★ From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea

By Kai Cheng Thom; Kai Yun Ching (ill.); Wai-Yant Li (ill.)

Kai Cheng Thom’s From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea is an exquisitely rendered picture book about gender and identity. It tells the story of Miu Lan, a child who ... Read More »

October 26, 2017 | Filed under: Picture Books

Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment

By Claude Lalumière

There is a Monty Python sketch from 1969 called “Candid Photography” (or sometimes simply “Nudge, Nudge”), in which a young rake interrogates an older, conservative man about his sex life by means of cryptic but ... Read More »

October 24, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You

By Vicki Grant

Two strangers walk into a room. They sit facing each other. They ask and answer 36 predetermined questions ranging from the banal to the intimate. Afterward, they stare into each other’s eyes silently for four ... Read More »

October 23, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

A Brief History of Oversharing: One Ginger’s Anthology of Humiliation

By Shawn Hitchins

Shawn Hitchins dedicates his debut collection of essays to two people: “Harrison Ford, for making me gay,” and “my father, for making me a comedian.” That salty-sweet-salty combination is Hitchins’s go-to mode in A Brief ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ Louis Undercover

By Fanny Britt; Isabelle Arsenault (ill.); Christelle Morelli (trans.); Susan Ouriou (trans.)

Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault follow up their Governor General’s Literary Award–winning Jane, the Fox and Me with a second graphic novel collaboration of equal acuity. The titular protagonist of Louis Uncover is a perceptive ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Graphica, Kids’ Books

A Reckoning

By Linda Spalding

The biblical principle of the sins of the father being visited upon the sons is very much at play in Linda Spalding’s follow-up to her 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award winner, The Purchase. That novel ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit

By Lynn Gehl

In the Anishinaabe culture, “Mino-pimadiziwin” means “the good life.” In context, Mino-pimadiziwin can be understood as a wholistic life, one that includes fostering a relationship to land and community, and sharing knowledge with others. Lynn ... Read More »

October 16, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Under-the-Bed Fred

By Colin Jack (ill.); Linda Bailey

Leo loves scary movies (he has posters of them on his bedroom walls), but in real life he’s terrified of the monster who lives under his bed. One fateful middle of the night, he decides ... Read More »

October 16, 2017 | Filed under: Picture Books

To Me You Seem Giant

By Greg Rhyno

The most effective vehicles for nostalgia are often sensory: the sight of former stomping grounds revisited after time away; the unbearably saccharine wave of the vodka coolers you swore off after too many notoriously bad ... Read More »

October 10, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels