New children’s books celebrate Canada

Children’s books about Canada and Canadians are getting a push to the forefront with Canada 150 celebrations and, fortunately, they are available for all reading levels.

Carson Crosses Canada (Tundra, $21.99 hardcover) by Linda Bailey with illustrations by Kass Reich is a ride across Canada from a dog’s perspective. Carson’s owner, Annie, is living in a house facing the Pacific Ocean when she learns her sister in Newfoundland is ill and needs cheering up so they load up the car and head east.

This is a book of mountains, big prairie skies, lakes, endless rocks and trees, a tourtière fit for a travelling dog, lobster rolls by the seaside and another house that faces the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes Carson gets a little bored and sometimes he cannot believe his luck, like when he rolls around in Fundy shore mud.

This book comes with a map but try not to pay too much attention to why someone in a hurry to get from British Columbia to Newfoundland goes via Prince Edward Island.

Bailey is best known for her Stanley series about an adventurous dog born to trouble.

Good Morning Canada (Northwinds Press, $16.99) by Ontario writer Andrea Lynn Beck is a rhyming picture book that opens with children waking up by the sea and wondering about other Canadian children. It is a series of good mornings to Canadian icons including moose, goose, canoes, Mounties, loonies and toonies. There are also good mornings to hockey, snow, maple trees and wheat fields.

This is a quick read and a lively way to give children a taste of their country.

The Vimy Oaks: A Journey to Peace (North Winds Press, $19.99 hardcover) is a lovely layered story that combines text, art and historical photographs. Written by best-selling author Linda Granfield with award-winning illustrator Brian Deines, both of Toronto, it is an account of one Canadian soldier’s experience of Vimy Ridge and the connections made decades later.

Leslie Miller of Toronto joined the signal corps and sailed to England in 1915. He kept a diary of personal observations as he moved across Europe. In the spring of 1917 he and others in the signal corps were dodging danger along France’s Vimy Ridge. After the Canadians dramatically won the ridge Miller was among those carrying the wounded. He took a few moments to gather acorns from the once-grand oak trees that were destroyed in the battle and he mailed them home for planting.

After the war, Miller became a farmer and an arbourist and named his farm The Vimy Oaks for the trees that grew from his acorns. He never returned to France but in 2004 Monty MacDonald, who worked on the farm as a boy, went to France to follow the route his father had taken during the Second World War. He was struck by the fact there were no oaks at Vimy Ridge, though they were still growing on Miller’s property. Thus began the Vimy Oaks repatriation, ensuring the trees would grow once again at Vimy and at places of remembrance in Canada.

It is a magnificent story for children old enough to have some knowledge of war and geography.