"Song for a Summer Night"

By Robert Heidbreder & Qin Leng
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-493-0
www.groundwood.com

"Day's left the stage. Night's in the wings. The summer air sings what a summer night brings." In an age of books like "Go the F*** to Sleep" suggesting that already sleep-deprived parents let their children stay up waaaay past their curfews must be fighting words. But they are such lovely words. Those opening lines from this charming, beautifully illustrated lullaby of a book announce a contrarian kind of bedtime story about the promise, not of a new morning, but of the start of a day's end. When the children in this story break curfew to party with the cute creatures of the night (shy skunks, sparkling fireflies) they're appreciating the magic of a moonlit summer night many decades before they'll go gently into another, more sombre, good night. It's touching stuff.

"The World Without Us"

By Robin Stevenson
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0680-1
www.orcabook.com

It takes a certain kind of courage to publish a youth novel about suicide when even the mainstream media is still trying to figure out how to report on it without nudging depressed millennials in that direction. It takes even more courage (balls? gall?) to give your book the same title as another one about what the world would look if the virus of humanity were suddenly gone for good. Stevenson's book is all those things (ballsy, galling, torn from the headlines) - just not to everyone at the same time. Yes, the titling of an end chapter "The Point of it All" suggests a certain resolution to a tragic phenomenon. It isn't. Instead, its characters are the human beings behind the headlines. They never feel like stock characters or ciphers and their motivations - ultimately - are always about doing the right thing and making the world a better place for themselves and their loved ones, now and long after they're gone. That's a heady ambition in contemporary adult fiction. That Stevenson achieves it in youth fiction is a miracle. It's a smart, daring read. 

"Unnatural Selections"

by Wallace Edwards
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0555-2
www.orcabook.com

We're warned right upfront: "Readers of this book, behold! Beasts from an imagined age." Those beasts come from the imagination of Professor I.B. Doodling, a "traveling artist who visits schoolchildren and takes their suggestions...to create fantastical hybrid animals." The results are elegant illustrations and nonsensical poems about everything from the "Whalephant" ("Everyone who gets to see him, secretly would like to be him") to the "Leofroat" (a mashup of leopard, frog and goat).
The book encourages children to spot and identify the different animals in the pictures, but it's also an unwitting introduction to the environmental ills of our rapidly (de?)evolving planet. Being "a fantastical collection of unnatural selections!" also means the book might be an empowering or emasculating read for children with emerging gender issues. Whew... Thats a LOT of forehead crunching for a children's book. This isn't a bad thing if it gets parents and children talking about stuff like "natural" selection, the implications of GMO agriculture or - considering how fast kids grow up these days - the unnatural selections in books like Margaret Atwood's dystopian "Oryx and Crake" trilogy, where glowing rabbits - a failed experiment in bioluminescence - run freely in the countryside.

“Bike Thief”

by Rita Feutl

ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0569-9

www.orcabook.com

In 1948 it was a movie called “The Bicycle Thief”, which is memorable for being both an affecting neo-realist examination of Italy’s working class and - according to Mia Farrow - the only movie that ever made Woody Allen cry. This year it’s a book simply called “Bike Thief” and it updates, westernizes, and youthenizes the concept of bike theft for the internet, foster home, and fixed-gear bicycle age. When stalwart Nick visits the local pawn shop to replace the TV his sister broke (hopefully before their foster parents find out) he’s coerced by the store owner to steal bikes to pay for the TV. What happens next is the moral quandary of every tween trying to do the right thing – but with some surprisingly evocative, millennial and grown-up touches. When the pawn shop owner asks after Nick’s younger sister his how-is-she “smells of sex – or drugs.” Bike chains in a chop shop “spill from an old box like a mess of snakes trying to escape.” When Nick doubles a girl he likes home on his bike he thinks: “Good thing she’s facing forward. She can’t see the grin on my face.” Eventually the clever touches – which both adults and kids can appreciate – elevate “Bike Thief” above the genre of youth lit.

