Children and YA Non-fiction

Green Grit: The Story of the Saskatchewan Roughriders

If it’s true that losers’ tales make for the best sports stories, Green Grit, Graham Kelly’s history of the floundering fortunes of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, ought to have provided readers with a very dramatic ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Sports, Health & Self-help

Northern Wild: Best Contemporary Canadian Nature Writing

By David R. Boyd, ed.

It is somewhat curious that Canada, a country very much aware of its natural heritage and with an abundance of nature writing (both in periodicals and books), lacks significant, contemporary anthologies of nature writing. Despite ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Anthologies, Children and YA Non-fiction

The Mystery of Ireland’s Eye

By Shane Peacock

When Dylan is 11, he is seized by an unexplained passion to accompany his parents on a sea kayaking trip to Ireland’s Eye, an abandoned island in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Over the next year, Dylan ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction

The Nordlings

By Kathleen McDonnell

In The Nordlings, 15-year-old Peggy finds herself thrust out of her unhappy everyday life and into Notherland, the fantasy world she created as a child. The soul-stealing Nobodaddy now threatens Notherland’s existence, and it’s up ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction

Geometry of the Odd

By Stan Rogal

Stan Rogal’s fourth book of poems opens with an “introduction” by Andrew Marvell, who, as he explains, has been “summoned” to comment on Rogal’s manuscript. The 17th-century ghost offers a textbook definition of metaphysical verse ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry

All the World’s a Stage: William Shakespeare: A Pop-up Biography

By Michael Bender

There are two questions to ask about this biography: does it contain the kind of information a young person needs to know about the life of William Shakespeare? And does the book’s pop-up format enhance ... Read More »

February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction

Mr. McGratt and the Ornery Cat

By Marilyn Helmer, Martine Gourbault, illus.

He’s not my cat!” says the grumpy Mr. McGratt about the uninvited stray in this picture book by Marilyn Helmer (author of Fog Cat and The Boy, the Dollar and the Wonderful Hat).McGratt’s an old ... Read More »

February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Picture Books

Flight of the Whirligigs

By Grant Innes

Grant Innes’s illustrations for his first book, Flight of the Whirligigs, are bright, primitive, and childlike – he is like a folk-art Lucy Cousins. In the accompanying story, Grant, a painter, takes his dog to ... Read More »

February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Picture Books

Stop Depression Now: Sam-e, the Breakthrough Supplement That Works as Well as Prescription Drugs in Half the Time … with No Side Effects

By Richard Brown, Carol Colman, Teodoro Bottiglieri

After spending an hour or so perusing the bookshelves at my local big-box, books-by-the-barrel bazaar (where, by the way, I am certain that the health categories into which the books are divided were selected by ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Science, Technology & Environment