Happy Birthday, Alice Babette

For years there’s been a trend of picture books based on important and/or misunderstood artists: Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Virginia Woolf are just a few who’ve gotten the kindergarten-lit treatment. ... Read More »

April 18, 2016 | Filed under: Picture Books

★ Hunting for the Mississippi

By Camille Bouchard; Peter McCambridge (trans.)

When 12-year-old Eustache Bréman, the unworldly and wide-eyed narrator of Camille Bouchard’s Hunting for the Mississippi, boards a ship bound for Louisiana, he’s filled with hope. The year is 1684, and he’s been promised that ... Read More »

April 4, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

★ Flannery

By Lisa Moore

Flannery is 16. She has spent her whole life in an East Coast town so small she attended Happy Kids daycare with practically every one of her current classmates. One of them in particular makes ... Read More »

April 4, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Fifteen Lanes

By S.J. Laidlaw

In her latest novel, S.J. Laidlaw gives us a poignant story of two girls who share a city but lead vastly different lives. Grace enjoys the luxurious lifestyle of an expat, though her shyness prevents ... Read More »

March 31, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Fluffy Strikes Back (A P.U.R.S.T. Adventure)

By Ashley Spires

After five books about Binky, the flatulent cat who yearns for intergalactic adventures, author-illustrator Ashley Spires launches a new spin-off series, introducing readers to Fluffy Vandermere, the head feline at P.U.R.S.T. (Pets of the Universe ... Read More »

March 29, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Righting Canada’s Wrongs: Residential Schools

By Melanie Florence

One of the challenges confronting Canadian youth is the legacy of their country’s horrific treatment of its First Nations. The deliberate, determined attempts to annihilate aboriginal ways of life culminated in the creation of the ... Read More »

March 29, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction

Away Running

By David Wright; Luc Bouchard

The new novel by Luc Bouchard and David Wright tackles the subject of racism and adversity faced by American football players in the early 2000s in Villeneuve, a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Paris. Away Running also ... Read More »

March 21, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts

By Esta Spalding; Sydney Smith (illus.)

Screenwriter, poet, and author Esta Spalding dips her toe into the ocean of children’s writing with her debut middle-grade novel, the first in a series about a family of loosely related children who have been ... Read More »

March 21, 2016 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Maya

By Mahak Jain; Elly MacKay (illus.)

It takes considerable talent for an illustrator to do justice to the peacock, to come even close to matching nature in rendering its most exquisite bird. With their textured and evocative illustrations in Malaika’s Costume ... Read More »

March 18, 2016 | Filed under: Picture Books