"Ace's Basement"/"Caught in the Act"

“Ace’s Basement” by Ted Staunton
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0437-1
“Caught in the Act” by Deb Loughead
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0496-8
www.orcabook.com

 “Ace’s Basement” is – depending on your POV – about how Rebecca Black really feels about her YouTube video for the song “Friday” or well, okay, it’s a fictionalized treatment about how Rebecca Black probably feels about her YouTube video for the song “Friday.” In “Ace’s Basement” a youth band puts out a video and the attention it gets is a lot like Rebecca Black got for her YouTube video for “Friday.” What the band really gets is a good introduction to the consequences of hastily posted videos and tweets and the permanence of social media. All of this will be covered in the next news story about online bullying (gee, how did I know there’s a “next” one?) but the long form of a short novel allows Staunton to suggest the freaky frustration of self-absorbed youth who suddenly become punchlines, entertaining other self-absorbed youth.
The kids in “Caught in the Act” are the usual good kids who do something bad and then try to explain it away with an “I don’t know” when asked why they did it. The difference here is that they know how to get out of the stuff they’ve done – and not feel too bad about doing it or lying about it. Well, for a while, at least. It’s surprising how long Loughead dangles the prospect of redemption in front of her characters before they decide to do the right thing, but the wait is weighty enough to impress even the most hardened reader of finger-wagging tween fiction.

“FaceSpace”

By Adrian Chamberlain
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0150-9
www.orcabook.com

A lonely student named Danny becomes popular at school when he invents a “Facespace” profile for a British rocker named James and befriends him. Then things get complicated. “What’s so special about Danny?” his classmates wonder. “What could a lonely kid who plays Parcheesi with his Mom on Saturday nights have in common with a big glam musician?” “What kind of banner ads would something like ‘FaceSpace’ run?” “FaceSpace” answers the first two questions, no problem. But I would have appreciated a bit more of the third: reading more of the mechanics of Danny’s deceit; the little nuance of character that makes readers believe James is a real person; the close calls when he’s nearly revealed as Danny’s invention. Certainly fake internet profiles and online bullying are hot-button topics these days, but – probably for space reasons – Chamberlain rushes to the moral point when a long, leisurely satirical roll-out of vanity, perception and technology would have been a more enjoyable read - for readers over a certain age, of course. But his book is intention-perfect: it’s a great starting point for all sorts of theoretical talking points. Given the cannibalistic state of TV, film and books today (where narrators are bright-eyed novices and cute, shadowy acquaintances are werewolves, vampires or worse), the fake profile has become more Wattpad than escort ad. Crunching a human being down to a few para- and photographs which evoke contemporary yearnings, the creator of the fake online profile is the new bedtime storyteller for the internet age.

"Pyro"

By Monique Polak

Orca Book Publishers

ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0228-5

www.orca.com

Franklin, the pre-teen “Pyro” of this book’s title likes fire. Recalling the “ah-ha” moment when his father set fire to some balled-up newspapers in the family fireplace, he’d “never seen anything more beautiful” than that first “giant blue-and-orange flame.”

Of course, the fires in “Pyro” have as much to do with the -mania of the title as they do with the destructive dynamics of a broken family. Franklin’s parents are separated and his father and he are on opposite sides of arson: Franklin commits it, while his mayor father reassures the public that they’re doing everything to catch him. 

“Fire’s a powerful thing,” Franklin’s father tells him. “It creates, but it destroys too.” 

But mostly fire creates some indelible images – whether they’re in book, film or news form. “Fahrenheit 451”, “Wild at Heart”, “The Day of the Locust”, “The Towering Inferno”, TV’s “Rescue Me”, the fireballs of 9-11; there’s fewer images more filmic or powerful than fire. In most cases and genres the arsonist is beyond redemption. Most works of art don’t even try to explain the firestarter’s motivations.

“Pyro” is frank enough with Franklin to make him an unlikeable and dangerous character; a daring move when dealing with one of the few remaining untamable manias of our over-analyzed and over-medicated times. And, in turn, Franklin makes “Pyro” a conversation piece of a book. Certainly, the story’s moral lesson is obvious, and its conclusion tidy (we are talking about young readers, after all), but the overall effect is something that can be appreciated by all age groups (especially adults looking for an unusual and challenging read).

