Library Matters: Olivier Dunrea Quilt

Showing posts with label Olivier Dunrea Quilt. Show all posts

#IMWAYR March 21, 2022

Welcome readers! 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.

Happy Spring everyone!

I'm going to be out of town next weekend so I thought this Monday, I better post what I've been reading. We will be in Vancouver, BC, where I will be delivering this quilt to my youngest granddaughter. I hope she enjoys it as much as her six month older cousin enjoys hers.

Friday was International Quilt Day. The forecast was for rain, so I only hung a few wall hangings in my front window. I posted a collection of some of the quilts I have made over the years on Facebook.

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

4 stars

I Am Golden by Eva Chen, Sophie Diao (Illustrator) February 1, 2022

Sophie Diao's illustrations are absolutely stunning! I love how inspirational and affirming Eva Chen's text is. This is one of those books that can be a mirror, a window, and a way to make connections between our own stories and history, and those of others.
Unfortunately, my ebook was wonky and chunks of text were either missing or out of alignment.

MG NON FICTION

4 stars

Powwow, A Celebration Through Song and Dance by Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane April 21, 2020 🍁

This book should be in every community and school library in North America. While the author focuses on Canadian First Nation Powwows, her scope extends into Native American Powwow culture and dances. The beautiful captioned photographs make the book worth picking up, even without the extremely informative text.
The back matter includes a glossary, an index, a resources section, and a note from the author.

NOVELS

5 stars

City Spies by James Ponti & Lisa Flanagan (Narrator) March 10, 2020

We meet twelve year old Sara Martinez, a brilliant hacker, while she is talking with her legal aid lawyer. Sara hacked into the system to get information to show her foster parents up as the criminals they are. Instead, Sara is facing time in juvenile detention and no computer access for at least two years.

A classily dressed man enters to replace her legal aid lawyer and before she can fully take stock of what is happening, Sara has been recruited as a spy and is on her way to Scotland. Within a couple of weeks she has to be ready to go on her first mission.

The rest of the crew, also recruited by Mother, (Sara's saviour,) are a diverse group of teens and preteens from around the world.

I needed this book. It has just the right amount of fun, excitement, intrigue and escapism. I've already put a reserve on the next one in the series.

Thanks to the many #IMWAYR posters who have written about James Ponti. I have finally joined the fan club.

5 stars

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont January 1, 2021 🍁

John, a 30ish year old Cree man, lives a relatively reclusive life on his ranch in Saskatchewan. Not far from him is Nadine who carries a torch for John. Nadine teaches traditional dance and has organized a tour of Europe with her troupe. When food poisoning brings Nadine and her dancers low, John's brother, the chief, manipulates him into taking her place along with Edna, an older woman, and her niece, Desiree. Neither of them are dancers so he's going to have to teach them. At the airport they meet up with the last member of their troupe, Lucas Pretend Eagle, a young, slightly manic Native American. It starts off inauspiciously with their plane being hijacked. Meanwhile, Nadine has recovered from her food poisoning, connects up to someone else who claims to be Lucas Pretend Eagle and the two of them set off to meet up with the dancers in Germany. It continues on with one debacle after the next.

At the same time as this book is full of humour, it's loaded with heart-aching sweetness.

The story is told through the perspectives of John, Edna and Nadine. By the time they return home, we have learned a lot of their backstories and they have all learned more about themselves. Some of them might even have found love.

I didn't know til I read the blurb on Goodreads after finishing the book, that this is very loosely based on the true story of a group of Indigenous dancers who left Saskatchewan and toured through Europe in the 1970s.

ADULT NON FICTION

4 stars

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery (Author and Narrator) May 12, 2015

Understanding how other people experience the world is it's own kind of challenge. Connecting to how Octopus experience it requires a whole other level of comprehension. Just what is consciousness anyway?

Sy Montgomery takes us with her as she learns about, and bonds with, these remarkable animals. This book is full of humour, awe, and heartache.

Some of the animals Montgomery connected with spent their entire life in captivity. I wish she had more fully addressed the incongruity of keeping such brilliant, beautiful creatures in what to them, are small cages. Some aquariums, like the Vancouver Aquarium near me, justify having them on display by only keeping each one for a limited amount of time before returning them to the wild. When I asked one of the staff there why they keep them in such small spaces, he told me it was because if they were bigger, the animals could get enough speed and force behind them to break the glass.

If I hadn't already stopped eating octopus after watching My Octopus Teacher, I certainly would now.

CURRENTLY

Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez 🍁

This is a reread from me and I am having a hard time with it. I now know the ending for some of these characters and Hernandez' writing is so good, that I am emotionally invested in them and dread revisiting what happens.

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of Katherine Johnson by Katherine Johnson

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

UP NEXT

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

READING GOALS

#MustReadFiction 6/24

#MustReadNonFiction 3/18 - 1 in progress

Canadian Authors 17/100

Canada Reads shortlist 5/5 rereading one

Indigenous Authors 7/25

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 70/250

#IMWAYR February 22, 2021

Hello out there. 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.

