Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned publishing company that “aims to promote and preserve the stories, knowledge and spirit of northern Canada”, produces wonderful picture books many of which CanLit for LittleCanadians has had the pleasure of reviewing, including Games of Survival, Grandmother Ptarmigan, The Blind Boy and the Loon, The Legend of Lightning and Thunder, Lesson for the Wolf, Painted Skies, Sweetest Kulu, Kamik An Inuit Puppy Story, and Tuniit: Mysterious Folk of the Arctic. Way Back Then continues that tradition by focusing on the Inuit oral tradition of a father, Kudlu, who begins to tell his sweet children, his “kuluit”, stories his grandparents told him about what things were like long ago.
There is the origin story of night and day, based on a fox who wanted darkness so that it could steal from others, and the one of how sea mammals arose from a woman tricked into marryng a bird spirit. The myths about the origins of the caribou that fill the North and how the land populated itself with babies that were adoped by people of the North are also shared with Kudlu’s children. And then there are the tales of magical igluit (pl. of iglu) that could travel through the air and of the nanurluk, the giant polar bear, which could be so large as to be mistaken for icebergs (see illustration below).
The stories, however, are short and not always complete, as Kudlu whispers to his sleeping children that “…when I was a child, I always fell asleep before my grandparents got to the end of each story, and I never heard the endings.” (pg. 33) Regardless, these stories are born of a time of magic and a place wholly arctic and lovingly illustrated by Inuit artist Germaine Arnaktauyok. Germaine Arnaktauyok's illustrations, drawn meticulously with pen and coloured pencils, have a somewhat pointilistic flavour to them because of the visible dotting. Yet, the artwork is easily identifiable (unlike much pointilism) and has an essence of ethereal realism to it, easily complementing the magic and natural world of Neil Christopher's stories and text.
Way Back Then may be short, incomplete myths told within the context of a bedtime story, but it is a larger-than-life (much like the lemming and giant polar bear within) story that celebrates oral storytelling, both in Inuktitut and English here, that will provide parents and educators with the seeds for expanding that storytelling practice to a new generation.
I’m sorry I didn’t review this book sooner but I should have recalled how much I’d been impressed with B. R. Myers’ debut novel, Butterflies Don’t Lie (Nimbus, 2014). But, here I am again, reviewing in winter a book that takes place during summer. Let’s look at it this way, though: it’s that time of year when high school students are thinking about summer jobs and parents are anticipating signing up their children for summer camps. So, it’s still all good: both Girl on the Run and reviewing Girl on the Run now.
Seventeen-year-old Jesse Collins used to be a runner and a very good one. But that all changed four months ago when her father died suddenly.
I used to care about provincial records, and even the Olympics, but not anymore. Those were things I no longer had, and no longer deserved. I put my hand on my stomach, on the heaviness that was always there. A reminder of what I’d done and what I’d lost. (pg. 49)
Now it’s all she can do to push forward through her days, convince her mother that she’s not depressed and give in to her BFF’s attempts to get her dating and meeting the right guy. Jesse needs a fresh start and two months at Kamp Krystal Lake as a counsellor is what she plans to do. What she doesn’t plan on is there being a mix-up with the camp thinking she was a male and entrusting her with Cabin 4A, a small makeshift cabin, and four twelve-year-old boys: the camp owner’s terror of a son, Spencer; twins Liam and Duff; and the kindest of all, Scotty.
While Jesse tries to make the best of things, which isn’t always easy, she does meet new people who don’t know about her past and she’s so good with that. There’s Devin, another counsellor (or so she thinks) that is making the moves on her; Lewis, recent grad and part of the kitchen staff; Alicia, a friendly lifeguard; Lacey, the perfect counsellor to a cabin of pink cupettes, as Jesse calls them; and Kirk, the head counsellor who always seems to catch her at her worst but whose milk chocolate eyes consistently attract her notice.
But the pranks pulled by the boys, including a fake drowning that costs Jesse a special necklace from her parents, commemorating her first provincial running record, brings her to the attention of the camp director, Susan, who wonders, along with Kirk and Lacey, whether they should be looking for another counsellor for the boys. And, though the camp is eager to have Jesse run for them in the annual lake triathlon against other camps, Jesse is adamant that she will not.