“Riot Act”

By Diane Tullson
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0139-4
www.orcabook.com

“Riot Act” is basically “The Crucible” for the iPhone age. Remember when the Reverend has to choose between admitting his affair with the girl who’s accusing his wife of witchcraft, or deny it and save himself? No? Couldn’t sit through the whole thing? Don’t feel bad, I couldn’t either. So thank the deity of your choice for Diane Tullson’s “Riot Act”. Will seventeen-year-old Daniel, a hero for preventing a business from going up in flames during a post-game riot, save a friend who’s been YouTubed as a rioter? He better! Because as anyone following the outting of Vancouverites who rioted after the losing Stanley Cup game knows, the rioters can either come forward or the police can come and get them. Still, there’s lots to enjoy about the book than just taking a stroll down a memory lane of mayhem. It’s got a good moral quandary, a decent set of characters, and is written with the tween energy of getting caught up in the moment (a kid picks up a bottle, “Someone from the crowd shouts, ‘Throw it!’ Others take up the call and it becomes a chant. ‘Throw it! Throw it!’” A few pages later “the car bursts into flames.” A little later the denials start: “Other people were doing so much more.”). This is one readable riot act.

“When I Kill You”

By Michelle Wan
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-990-2
www.orcabook.com

“When I Kill You” is basically one half of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train”, and while it’s got enough blackmail, suspense and intrigue to keep even my aunt reading, the one thing it’s missing is the thing I wanted to read most: what it’s like to work at the post office. Listen, I can believe the heroine of the story was an abused wife, that she stood to profit from the death of her husband, that one of his exes comes out of the woodwork with some incriminating cell phone footage, and, yes, that she even wrestles in mud (but not the Spa-grade kind - nice touch) on the weekends. But what I cannot believe, what I cannot accept, what I find practically science-fiction – especially in the current economy – is that she’d actually QUIT the post office. No one quits the post office – EVER. That twist in the story is perhaps its most daring, and highlights a larger irony of contemporary fiction: In movies, TV shows and novels, characters talk about dreams, big business and blackmail. In real life, people probably talk about movies, TV shows, novels – and getting on at the post office.

The Peer Pressure Cooker

“Hold the Pickles”
By Vicki Grant
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-920-9

“Maxed Out”
By Daphne Greer
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-981-0

Both available at www.orcabook.com

In “Hold the Pickles”; an embarrassed Dan dresses as a hot dog at the fair to earn money to hire a personal trainer to pump up his physique and self-esteem. In “Maxed Out”, the Max of the title is all things to the needy people in his life: a responsible son and brother (his dad recently died and his brother has special needs), and a promising hockey player who’s stoked about the requisite “big game.” You’d think by now – with the evolution of peer pressure into social networking - that the Dans and Maxes of the world wouldn’t need any more lectures (that everybody has an agenda, crime doesn’t pay, out of the frying pan and into the fire) but there’s always room for one more, told a little differently by different people – at least in the world of YouthLit. Namely that everybody has an agenda; crime doesn’t pay; out of the frying pan and into the fire. The Dan and Max of these two stories learn all those lessons, and while it should read like an old person wagging a finger at you, these books still work on a dramatic and emotional level (“Hold the Pickles” has nuance fit for a film script; “Maxed Out” asks if someone is going to be the “puck getter”). And the larger lesson of these two books? That even the familiar can seem fresh and inventive when it’s done with sincere interest in the reader.