I have almost finished all the characters for my Olivier Dunrea quilt. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to create the red stripes for Gideon's friend Otto (the octopus). Should I sew them, embroider them or invest in some fabric pens and colour them in? It will get figured out eventually. After a short reading break I plan to start on the rest of the little animals and plants. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by what I've taken on, but then I remember that it all gets accomplished bit by bit.

Aside from sewing, I worked on a book review for Naomi Klein and Rebecca Stefoff's book about climate change. It was challenging. I haven't taken that many notes while reading since I was at university. At the same time as I was reading and writing about it, I was reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I also had Crossing Home Ground by David Pitt-Brooke, a title about habitat loss in my part of the world, on the go. It was all pretty grim.

Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian Author and or Illustrator.

Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.

BLOG POSTS LAST WEEK

How to Change Everything: The Young Human's Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other by by Naomi Klein & Rebecca Stefoff

#IReadCanadian: Books For All Ages

PICTURE BOOKS

4 stars

In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok & Lenny Lishchenko (Illustrator) 🍁

This is told from the perspective of a child being carried in an amautik - a pouch at the back of their Inuit mother's parka. Connections are made from the experience of being inside it to the rest of their arctic environment. The beauty of the land is captured in both Sammurtok's words and Lishchenko's illustrations.

POETRY

4 stars

Our Corner Store by Robert Heidbreder & Chelsea O'Byrne (Illustrations) 🍁

This sequel to Rooster Summer, is another novel in verse based on the memories of the author's childhood. It tells the story of two siblings, their friends, and their relationship to the owners of the corner store in their neighbourhood. The rollicking poetry is full of the energy of childhood. Heidbreder captures the sounds and smells of a time gone by in these delightful poems. O'Byrne's illustrations add to these memories. The collection reminded me of being sent to the store to pick up grocery orders my mother phoned in. Imagine sending a four year old a block and a half to the store now!

NON FICTION

5 stars

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

I was nine in 1962 when this beautifully written book was published. Rachel Carson sounded the alarm about the devastation wrought by our attempt to control insects, weeds and other 'pests' by spraying toxic chemicals I might have read this book in my youth, but if I did, I have forgotten it. I do remember a conversation with my father about the local consequences of spraying DDT. Here in our orchard/vineyard community in the Okanagan Valley, not only were the birds silenced, the mouse population went out of control and began to destroy fruit trees. The local rattlesnakes, their primary predators, had also been decimated by the poison.

Carson shows us the consequences of an extractivist worldview where humans see themselves as masters of the planet. She takes the reader through episode after episode of the destruction of the natural world and shows how we harm ourselves as a consequence. Most profoundly, we see that any positive results are temporary at best. Because of the chemical's wholesale wreaking of armageddon to ecosystems, they ended up making matters worse. She finishes the book with alternative, and much more cost effective and efficient ways of dealing with the pests in our lives. These are the methods we use in our local garden today.
I couldn't help but make a connection between the subterfuge of chemical companies then and similar tactics used by the chemical & fossil fuel industries today.

3.5 stars

Crossing Home Ground: A Grassland Odyssey through Southern Interior British Columbia by David Pitt-Brooke 🍁

In search of pristine bunchgrass meadows, Pitt-Brooke set off to walk from Kereomas and Osoyoos in the southernmost part of the Okanagan Valley here in British Columbia, to Williams Lake in the Cariboo region of the province. Along the way he reminisces about his past and ruminates on the history of the different areas.

DISCWORLD NOVELS

5 stars

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

I've read this one before and am happy to have read it again in the context of the rest of the series. It's one of a handful of best novels from the Discworld collection. It's also one of the few suitable for younger readers (aged 10 and older.) It's a twisted fairytale based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin theme. A group of rats, having eaten some kind of strange food, become sentient and start to talk and think like humans. Maurice, a cat, ended up in the same situation after eating one of them. They band together with Keith, a young flute player. The group travel from community to community fleecing the inhabitants after tricking them into believing they have a rat infestation and being saved by Keith, their Pied Piper.

Things change when they arrive in a new town where the village Rat Catchers have their own nefarious swindle going on. As nasty as they are, they are not the worse surprise for the group. A manipulative evil being gets inside and controls the mind of anyone who gets close to it.
This book is hilarious, heartwarming, and gruesome.

CURRENTLY

The Pratchett novel I'm listening to is Night Watch. Otherwise, I am between books right.

UP NEXT

I plan to read Twins by Varian Johnson, When You Trap A Tiger by Tae Keller and Measuring Up by Lily La Motte. I'll be reading and writing a review for a Netgalley title, The Incredible Nellie Bly by Luciana Cimino. I'm hoping to find time to start reading The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. I've got an audiobook, On Fire: The Burning Case for A Green New Deal by Naomi Klein checked, but I'm not sure I can handle reading it in tandem with Elizabeth Kolbert's book.