bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Tecumseh by J. Laxer
Authors: Rogers Anne 
Published: April 2016

Laxer, James. (2012). Tecumseh. Toronto, Ontario: Groundwood Books. Print. A university political science professor may seem an unlikely author of a children’s book on the legendary native leader Tecumseh but York University’s James Laxer’s keen interest in the War of 1812 and the relationship between the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh and British Major General Isaac Brock, make him ideally suited to the task. In 2012, the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 was marked by the release of two books by Laxer, Tecumseh and Brock: the War of 1812, for adults and Tecumseh by Laxer and illustrated by Richard Rudnicki, for children. In this second book, the reader is presented with richly coloured and detailed illustrations and accessible text depicting the journey of Tecumseh from infancy to his death in 1813. The reader learns about the way of life of his family, the challenges faced when settlers moved into the area, and of course, the major battles in which he played a key role. The text is organized into chronological segments with headings referring to events or significant people in Tecumseh’s life. While there is not a table of contents to guide the reader, the language is appropriate for young readers, as well as a timeline, glossary and clearly labeled maps at both the front and back of the book. Tecumseh was motivated to take action after his father was killed in 1774 by American militiamen advancing on Shawnee land. This constant fear of expropriation led Tecumseh to consider the best options for defending native territory. His military and leadership skills made him a natural choice to head a native confederacy against the determined American colonists. By 1812, when the Americans had declared war on Great Britain, Tecumseh was ready to go into battle to fight for Native lands previously taken by force. He decided that the best choice to do this was to ally with the British under Major General Isaac Brock. Together they strategized and fought at Detroit, Queenston, and Moraviantown. During the short span between August and October, both leaders lost their lives. Their deaths would negatively impact the effort to ensure that there would be Native lands when borders were later drawn between Canada and the United States. Laxer concludes with these words: “In the end, the confederacy did not win. But Tecumseh’s courage, eloquence and steadiness of purpose continue to fascinate people in many parts of the world two centuries after his death. He remains a symbol of justice for the native tribes of North America” (p. 52). Ideal for children aged 8-12, grades 3-7. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Anne Rogers Anne Rogers is a teacher-librarian in a K-6 school in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She loves reading, running and cheering on her family in their pursuits.
50 Below Zero by R. Munsch
Authors: Campbell Sandy 
Published: April 2016

Munsch, Robert. 50 Below Zero. Illus. Michael Martchenko. Richmond Hill, ON: Annick Press, 2013. Print.Originally published in a larger format in 1986, 50 Below Zero has been republished as a board book. The story is a northern and cold climate one, created while Munsch was making a book tour stop in Watson Lake in the Yukon Territory. However, while the setting is cold, the story is really about sleepwalking.The text of the board book is much abbreviated from the original. Much of the repetition, for example Jason’s “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” and the father’s running three times around something whenever he is wakened have been removed, as well as a segment where Jason finds his father in the bathtub. However, the story still contains enough repetition to amuse the intended audience of 2 to 5 year-olds. Like many of Munsch’s books, the story presents a child who takes control of a problem and solves it. Jason repeatedly gets up to find his father in a new location to which he has sleep walked. Most importantly, he locates him out in the forest when it is “50 Below Zero”, asleep against a tree. Had Jason not found him and brought him back to warm up in the bathtub, he surely would have died. So Jason saves the day and even figures out how to keep his father out of danger while sleepwalking.Most of Michael Martchenko’s illustrations are in an icy blue, reflecting the cold winter landscape. All of the images are fun and will elicit a smile from both child and adult readers.This book has stood the test of time and does well in the board book format. It would be a good addition to school libraries, public libraries and libraries with polar children’s collections.Highly Recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.
The Highest Number in the World by R. MacGregor
Authors: Sulz David 
Published: April 2016

MacGregor, Roy. The Highest Number in the World. Illus. G. Despres. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2014. Print.It shouldn’t surprise you that Roy MacGregor writes a good children’s book about hockey especially if you read the Globe and Mail where he is a sports writer. Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of professional sport with little interest in stats, trades, and game results. However, Roy MacGregor always finds an interesting twist to set his stories apart.So it is with this book. On first glance, it seems to be about a hockey-prodigy; a 9-year-old girl idolizing a famous Canadian female hockey player so much she would give up playing because she has to wear #9 on her new team (not the #22 of her idol). How predictable and boring is that? BUT… her grandma sets her straight on why #9 is actually a better number to live “up” to (incidentally, “highest” in the title refers to height).The illustrations are fantastic - filled with witty references to the life of a Canadian, 9-year-old, hockey-loving girl such as drawings hung with hockey tape, embarrassing Velcro skates with toe-picks, sock-monkeys, and many more.A small quibble is the passive voice used in the first few pages; while chronologically correct, it detracts from the opening action just a little. Then again, hockey games themselves usually build up in intensity and excitement. The main reason for loving this book is the use of history to change perceptions. In a world so concerned with the desires of now, this book reminds us that the present is intimately shaped by the past (even if we don’t quite yet know how). Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: David SulzDavid is a Public Services Librarian at University of Alberta and liaison librarian to Economics, Religious Studies, and Social Work. He has university studies in Library Studies, History, Elementary Education, Japanese, and Economics; he formerly taught in schools and museums. His interests include physical activity, music, home improvements, and above all, things Japanese.
Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by J. Boyne
Authors: Feisst Debbie 
Published: April 2016