“Money Boy”

By Paul Yee
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-093-2
www.groudwoodbooks.com

It’s an unspoken rule in children’s books that no one goes all the way. Of course, in real life young people really do have sex. But first times for the poor put-upon youth of kid lit are almost always interrupted by religious guilt, fears of pregnancy, meddlesome parents or dateless sidekicks; all the better to second-guess, come to your senses, and realize you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.
Fifteen year-old Ray Liu has his whole life ahead of him too – as everyone keeps telling him. As a new immigrant to Toronto he’s still learning English. As the leader of the online game, “Rebel State,” he’s learning about honour and teamwork. As a closeted gay youth he’s learning about cultural homophobia - especially when his army veteran Dad evicts him after discovering he’s gay.
Like any young gaysian he heads to Toronto’s Chinatown. “The first time we came here,” he recalls, “I was surprised at how big this district was, full of Chinese restaurants, Chinese stores and Chinese people. I thought, if people want to do Chinese business and buy Chinese groceries, then they should stay in China!”
After he’s beaten and robbed he realizes/rationalizes that becoming a prostitute couldn’t be that bad, could it? Like an actor, athlete or model, he’s just going to use his body to make money. “I feel as though I am in a jerky fast-forward video,” he says. “Monday I get kicked out of the house. Blippety-blip. Tuesday I am homeless at a shelter. Blippety-blip. Wednesday I dine with a drag queen. Thursday I sell my body. Blippety-blip.” But will Ray second-guess himself, come to his senses, and realize he’s got his whole life ahead of him BEFORE it’s too late?
I’m not going to tell you what Ray does, but by the last third of the book he’s saying, “if the thief who stole my laptop could break into my skull and steal the last sixty minutes of my life, I would pay him well.”
After enduring the endless courtship of the vampire genre’s erotically neutered tweens (please no e-mails) it’s a pleasant surprise to read about young people who are actually interested in sex – and aware of its exploitation. Maybe Paul Yee (“Ghost Train”, “Dead Man’s Gold”) is the only writer sensitive and reckless enough to handle a reality that many parents wouldn’t want their children to know exists. He beautifully captures both the narcissism of youth (Ray is equally desperate for food, shelter and to “get back to Rebel State. Players are waiting for me to lead the fight against the guerrilla war”) as well as the cultural tyranny faced by both young immigrants and older gay men (“Younger men laughing in a circle, they’re a fortress with no door. A stranger can walk around them and around them and never find an opening”). For a book about the oldest profession seen through new eyes FOR young readers, “Money Boy” is nothing less than astonishing. It’s perhaps Yee’s best book yet.

“Today, Maybe”

By Dominique Demers and Gabrielle Grimard
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-400-6
www.orcabook.com

The introspective, reflective medium of print has always had a problem when it comes to younger readers. Inside a child’s head is a dangerous place to be. First impressions solidify into lifelong perceptions and emerging emotions permanently merge with dramatic storylines. The best example of this is the unexpected (?) demonizing of foreigners when a writer gives her story’s evil characters with unusual names. But with mainstream non-fiction addressing loneliness as a lifelong condition “Today, Maybe” – about a girl whose “only treasure was her one hundred favorite books” choosing imaginary friendships with literary characters over real people – is both the hot button book of the moment and a hopeful sign that kid lit is evolving as fast as the internet. This is a lovely little book – with bite. Yes, it’s “just” a children’s book full of famous friendly/frightening heroes (wicked witches, princes, wolves) that entertain bored children, but it’s also a book of epic perspective. It evokes everything from the plot of “Where the Wild Things Are” (a child’s solitary daydream), Sartre’s comment that “hell is other people” and a line from “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”: “I’m alone, not lonely.” Of course, that’s a fat interpretation of a very slim picture book – but it’s also a big recommendation. Ideal for children and perfect for parents who actually like to connect with their kids, “Today, Maybe” is as much about a lifelong love of literature as it is about the importance of a rich imagination.

“When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew”

By Jan Andrews
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-952-8
www.groundwoodbooks.com

“When Apples Grew Noses…” follows the everyday yet fantastical adventures of a foreign fairy tale everyman named Ti-Jean (the introduction wisely explains that Ti-Jean is like “Jack” in the fairy tales most of us remember: a projection of our myriad selves, and whose past changes to accompany whatever story he’s in). In the three tales here Ti-Jean outwits “a greedy princess”, “a pint-sized scoundrel” and a young woman “too clever for her own good.” In short, he’s a karmic Better Business Bureau, evening up the score in places referred to as the “New World” while being faithful to the Old Country style of oral history storytelling. And unlike a lot of oral history, the stories here seem to have actually improved with each airing: plots make sense, characters are smart, and the moral lesson isn’t always obvious. And when it is – as in the case of a fiddle that’s both inspirational and magical – it evokes touches of the Pied Piper that’ll be appreciated long after the stories are finished.