Still, guilt-ridden about her dad’s death, Jesse perseveres, through humiliation and misunderstandings and misplaced crushings and some kissing, to find that she has a lot more gumption than she first thought and is able to make Kamp Krystal Lake a positive experience for more than just herself.
B. R. Myers embeds a lot of constructive messages in this sweet volume of teen chicklit. Not only do readers get to share in a summer fling with Jesse and go through the full camp experience of outdoor activities, dances, dining hall shenanigans and food, they will learn a lot about Jesse’s namesake, runner Jesse Owens, about working through guilt and grief, and about resiliency. Lessons well learned and even enjoyed by Jesse herself, the Girl on the Run.
Ten-year-old Kenny (Kenji in Japanese) worships his older brother, Mickey (Mitsuo), a baseball hero whose outstanding performance on the Asahi baseball team has given him fame and popularity. Despite Kenny's suspected heart condition, he is determined to practice secretly with Mickey so he, too, can one day try out for the Asahi. But world events soon overtake life in this quiet community. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in 1941, everything for Kenny and his family spirals out of control: schools are closed, businesses are confiscated, fathers are arrested and sent to work camps in the BC interior and mothers and children are relocated to internment camps. When Mickey is arrested for a small act of violence, Kenny manages to keep his family's spirits up, despite the deplorable conditions in camp. Coming across a "vacant" field covered with scrap wood, broken shakes and torn tar paper, Kenny gets permission to clear it and convert it into a baseball field. One by one, the boys in the camp pitch in, and the work gives purpose to their long days. Kenny's persistence, hard work and big dreams shape the teen he is to become in this story of happiness found despite all odds.
Forget today's world. Meaghan McIsaac will take you into the new world of 2083 when people live in tiny apartments, use droidlets as keepers of all information, where schools are 64 floors high, water is scarce, powerful winds called Eventualies bombard everyone and everything, and there are Movers, people with the special ability to move others called their Shadows from the future of war, famine and disease to their own time. And, because there are Movers, there is the Bureau of Movement Activity Control (BMAC) and the anti-Mover group, We Are Now, and Movers' Prison and Shelving–whereby Movers convicted of moving their Shadows are Shelved i.e., put into "An endless sleep. A living kind of deadness" (pg. 2). It's a totally different world and it's the world of fourteen-year-old Patrick Mermick whose father Michael was Shelved after Moving his Shadow, Oscar Joji, from the future, killing him in the process and causing considerable damage. Problem is that Michael Mermick was a Phase 2 Mover and incapable of Moving his Shadow.
Now Pat and little sister Maggie, both Phase 1 Movers, and Mom Izzy, a Non-Mover, must live in a world of monthly Mover renewal forms and much discrimination. Not surprising Mom is known as a Mover symathizer, protesting Shelving, and helping Movers falsity their FIILES–digital accounts of their lives–to keep them from being treated as criminals.
Then everything goes from bad to worse. Mom gets called into Maggie’s school, because of Mags' new behaviours suggesting the need for a Phase upgrade, and they are both being taken to BMAC headquarters when Mom tells Maggie to make a run for it. Maggie heads to Pat’s school where a Movement creates destruction and chaos while bringing over the Shadow of Gabby, a classmate of Pat’s and a favourite target of the bullies. Together, Pat and Gabby and Maggie become fugitives and must delve into the underworld of Mover society in order to survive and avoid Shelving.
Movers is an earth-shattering, action-packed futuristic adventure of the heightest proportions. Set in a future that appears to be of our own making–depletion of most resources, scarcity of others, continued discrimination for those who are different–with new technology and supernatural elements of time-travel, Movers is incessant in its fast pacing and rife with villains of all natures–bureaucratic, school bullies and future warlords–keeping the action steady and plot unravelling.
Another blast sends tremors rippling through the building. The cement begins to give way under my right foot and there’s nothing I can do. My body is in freefall and I cry out. My brain shuts down, and there’s only one thought–I’m so dead–but my hand still has a grip on the metal bar.
