Jukebox by Nidhi Chanani
Linked by Gordon Korman

PROGRESS ON MY READING GOALS

#MustReadIn2021 28/25 

#MustReadNFIn2021 11/12 one in progress

#MustReadPBIn2021 63/100 

Big Book Summer Challenge 9 

Books by Canadian Indigenous Authors 35/25

Books by Canadian Authors: 99/100

Canada Reads 2021 5/5 

Discworld Series 41/41

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 374/333 


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Poetry Friday October 25 2019

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Karen Edmisten. She is sharing an ode to autumn, October by Helen Hunt Jackson. Don't forget to check out the links to other participants sharing poetry today.

 Halloween is my favourite holiday. There's no feast to prepare and no gifts to purchase. You just buy candy, get dressed up, and enjoy all the delightful scariness. Plus, it's a fun way to get to know your neighbours and their children.
For many years I taught family groupings of grades 3/4/5 students. Each October I would dig out my copy of Jack Prelutsky's Nightmares: Poems to trouble your sleep. (I wanted to take a photograph to show you how beat up it is, but it's tucked away in a box somewhere.) The collection was originally published in 1976. Throughout my career I never found anything so delightfully macabre that's appropriate for elementary students. In that last week before All Hallows Eve, I would read one or two poems aloud every day. These are not playful verses with happy endings. They terrify. I am not a fan of the horror genre, but can manage  to get through one or two at a time. Prelutsky's rhyming poetry is rich and explicit. Even when students don't really grasp the vocabulary, they understand the ominous tone. Arnold Lobel's sinister illustrations just make it all the more scarier.

 The collection is chock full of creepiness, but my favourite is The Ghoul. It is guaranteed to intimidate even the most bold and brash students.
THE GHOUL

 The gruesome ghoul, the grisly ghoul,
without the slightest noise
waits patiently beside the school
to feast on girls and boys.

 He lunges fiercely through the air
as they come out to play,
then grabs a couple by the hair
and drags them far away.

 He cracks their bones and snaps their backs
and squeezes out their lungs,
he chews their thumbs like candy snacks
and pulls apart their tongues.

 He slices their stomachs and bites their hearts
and tears their flesh to shreds,
he swallows their toes like toasted tarts
and gobbles down their heads.

 Fingers, elbows, hands and knees
and arms and legs and feet -
he eats them with delight and ease,
for every part's a treat.

 And when the gruesome, grisly ghoul
has nothing left to chew,
he hurries to another school
and waits...perhaps for you.

© Jack Prelutsky 1976

 I've never found a book quite so perfect for the season. Have you?

I was most likely under Prelutsky's influence when I penned Anthrophobia. I wrote it in response to this month's padlet challenge at Today's Little Ditty, "write a poem about something a monster is afraid of." Michelle Heidenrich Barnes shared it here. Spiders give me nightmares - especially if I see one before I go to sleep. I try hard to get along with them and mostly succeed if they follow the rules and stay outside!  


 ANTHROPHOBIA

 In my web I hide in silence
Fearful of your awful science

 What harm I’ve done I do not know
I wish you did not hate me so

 I munch the bugs that harm your plants
I decimate both flies and ants

 I venture out at times it’s true
But I don’t mean to startle you

 I do my best to help you out
Still you see me and scream and shout

 You grab a shoe prepared to swing
I bolt hole from that ghastly thing

 Cowering now inside this crack
I wait in fear your next attack

 Please not the long and roaring pipe
That suctions web and devours life

 Viler still is the noxious spray
From which no beast can get away
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