North offers simple, heartwarming tale
A Picnic at the Lighthouse (Tuckamore Books, $12.95) is a five-minute read that can rescue a weary parent’s day, not to mention entertaining children.
Written by Newfoundland writer Rebecca North, it is as sweet as the chocolate cake young Patrick and his father enjoy on a picnic near a lighthouse. Exactly how they managed to end up with perfectly intact, iced chocolate layer cake on plates, no less, at a picnic is a question for illustrator Nancy Keating but who really cares?
As simple as it is heartwarming, North’s story brings home what we all know but struggle to hold onto – it is the time spent together that counts. The dad makes time to take his son on a picnic and Patrick loves, in turn, the lighthouse, the lemonade, the whales breaching offshore and the chocolate cake. As he carries his sleepy son back to his car it is the dad’s turn to say what he liked best about their time together.
Double Trouble at the Rooms (Tuckamore Books,
$12.95) is a silly story of a young girl named Nat who unleashes her pet polar bear at The Rooms, Newfoundland’s provincial archives, art gallery and museum.
Written by Lisa Dalrymple and illustrated by Elizabeth Pratt-Wheeler it is a lively rhyming adventure that sees the polar bear bring to life a black bear on display. Together they roam from one display to another, cavorting upstairs and down, with The Rooms’ security staff in pursuit.
When the doors are thrown open in hopes the bears will make a hasty exit, they instead stop dead and the polar bear wonders if he would not fit in better here than at home with Nat. She agrees and releases him to live with the black bear.
Oak Island and the Search for Buried Treasure (Nimbus,
$15.95) explores the theories and conspiracies of who buried what on Oak Island. Written by librarian Joann Hamilton-Barry, of Saint John, N.B., it asks all the right questions such as whether this is where Shakespeare’s lost manuscripts are hidden or is it just the pirate Blackbeard’s loot. It has four chapters, lots of photographs, a conclusion, a timeline, a glossary and a recommended reading list. It is well organized and full of fact boxes making it more appealing for children who favour nonfiction over more narrative fiction, although it remains hard to say what is fact or fiction at Oak Island.
Good Morning Canada (North Winds Press, $16.99), written and illustrated by Andrea Lynn Beck, is a vibrant picture book that takes its young readers on a cross-country tour. The text is minimal so most of the story is in the illustrations, making it a book pre-readers can soon handle on their own. Morning greetings on the east coast are shared with beavers and moose and a Canada goose.
Then it moves on to kayaks, canoes, loonies and toonies and, inevitably, a hockey game. There are early morning rides down toboggan hills, Mounties all in a row, maple trees for tapping and wheat waving in farmers’ fields.
Beck is also the author of the Elliot Moose series.