I dangle there, scream-crying with Gabby while the rough rusty bar cuts into my palm. My vocal cords feel ready to snap while the rest of me is consumed by fear. No Gabby, no Movement, just – falling.
My temples start buzzing, like the lightning has shot right through them, and I can feel him, my Shadow, suddenly aware of me. He’s angry, overwhelmed by the emotion flooding out of my body and suddenly I’m furious too. (pg. 50-51)
It’s like Die Hard meets The Time Traveler’s Wife for teen readers except the threat is from within and a romance doesn’t drive the story. But the threat is real and the time travel is real and the horrors of discrimination are real. And, to cause even more discomfort for readers, the story of Movers isn’t over because Meaghan McIsaac leaves readers on the edge of time and place, literally, with an ending that can’t even begin to be resolved until Book 2 of this new series is announced. Hang on.
Labels: crime, crows, discrimination, future, guilt, labels, Meaghan McIsaac, Movers, science fiction, siblings, speculative fiction, time travel, Tundra Books, young adult
Author Carol Anne Shaw introduced West Coast Hannah and her supernatural affinities in Hannah and the Spindle Whorl (Ronsdale Press, 2010) and followed up with Hannah and the Salish Sea (Ronsdale Press, 2013). In both stories, Hannah, a teen who lives in Cowichan Bay, had been touched by First Nations spirits of the past, giving her a greater appreciation for their history and for the environment. Though Hannah and the Wild Woods is the third book in the series, I am pleased to say that it can be read without reading Books 1 and 2, capably standing alone with a new set of characters and story line, while keeping Hannah tethered in spirit to her roots and passions.
It’s spring break and fifteen-year-old Hannah is heading to the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve to work with the Coast-is-Clear program, clearing beach debris, much washed up from the Japanese tsunami of 2011. Surprisingly, also going is Sabrina Webber, Hannah’s rich-girl nemesis, who has to do some eco-community service to avoid juvie for shoplifting.
Things at home are a little tenuous with Hannah’s dad considering moving them from their houseboat at Cowichan Bay to a home in Victoria with his girlfriend, Annie. Moreover, Hannah’s boyfriend Max is in Mexico vacationing with his family and seemingly at arm’s length. But Hannah does have Jack, her raven buddy, who follows her to the Tofino area where she will be staying at the lodge called the Artful Elephant with other Coast-is-Clear volunteers. Led by the program facilitator, Peter, and his girlfriend Jade, Hannah and Sabrina are joined by an older teen, Kimiko, who reveals that she lived through the tsunami and has lost her father. But there is something unsettling about Kimiko, from the way she moves and disappears sometimes to her relentless questioning of Hannah, and it’s evident that the lodge’s resident dog, Norman, thinks things are off with Kimiko too, kicking up a fuss whenever she’s around.
When a glass ball with curious markings on a gold chain that Jack finds for Hannah goes missing, Hannah begins to suspect Kimiko. But, Hannah has no idea how weird things are going to get, especially when she spies a fox with multiple tails and the glass ball and chain hanging from one of them. There’s also a lone wolf that appears to be watching the lodge and the volunteers. With Jack’s help, Hannah tries to learn Kimiko’s secret and that of the fox and wolf, and make things right for the whole lot of them, while still working to clean up the environment. She’s one busy girl.
It’s evident that Carol Anne Shaw has great affection for the West Coast, its people and environment, and she takes the reader into that milieu easily.
I push my hair under my hat and face the sea, leaning into the wind at a forty-five degree angle. It's as though the wind up here is on steroids! I hang for a couple of moments, feeling weightless before allowing myself to be blown back upright. I feel a little bit like the shrubs and western hemlock out on the point, all of them growing in the same direction, shaped by years of being hammered by the relentless winds. (pg. 38-39)
Everything Hannah feels and does is embedded in that caring and concern and she is a totally believable character. She wants to be good and do good but is still human with her distress, frustration, suspicion, worry and anger. But by tying in elements of Japanese folklore, specifically the kitsune and Okami, Carol Anne Shaw makes Hannah and the Wild Woods into a bigger story of finding oneself and one’s family and accepting mistakes as learning steps. Kimiko has lots of learning to do (even if she is almost 900 years old!) but, at 15, Hannah has lots of life wisdom to share. Though there are multiple harrowing circumstances and even a devastating loss, Hannah and the Wild Woods will deliver the reader to a calm that can only appear after the storm. Look forward to the ending.