“Benedict”
By Teresa Duran; Illustrations by Elena Val
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-098-7

“Migrant”
By Maxine Trottier; Illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-975-7

Both available at www.groundwoodbooks.com

The first lines of “Benedict” are very disturbing. They tell us that the little boy of the book’s title “lives in a very hot place. It is red, red, red.” And in case you didn’t get the point of all that red, Elena Val draws you a picture: battling snakes, pitchforks, and the gaping maws of hell itself. Your mouth will be gaping too when you consider that “Benedict” is about a kid living in H E double hockey sticks – but only until you realize that “Benny” is actually tired of seeing all that red. So with one springy coil of his tail (just picture the slingshot on the iPhone app “Angry Birds”) he vaults himself from a red place to a white one (the North Pole). Here everything is cold and snowy. Another “sproing!” and Benny is in the desert where everything is yellow. And so on and so on, until he’s visited earth’s whole colour scheme. “Benedict” is a cute book – and a conversation piece. I would have enjoyed it more had Teresa Duran set the whole story in various imaginary places (religious zealots, no e-mails please) and the book’s font more rousing than rudimentary.
“Migrant” is even more to the point. It’s the story of a Mennonite/Mexican child named Anna who travels north with her family each Spring to work on farms harvesting fruits and vegetables. Speaking patchy “Low German” or “Plautdietsch”, Anna doesn’t make new friends; she just tries to acclimatize herself to the new culture. At the supermarket she “listens to all the voices – to the woman with pink hair at the cash register, to the tattooed men who put cans on the shelves. But she only understands some of their words. Dollars. Peas. Meatballs.” With a child’s-eye view the book compares her life with that of a bird or rabbit migrating north each Spring and then south in the Fall. There’s Anna’s observation of her mother making “a home of yet another empty farmhouse, the rooms filled with the ghosts of last year’s workers.” Her sisters sleep in one bed, her brothers in another. In a year when immigration is a hot-button election topic, “Migrant” should be a hot-button book – and it is. It’s just so culturally sensitive and beautifully told that it’s hard to take exception with its closing message that migrants “be treated with the same respect that is extended to citizens and visitors alike.”

Serious Business: Fall Kid Lit

“The Way it Works”
By William Kowalski
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-367-2

“Silver Rain”
By Lois Peterson
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-280-4

Available through www.orcabook.com

“The Way it Works” is one of Orca’s “Rapid Reads” and presumably that means you can breeze through this 128-page book in one sitting. Then again, given that it’s about a homeless hottie living in his car after his mother’s medical expenses and death leave him both destitute and drifting, you won’t be able to put the book down until you’re finished anyway. For this is the kind of book that Orca does best: character-building through adversity. You just have to keep reading to see how things turn out – and whether our hero will win the heart of the pretty girl who doesn’t know he lives in his car. And while tweens and teens will enjoy the book, adults and writers will be equally fascinated with the economy with which Kowalski manages to draw full-fledged characters, create increasingly dramatic situations and then resolve it all in just a hundred-plus pages. Wow one.
“Silver Rain” is only fiftysomething pages longer than “The Way it Works” so it isn’t labeled a “Rapid Read” but you won’t be putting it down until you’re finished it either. What the first book had in plot, “Silver Rain” has in plot PLUS historical significance. Here, a destitute, depression-era 11-year-old named Elsie deals with vagrants, bread lines and a local dance marathon while searching for her missing father. Yes, “Silver Rain” is “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” for the tween set and it must be read - if only for curiosity value. After you pick your jaw up from the floor, however, you’ll find that this story feels wholly and respectfully authentic to its time period. There’s a Nancy Drew aspect to the book, of course (and that’ll keep the young readers reading): Will Elsie find her dad? What’s going on over at the dance marathon? But what’ll keep coming up is how Peterson gets the little, evocative details just right: old coats, stained-glass windows, and a house that looks “like a spider’s web, with the wash lines zigzagging across it.” Wow Two.