Boyne, John. Stay Where You Are and Then Leave. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2014. Print.John Boyce, multiple award winning author of children’s and adult books including The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas delivers another emotional yet tender tale for younger readers set during wartime.Alfie Summerfield had always remembered the day the fighting started. It was July 28, 1914, and it was his 5th birthday. It was also around the time he learned that his father would be headed to fight, having volunteered in hopes of making it easier on the family. More than four years had passed since that day, and nine-year-old Alfie thought about it and his dad Georgie all the time. The letters that his father regularly sent stopped arriving, and Alfie fears he is dead although his mother insists he is still alive. Not much is said about Georgie, though Alfie is led to believe he is on a long and secret war mission and his mom Margie cries a lot when she thinks he cannot hear her.Alfie’s life revolves around his hard-working mother Margie, skipping school, his Granny and the friends he had made in the row houses along Damley Road including Kalena and her father Mr. Janáček. After the army relocated Kalena and her father to the Isle of Man as ‘persons of special interest’ Alfie discovers that they left behind a shoe shine box. Insistent on helping his worn out mother and not keen on attending school, Alfie secretly takes a job as a shoe shine boy where one day he makes a startling discovery: his father’s name on a stack of his customer’s hospital papers, relating to a military hospital just a train ride away.What follows is Alfie’s journey to learn the truth about his father’s whereabouts. His steadfast determination to keep his family together is touching and heartfelt. This would be an excellent book to use in a classroom in relation to World War One or to be read together at bedtime so that young readers have a chance to ask questions.Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.
Circle Nine by A. Hetzel
Authors: Mead-Willis Sarah 
Published: April 2016

Heltzel, Anne. Circle Nine. Somerville, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2011. Print. Why are hapless females in YA novels always named Abby? I don’t know, the amnesiac narrator of Circle Nine would reply. That’s just what it says on my necklace. So begins Anne Heltzel’s debut thriller: a teenaged girl awakens on the pavement outside a burning building with no memories and no name, save the one she wears in gold around her neck. With her is a mysterious, charismatic youth named Sam, who claims to be her friend. Sam persuades Abby to retreat from the fire and into the woods, where they hide in the safety of his “cave-palace”: a glittering subterranean paradise full of shimmering fabrics and sumptuous furniture. There, the two of them sip pomegranate wine, discuss fine literature, and forswear all contact with the outside world, which Sam likens to an Aleghierian hell (hence the book’s title). We suspect this a fantasy, invented by Abby to protect herself from an uglier cave and an uglier Sam, to say nothing of the ugly events occluded by her smoke-kippered memory. The question is: whose fantasy is it? What sixteen-year-old with cheap bling on her neck would retreat into a happy place wrought with literary allusion, Platonic cave metaphors, and Oriental carpets? This is clearly the reverie of the author herself, still in love with her various muses. Abby’s fantasyland, though out of character, is not necessarily a detriment to the novel itself. Indeed, we could do without the predictable combination of flashbacks and sleuthing by which Abby reconstructs her true identity, and abide instead within her doomed and darkly luminous otherworld. For it is there that Heltzel’s storytelling is at its boldest, her writing most sensuous and wild, and it is here that the novel promises—if only briefly—to be something other than the dreary chestnut about a naïve girl brought low by bad luck and sly men.Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Sarah Mead-Willis Sarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria.
The Honeybee Man by L. Nargi
Authors: Mead-Willis Sarah 
Published: April 2016