The son of former slaves, Garrett Morgan, came from humble beginnings, working on a Kentucky farm alongside his family before heading north at 14 to find something more. His first invention came by simple observation from the clothing factory floor which he cleaned. Sewing machine belts were often breaking and Garrett Morgan's development of a stronger belt resulted in a promotion to sewing-machine repairman. Garrett Morgan relayed this success into his own sewing-machine shop and tailoring shop, and was on his way.
Garrett Morgan could well have been considered a success at this point, owning his own house, and running his own businesses. His successes were all the more because he was an African-American man in a time of great prejudice and ignorance. But he continued to develop new products, serendipitously developing a cream for hair straightening which led to his first patent and the beginnings of the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company.
But the key product for which Garrett Morgan is showcased in To the Rescue! came from the man's shock at the death toll from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City in 1911. Determined to help the firefighters breathe while inside burning buildings, Garrett Morgan developed a safety hood, the precursor to the gas mask, that utilized long hoses to draw breathable air from ground level and allow the wearer to exhale safely, with a sponge to filter out smoke. He called it Morgan's Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. Though it worked, it was often shunned because the inventor was black.
It wasn't until a gas explosion trapped more than thirty men underground in Cleveland that Garrett Morgan's safety hood was utilized and applauded as valuable. Not surprising the safety hood was developed further for use as a gas mask during World War I.
With Black History Month upon us and To the Rescue! Garrett Morgan Underground just published last month, it seems appropriate that I share the book with readers now. Everyone knows the big inventors like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison but Monica Kulling continues to shine some publishing light on the accomplishments of lesser known but just as notable inventors. The safety hood was a great idea and Garrett Morgan is deserving of recognition for this achievement. It’s heartbreaking that the colour of his skin may have prevented earlier implementation of his invention and perhaps could have saved lives sooner. Fortunately, some were able to see beyond that and accept the significance of the safety hood for everyone.
Surprising, Tundra’s Great Idea Series uses a variety of illustrators, though the text is wholly Monica Kulling, and I like the selection of David Parkins to illustrate To the Rescue! Garrett Morgan Underground. David Parkins, who also illustrated In the Bag! Margaret Knight Wraps It Up and Spic-and-Span! Lillian Gilbreth's Wonder Kitchen by Monica Kulling, is reknowned as a cartoonist, including an editorial cartoonist for The Globe & Mail, and there’s a retro cartoon feel to the art that works well for To the Rescue! The illustrations of pen and ink with watercolours are embedded in realism, necessary for non-fiction, but still gentle and detailed, conveying much about the time and the people, critical for a biography.
I understand that there will only be ten books in the Great Idea Series and this one is the eighth. So, if you haven’t already, get with it and start your collection of illustrated biographies with To The Rescue! Garrett Morgan Underground to recognize the inventiveness of one African American while talking up safety and necessity as the mother of invention.
Labels: African-American, David Parkins, Garrett Morgan, Garrett Morgan Underground, gas mask, Great Idea Series, hair products, inventor, Monica Kulling, non-fiction, picture book, safety, safety hood, To the Rescue
Two years ago I prepared my first book list of 54 youngCanLit titles for Black History Month. I have updated that list periodically when important titles were brought to my attention or were newly published, like Caroline Pignat’s Governor-General award-winning book, The Gospel Truth. But, it gets to the point when that list becomes a bit ragged and the formatting starts to go wonky and I thought it best to update it and reorganize it completely. I hope that, in this more complete list of 76 titles, enhanced with the addition of titles brought to my attention by readers, everyone will find something that helps them grasp the importance of Black History Month to all Canadians.
Labels: achievements, Black History Month, book list, civil rights, fiction, film, freedom, heritage, history, non-fiction, picture books, plays, racism, settlement, Underground Railroad, young adult