SLOTH AND CO.
Jan Thornhill’s latest is a highlight of her 30 year career
Late fall is here, which means two things: novelty pumpkin-flavoured desserts are being replaced with novelty candy cane-flavoured desserts, and seemingly every week there is another literary awards ceremony. Last week, the Writers’ Trust of Canada presented the vicky metcalf Award for Literature for young People to Jan Thornhill.
Though the award is based on an entire body of work and though Thornhill has been publishing for three decades, her most recent book Kyle Goes Alone (Owl Kids, ages 3 to 7, 32 pp, $19) is a career highlight. A baby sloth is about to leave his mother’s side for the first time because he needs to use the — well, you know. His nerves dissipate along the slow journey to the ground as he meets other forest dwellers, offering encouragement. Illustrator Ashley barron brings the pathos with her expressive creatures crafted through colourful cut-outs. Combining an elegant sense of humour (has a story about pooping ever been so sweet?) with a subtle educational bent (everything you wanted to know about sloths, and more), Thornhill’s latest is as good an entry point as any into the recent award-winner’s work.
Fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos is also ready to make his way without his parents’ help. The Trouble In me (Farrar Straus & Giroux, ages 12 to 16, 224 pp, $20.50) is Gantos’s fictionalized prequel to his 2003 memoir, Hole in my Life. (The latter opens with the young author in a detention centre, which gives you an idea of how Trouble goes down.) Obedient and shy, Jack is sick of being a loner. He becomes intoxicated with Gary, an older neighbour boy fresh out of juvie, and becomes willing to stop at nothing short of complete self-destruction to impress him; the results alternate between hilarious and nauseating. (No puppies were harmed over the course of the story, but not for lack of Gary’s trying.) Present-day Gantos writes about his childhood with compassion and candour, making him a consistently refreshing and necessary voice in young adult literature.