Nargi, Lela. The Honeybee Man. Illus. Kyrsten Brooker. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2011. Print. This charming picture book chronicles the unconventional cottage industry of Fred, a Brooklynite who spends his spare time tending three colonies of honeybees housed on the roof of his townhouse. As the day unfolds, we follow Fred’s bees as they fan out across the borough, bringing back nectar from the herb gardens, flower pots, and even wild blueberry bushes flowering therein. Fred then harvests the honey and distributes jars of it to his neighbours. With this growing popularity of urban agriculture (and urban apiculture), Nargi’s story is a timely one, clearly aimed at progressive young families interested in the connection between local ecology and human community. The book is transparently but not disagreeably didactic: bee behaviour is examined and explained (both within the context of the story and in a two-page appendix), and the processes of beekeeping and honeymaking are illuminated through Fred’s perambulations within his apartment-cum-apiary. Brooker’s illustrations, a combination of gestural painting and collage, have a patchwork, handmade quality well suited to the book’s overarching preoccupation with all things organic and homespun. Her renderings of Brooklyn’s brownstone vistas are simple in their bright, flat planes of colour, but also satisfyingly dense with decoupaged texture and detail. Like the honey made by Fred’s “tireless Brooklyn bees,” her artwork is both a concentration - and a sweetening - of the teeming heterogeneity of urban life.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sarah Mead-Willis Sarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria.
Sous ma roche par C. Duguay Mallet
Authors: Gomez Leticia 
Published: April 2016

Duguay Mallet, Chantal. Sous ma roche. Bouton d’or arcadie. Collection : Étagère poussette. Acadie (Canada), 2015. Imprimé.Sous ma roche c’est l’histoire d’un entomologiste en herbe qui va à la rencontre des insectes. Il y découvre de petites créatures bien connues telles que la fourmi ou encore le forficule.Ce petit livre est très ludique et cela n’a rien d’étonnant quand on sait que Chantal Duguay Mallet est enseignante de la petite enfance, dramaturge pour la jeunesse et auteur de deux albums illustrés. Ses talents de dessinatrice lui ont aussi valu la chance de publier ses dessins dans le magazine Rocket Science, en France et par dessus tout elle travaille également comme aide-libraire. Ainsi, on comprend mieux pourquoi, Sous ma roche est un petit bijou qui fera sourire les jeunes lecteurs et atténuera peut-être l’entomophobie de leurs parents.Ce livre est un outil pédagogique idéal pour enseigner aux enfants quelques noms d’insectes très communs, rencontrés dans n’importe quel jardin canadien. Pour que le jeune lecteur retienne ce nouveau vocabulaire, l’auteur utilise de courtes phrases où chaque insecte rime avec un autre mot ce qui rythme le récit. Les illustrations de Danica Brine sont particulièrement bien faites et se marient à merveille avec le texte.Sous ma roche est donc une excellente introduction aux sciences naturelles et invite même le jeune lecteur à explorer son jardin puisque l’histoire se termine ainsi : "Et toi… qu’est-ce qu’il y a sous ta roche ?"Note : 4 étoilesAuteur de la critique : Leticia GomezLeticia étudie au Campus Saint-Jean depuis trois ans où elle effectue un baccalauréat en éducation secondaire avec une majeure en littérature. Elle écrit également des critiques littéraires pour le Franco, un journal francophone local.
The Great Katie Kate Explains Epilepsy by M. M. DeLand
Authors: Desmeules Robin 
Published: April 2016

DeLand, M. Maitland. The Great Katie Kate Explains Epilepsy. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Books, 2014. Print.The Great Katie Kate Explains Epilepsy marks the fourth book in this educational series written by M. Maitland DeLand. As a radiation oncologist who specializes in the treatment of children, Dr. DeLand began this series as a way of helping children and their caregivers learn about the child’s particular condition. Each book in the series recounts a story of a child learning about their illness from the Great Katie Kate, a young, readheaded superhero who swoops in to answer their questions and help them combat the “Worry Wombat,” a furry manifestation of the child’s anxieties that only goes away once their questions are answered.Based on the premise that kids are sharp and that information can help them, this book provides concise and clear information about epilepsy. It documents the experiences of Jimmy, a young boy who has seizures and is taken to hospital. There, he encounters the Great Katie Kate, who takes Jimmy and several other young people on a journey where she and the other children explain epilepsy, its diagnosis, and its treatment.Overall, the book provides clear explanations of the types, diagnosis, treatment, and management of epilepsy. Any complex terms in the book are the actual medical names bound to be used by their treatment teams. Although the text may be too long or complicated for a very young child to read on their own it is of an acceptable level for 8-12 age range. The illustrations are colourful and generally informative.Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Robin DesmeulesRobin is an Academic Librarian Intern at the J.W. Scott Health Sciences Library at the University of Alberta. Robin is an avid devourer of fiction of all kinds.
Wear a Helmet! Healthy Safety Habits by M.E. Salzmann
Authors: Borle Sean 
Published: April 2016

