After you read You Can’t Do That in Canada!, you’ll know that it’s illegal to leave a fishing rod unattended in a Canadian national park and that you’ll be fined $100 if you swear on Parliament Hill. You’ll also be aware of many Canadian laws, both past and present, that are even more esoteric and, in some cases, bizarre. While flipping through the book and picking out individual laws is interesting and often amusing, reading all 220 of them at a stretch can become a little tedious, especially for the young reader. Fortunately, Steve Attoe’s humorous illustrations leaven the experience. His black and white line drawings of cartoon characters demonstrate certain laws with a clever twist. Thus, he illustrates that it’s a crime to disturb an oyster bed by showing a deep sea diver pulling a blanket off a bed in which oysters are sleeping. Including more of Attoe’s full-page zany illustrations and fewer laws would probably have made this book more appealing to children.

Bev Spencer’s book can, however, be a useful resource for teachers. The illustrations can be used as a springboard to encourage students to illustrate some of the book’s laws in a similar witty manner. Teachers might also want to discuss the origin of specific laws and have students speculate about or research why these laws were passed. Research might involve an exploration of the mores of society in a given time period.