“Flying Feet”

By James McCann
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-290-3
www.orcabook.com

It used to be so easy. If a fight broke out during a hockey or soccer game it was poor sportsmanship, bad manners; it was just…wrong. These days the fights are fast becoming the main attraction. More than just “The Karate Kid” turned up a notch but not quite “Fight Club” for tweens, “Flying Feet” is about a youth seduced into that violent culture known as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Jinho, is a young man feeling constrained by the limits of traditional tae kwan do. When he’s invited to join an underground MMA club where there are no boundaries or even referees, he’s amped. That is, until he realizes just how dangerous the sport is. What follows is the customary life lesson, the learning to depend on one’s integrity, and a frightening visit to the ring against a fighter known only as “The Ripper” [shudder]. Seriously, it’s like “Rocky” - but with real suspense. Obviously, “Flying Feet” is a topical book. But it’s also a welcome and important socio-political ring tone for kids already a bit desensitized by cement head Dad’s addiction to TV’s “Ultimate Fight Club.” It’s also written in a nice, easy style that will keep both kids’ and parents’ interest in the outcome piqued. It’s also got a bit of a surprise ending – if you expected calm heads to prevail before the big fight – because if I didn’t mention it earlier there actually IS a fight!

“ShapeShifter”

By Holly Bennett
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-158-6
www.orcabook.com

These days, it seems everyone is re-writing the “Twilight” phenomenon (vampire as metaphor for alienated teen) to fit either their own writing style or to take advantage of some freakish entity (werewolf, spirit, witch) that another writer re-writing the “Twilight” phenomenon hasn’t written about yet. But even with that furious flurry of opportunistic publishing “ShapeShifter” is a standout. For starters, the book announces immediately that it intends to be different than the usual Sorcerer fare by declaring its love of Irish mythology in the Preface (nicely augmented by an old map of Ireland on the opposite page). This gives the goings-on (mythology purist alert: Bennett also includes a “version of the ancient legend” upon which she bases her story) a kind of Book of Kells curiosity and credibility. (It also gives the book an academic pedigree that parents will appreciate.) The “ShapeShifter” of the title is a Sive, a young woman discovering her powers of transformation in The Otherworld. But when she becomes a deer she becomes prey to all of the figurative and metaphoric evil around her. As for what happens next, it involves the struggle for Sive’s soul between a strong, strapping hero of Irish legend and an evil entity known only as [shudder] the Dark Man. As far as books about tween mythology go (the book is recommended for readers aged 12 years and up) “ShapeShifter” has an awful lot going for it. The story is compelling, the characters involving, the plot twists make sense, and the suspense is really, really suspenseful.

Youthquake!

“Plastic”
By Sarah N. Harvey
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-252-1

“Bear Market”
By Michele Martin Bossley
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-220-0

