> SMALL PRINT DEIRDRE BAKER
The Honeybee By Kirsten Hall, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Atheneum, 32 pages, $23.99, ages 4-8)
“It’s close, it’s coming, it’s buzzing, it’s humming … A BEE!” begins this entertaining poem about that feared creature of summer. Hall gives kids a quick, poetic introduction to bees’ ways and work, from the swooping bee that first sips at a flower to those in the hive that give nectar “a chemical shakeup,” turning it into honey. Hall’s verse seems to flit and swoop like a bee itself, with varied rhythms and rhymes — clapping, flapping and lapping; perching and searching — conveying lightness and pleasure. This is a work of luminous, comic play and celebration, with Arsenault’s sunny, expansive illustrations radiant with gold and yellow, pink and blue, and the dark stylish lines of the honeybees’ stripes. The bees have sly smiles, pointy noses and big expressive eyes, making them lively heroes in the story of honey and pollination. Here’s a good way to assuage kids’ fears and share info about these vital insects.
The Mushroom Fan Club Written and illustrated by Elise Gravel (Drawn & Quarterly, 56 pages, $19.95, ages 5-10)
Gravel’s wonderfully nutty humour and self-confessed obsession “with bizarre creatures” is evident throughout this unorthodox, informative nature book. An introduction to mushrooms may sound dull, but Gravel can make anything exciting and weird. Searching for mushrooms is “like a treasure hunt that nature organized just for us!” she enthuses, but it’s really her descriptive take on her subject that will have kids heading for the woods. “They look like aliens from outer space,” she says. One kind has “little folds like an old person’s wrinkles”; one looks like “an alien’s brain”; another explodes “poof! like a great fart” when it lets loose its spores. In amongst all the candid, seemingly casual commentary is a sound introduction to this family of plants, with suitable cautionary advice about gathering and identification. Then there’s the final entertainment: a page of “poetic” (and real) mushroom names (Bug Sputnik, Drumstick Truffle Club, Dewdrop Dapperling) and a list of “things that happened to me while hunting mushrooms.” Surprising and hilarious. Highly recommended.
House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery By Liz Rosenberg, with drawings by Julie Morstad (Candlewick, 339 pages, $19.99, ages 10 – adult)
In this balanced, intelligent biography Rosenberg invites us into the unromantic, difficult realm of Montgomery’s “real life” — as a writer, a woman of her time and place, a child, wife, mother and friend. Virtually orphaned as a baby, committed to caring for her grandmother until well into adulthood, subject to depression yet fizzing with the natural beauty of her surroundings — Rosenberg shows with sensitivity the “checkered history and heart-hungry longing” behind Montgomery and her beloved, popular works of fiction. Her depiction of the arc of Montgomery’s life is lucid and engaging, but the heart of this compassionate biography is its interpretive insight into how that life became subject to “the great alchemy of art” in Montgomery’s writings. In this, Rosenberg offers a glimpse of the mysterious way imagination, emotion and hard work might combine for a serious writer, especially within the hurly-burly of adulthood’s complexities.
Learning to Breathe By Janice Lynn Mather (Simon & Schuster, 328 pages, ages 14 and up)
This novel dovetails chillingly with the #metoo movement. Sent from her tiny island home in the Bahamas to finish high school in Nassau, Indy has to room with her aunt and uncle. But her grown-up cousin Gary acts like Indy is there for the taking — and he takes her. Raped night after night, Indy becomes pregnant. Desperate for a place to go, she lights upon a yoga retreat that gives her a little respite, a place where people are actually friendly and “learning to breathe” might help her find a way through her loneliness. First-time author Mather evokes sea, air and land vividly; even more potently she depicts Indy’s loneliness and isolation within a terrifying predicament, creating a character whose courage and integrity are all the more poignant for her inexperience. Yoga moves and pregnancy facts give this an educational verve — as does the procedure of exposing Indy’s rapist.