Put Me in a Book!

By Robert Munsch; Michael Martchenko, illus.

It’s fairly well known that iconic children’s author Robert Munsch uses real kids and the stories they tell him as inspirations for the characters and situations in his work. His latest effort is no different, ... Read More »

June 11, 2010 | Filed under: Picture Books

Willow’s Whispers

By Lana Button; Tania Howells, illus.

Learning to assert yourself is not really about having a big voice, it’s about using the one you have – such is the lesson of Lana Button’s first picture book. Willow is all too familiar ... Read More »

June 11, 2010 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Picture Books

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book

By Gord Hill

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, by First Nations artist and longtime political activist Gord Hill, promises a fresh approach to understanding what has happened to indigenous people in the Americas since 1492. But ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Graphica

Sonnets

By Camille Martin

As the no-nonsense title of Toronto-based Camille Martin’s second collection suggests, the book is made up entirely of 14-line poems, 101 in all – 53 fewer than Shakespeare, 24 more than Berrigan. The latter’s “baffling ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry

Cast from Bells

By Suzanne Hancock

Cast from Bells is Montreal-based poet Suzanne Hancock’s second collection. In it, she blends historical poems about bells – their forging, their transformation into weaponry, and the melting down of those weapons to cast them ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Poetry

C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark

By Ryan Knighton

The premise of this memoir is straightforward: blind man becomes a father. How will he handle this new stage in life, this new role, and the swaddling infant he can only see in the faint ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography

By Alexandra Popoff

The revival of interest in Sophia Tolstoy doesn’t begin or end with Michael Hoffman’s 2009 film The Last Station, in which Helen Mirren portrayed Leo Tolstoy’s wife and muse. A year earlier, for instance, Cathy ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Under Heaven

By Guy Gavriel Kay

In a land far away and a time long ago, the devious Wen Jian sits inside a silk-curtained sedan chair being carried through the streets of Xinan. Jian is known as Precious Consort, the favoured ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The World Is a Ball: The Joy, Madness and Meaning of Soccer

By John Doyle

The literature of soccer is extensive. From the lyrical whimsy of Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow to the thorough social history of David Goldblatt’s The Ball Is Round to the ardent fanaticism of ... Read More »

June 9, 2010 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

Deadly Dues

By Linda Kupecek

Once upon a time Lulu Malone was somebody. Granted, she was the sort of somebody whose fame depended on a dimpled face warbling a signature dog food jingle (“Doggie Doggie Bow Wow”), but when there ... Read More »