Both available at www.orcabook.com

Those of you disheartened by the seemingly endless downward trajectory that is tween/teen magazines can take your heads out of the oven now. Judging from two new books for kids you may be raising Noam Chomskys instead of Paris Hiltons after all. “Plastic” is the more topical of the two books. When Leah announces she wants some plastic surgery for her 16th birthday her best friend Jack tries to talk her out of it. What follows is a dramatization of every alarmist newspaper headline you’ve read in the past couple of years about young girls wanting nicer cheekbones and bigger breasts. The difference here is that Jack’s case for a modest B-Cup is fuelled by some Hardy Boys-style investigating that flushes out a couple of corner-cutting plastic surgeons. Even better, this revelation leads to a public protest – which, in turn, leads to a violent splinter group taking up Jack’s cause without his approval. While the book milks the mediagenic outrage of a culture obsessed with physical perfection, it also illustrates the embryonic fanaticism that’s borne of – seemingly - every societal protest; be it a global summit on climate change or the Winter Olympics. Forty years ago a businessman in “The Graduate” summed up the future to the younger generation with the word “plastics,” and so it has come to pass. The strongest word for tweens and teens today is a word you hardly ever hear them say: “no.” In our hyperkinetic, disposable culture, the book “Plastic” is that rarity: a readable cautionary tale about responsible activism.
As usual, “Bear Market”, about the poaching of bears for their gall bladders, is arguably the more important yet less palpable of the two books. And it’s to Bossley’s credit that her book is just grisly enough to get young minds thinking about taking up the cause, but not so much that you have to stop reading because you’re disgusted with your fellow humankind. She presents the poachers’ side with a kind of polite, cultural respect (which is more than they deserved. See? There’s my disgust for my fellow humankind) and has her three lead characters succinctly address the moral quandaries of correcting the destructive, exploitive beliefs of other cultures. Socio-politics aside, her book is a really catchy read. Sure, there’s the suspense element, but just reading the nuts and bolts about how her characters talk is oddly fascinating. Maybe it’s a backlash against all the vague “highbrow” fiction I’ve read (or just a complete disgust for the Bret Easton Ellis humankind) but the joy of “Bear Market” is just how forthright and sincere a read it is. The book captures the tween/teen energies of today’s kids in a way I hadn’t read before.

“What Do You Want?”

By Lars Klinting
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-988-7
www.groundwoodbooks.com

There’s a kind of children’s book that I call the “piece together” genre. It’s probably the most common kind of kid’s book; the kindergarten-starter book that shows how something fits with something else. “What Do You Want?” is a new addition to the “piece together” genre – but with a twist. But first a little background. Normally, I just leaf through these kinds of books to see how easily their lessons in pairing can be absorbed by a child’s eyes. But as I was reading “What Do You Want?” my mind wandered away from the etiquette lesson for newborns (i.e. chairs have to go with tables) and started to wonder about the very nature of wanting and pairing in a world where nothing is guaranteed anymore. For instance, on one page of the book is a picture of a bumblebee. The next page shows what it wants: a flower. The text says as much: “The bumble wants…[turn the page] its flower.” There. Done. But in that example arise all sorts of messy philosophical wanderings about instinct, desire, fate, and free will. Sigh… On a brighter note, of course everything in the book makes sense and is beautifully rendered in daydreamy watercolours. But as you read about all this wanting in a world of increasingly limited resources you begin to realize the book is more than just a lesson in pairing alike things. There’s a poignancy to the simplicity of this book. Read through it a couple of times and you’ll learn something important; you’ll slowly realize that contentment – real achievable contentment – already exists all around us.

Taken

Taken
By Norah McClintock
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-152-4
www.orcabook.com
Youth lit has certainly grown up since the days when “The Catcher in the Rye” – which was about a youth – was considered an adult novel (publishing house editors have since said if the book were published today it would most likely be a youth title). Fast forward 50 years and witness “Taken”, which takes as its premise the POV of a girl kidnapped by a serial killer (It’s like a prequel to “The Lovely Bones” without the pretensions).
Now, this being youth lit publishing and not the wild west internet you just know that Stephanie, the book’s narrator, is going to mine her confidence, resources and survival lessons taught by her grandfather to survive her ordeal. That’s a given, right? Right? What we’re not prepared for, though, is the news that since Stephanie’s run away from home before she knows the police won’t be looking for her. Uh oh. And suddenly “Taken” takes on a whole new emotion for this genre: dread.
But before any happy ending (and I’m not saying there is a happy ending just that most youth lit books have happy endings) we’re treated to the obligatory checklist of do’s and don’ts for at-risk kids (which is another major ingredient of youth lit). Thankfully, the lessons are made palpable by McClintock’s winning way with the way tweens and teens talk and think and text. Even more impressive is how effective the book is at warning and informing parents and kids about avoiding dangerous situations and dealing with them when they happen. “Taken” is a keeper.