Books to learn from, escape into and love
All the vibrancy of cooking, community and end-of-summer harvest bursts onto the pages in Jillian Tamaki’s energetic “Our Little Kitchen” (Groundwood, 32 pages,
$19.95, ages 3-8). In an urban soup kitchen, a diverse crew takes stock of supplies, makes a meal and gets it on the table just in time for weekly diners. Tamaki’s varied graphics and wildly characterful volunteers give this story breathless excitement and humour, making it wonderfully entertaining along with its message of generous community involvement.
Nature’s nocturnal creatures populate “If You Were Night,” by Muon Thi Van, illustrated by Kelly Pousette (Kids Can, 32 pages, $19.99,
ages 3-8). “If you were the night and you saw an owl … would you join the thrilling hunt …?” the narrator asks, as a child dreamily shares the hunts of owl, raccoon, slug, coyote and more. Pousette’s cut paper, diorama art plays with green shades of moonlight and shadow, drawing us into night’s magic.
Equally evocative is Kate Moss Gamblin’s “Lake,” illustrated by Karen Patkau (Groundwood, 32 pages, $16.95, ages 3-8). “Do you see …?” asks the narrator, observing a lake with its shifting seasons. Unfurling fiddleheads and baby moose, morning mist, otters and crimson leaves come into view like a moment in the wilderness. Patkau’s accurate portrayal of plant and wildlife is especially valuable in this time
when awareness of nature is critical to all species’ health — including our own.
Nature brings consolation in “I Talk Like a River,” by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter, 40 pages, ages 4-9, $24.99).
Mocked for his stutter, the boy is comforted that the river, a glorious force of nature, bubbles, churns and crashes in its flow, just like the boy’s speech. Scott conveys palpably the merging of word and bodily experience, a mouth “full with words” that can’t get out. Smith’s turbulent blues, brief glimpses of the boy’s face and serene riverscapes convey emotion, beauty and respect. An exceptional work.
Water is a dangerous means of escape in Thao Lam’s wordless memoir of fleeing Vietnam,
“The Paper Boat: A Refugee Story” (Owl Kids, 32 pages, $19.95, ages 4-9). With cut paper illustrations, Lam shows two parallel stories — a Vietnamese family and a group of ants — leaving home and taking
to boats for refuge. The tiny ants deepen the sense of the family’s vulnerability and, although Lam describes an event of the 1970s, the story resonates all too well in our current world. For older readers, Marthe
Jocelyn presents “Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: Peril at Owl Park” (Tundra, 389 pages, $18.99, ages 9-13), a second spirited mystery based on a fictional Agatha Christie as child sleuth. Aggie and her friend Hector search for a missing man and a murderer after they’re surprised by a corpse on Christmas morning. Aggie’s wit, character and warmth are ever engaging as she matures, and Jocelyn maintains a pleasing pitch of humour, feeling and historical realities throughout.
In David A. Robertson’s “The Barren Grounds” (Penguin, 247 pages, $21.99, ages 10-14), Morgan and Eli, taken from their Indigenous families, end up at a foster home where Eli’s own drawings pull them into a different world — where animals talk Swampy Cree, winter has rule and Ochek, a fisher, can barely feed his village. Someone has stolen the birds, bringers of spring. Reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, nevertheless this fantasy is very much its own tale of ruptured Indigenous culture and environmental reciprocity.
In a buoyantly explosive YA fusion, Tracy Deonn interweaves Arthurian legend, Black American “rootcraft” and demons in “Legendborn” (Margaret K. McElderry, 512 pages, $24.99, ages 12 and up).
Just beginning college, Bree is grieving her mother’s death. When she happens upon a secret society based on King Arthur’s knights, she becomes implicated through her own magical powers. She realizes the society may help her learn how her mother died — even if it is “colonizer magic” founded on racism. With speedy pace and satisfying intellectual texture, Deonn plays on tricks of the fantasy genre and critiques them.