Salzmann, Mary Elizabeth. Wear a Helmet! Healthy Safety Habits. Minneapolis, MN: Abdo Publishing, 2015, Print.This small picture book is levelled to the third or “transitional” reading level defined in the Sandcastle series. This series is designed for use in “shared, guided and independent reading and writing activities to support a balanced approach to literacy instruction”. The subject of the book is health and safety. Each photograph shows a child doing something that promotes safety: wearing a bike helmet, a life preserver or a seatbelt. Other children are shown washing hands, using a pot holder and seated at a computer to illustrate online safety. The children featured are in the 7-9 age range and are named to allow readers to relate to them more easily. Younger children will look up to older children pictured doing the right things. The text is short and very simple, designed for children who are not yet fluent readers. However, for average readers, who might pick up this book in a library, the text would be most appropriate for the lower end of the recommended age 4-9 audience. There is a brief quiz at the end of the book, aimed at a low comprehension level. Strangely, some of the definitions in the glossary contain words that are well above the reading level of the book. For example, the definition of the word “germ” includes the word “organism”. While this book is designed for reading enhancement programs, it does model useful health and safety ideas, so would be a good addition for school and public libraries.Recommendation: 3 stars out of 4Reviewer: Sean BorleSean Borle is a University of Alberta undergraduate student who is an advocate for child health and safety.
Take What You Can Carry by C. K. Pyle
Authors: Kulyk Tamzen 
Published: April 2016

Pyle, C. Kevin. Take What You Can Carry. New York. Henry Holt and Company LLC, 2012. Print. ​This graphic novel intertwines two different stories, set four generations apart. The two stories are told in alternating perspectives of the two main characters, Ken and Kyle. To emphasize and distinguish between the two different stories, Pyle uses two diverse colors to set them apart. Ken’s story, in sepia tones, is set in 1941 when his family is sent to a Japanese Internment camp. Kyle’s story, in blue watercolor, takes place in 1978 in Chicago when he moves to a new neighborhood, is making new friends and rebelling against his father. ​ At the beginning it seems as though the two stories may never connect. Ken’s family has been uprooted from their home, his father is placed in jail, and he and his family are taken to an internment camp where they are treated like animals. Ken is faced with many decisions and choices about how to deal with his new life. Similarly, Kyle’s new friends begin stealing and they all become more reckless. Although Ken and Kyle’s worlds are vastly different, they are both faced with strikingly similar choices. Both teenagers are able to rise above, with the help of a wise adult, and take responsibility for their actions, and discover compassion and loyalty despite the hardships faced. Ken’s story has no narration or text, only pictures. This requires the reader to rely on the images to infer and make meaning from them. As a result, Ken’s story can be difficult to understand and necessitates an experienced visual reader with an ability to draw conclusions from images, and a reader interested enough to reread sections. Historical notes are provided at the end of the story to fill in the gaps and provide further context for the reader. Despite the shortcomings of having to put the pieces together, it does challenge the reader to think critically about this time in history and make connections to current day society. A thought provoking read, with important messages for all ages about forgiveness and finding happiness even in the most destitute of situations. Recommended for school library collections. ​ ​Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Tamzen Kulyk ​ Tamzen Kulyk is a teacher-librarian at two elementary schools in the Saskatoon Public School Division in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The Best Birthday Party Ever by J. LaRue Huget
Authors: Feisst Debbie 
Published: April 2016

Huget, Jennifer LaRue. The Best Birthday Party Ever. Illus. LeUyen Pham. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2011. Print. “My birthday is 5 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, and 8 hours away. Today I started to plan my party.” And so the planning begins for the 5-year-old soon-to-be birthday girl in this charming picture book. She has to start planning early if she wants the best birthday party ever. She is going to invite all 57 of her friends including the mailman and the invitations will be sprinkled with fairy dust. She will have 9 thousand balloons, streamers and napkins: all in pink. On the menu is a 17-layer cake, each layer a different flavour, with 6 zillion candles on top. Not only will there be: a magician, camel rides and a Ferris wheel, but each lucky guest will receive a hamster as a party favour. In a kid-friendly countdown style towards the big day, our sweet party planner gets more and more excited as her birthday approaches and the plans get more and more grandiose. Only after her mother comments that this birthday party is “getting out of hand” does she agree to skip the sparkly necklaces. The day finally arrives and while it may not be the party she dreamed of, she is appreciative and enjoys her day so much that she immediately begins plans for her next birthday. This beautifully illustrated read-aloud captures the excitement of a child as she looks forward to her special day and will appeal to lower elementary grades as well as preschoolers. The whimsical mostly-pink drawings may be initially off-putting to boys but they are certain to relate and enjoy the story. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.