Today I wanted to let you know about three titles by Canadian writer Eric Walters (published by Canada’s Tundra Press). The three books are all set at Rolling Hills Residence, an orphanage in rural Kenya. Each book is a fictionalized…
Author: J.L. Powers
J.L. Powers is the author of the y.a. novels This Thing Called the Future and The Confessional, and editor the forthcoming anthology That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone.
The No. 1 Car Spotter, in honor of MLK Jr.
I suppose it’s sort of an odd choice to review The No. 1 Car Spotter by Nigerian author Atinuke in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. But it’s not as odd as you might think. Bear with me and…
Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend by Erika T. Wurth
I knew from the very first sentence of Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend, by Erika T. Wurth, that I was reading a young adult novel like no other–that the voice was going to be entirely original, the setting one of those “invisible”…
The Boy on the Page: a celebration of life and love
I started shivering as I read The Boy on the Page by Peter Carnavas (Kane Miller), shivering with delight. A young boy shows up on a blank page in a book and wonders, “Why am I here?” Soon he starts…
A Cat’s View of Palestine: Deborah Ellis does it again
You know, if somebody just told me the premise of this book (“American girl dies suddenly and finds herself reincarnated, with all her memories intact, as a cat living in Palestine”) I would have thought, That is too cheesy for…
Two: exploring the politics of exclusion and us v. them
When you think of counting books, what do you think of? For the most part, a pretty basic book, right? Something that teaches kids about numbers, or a number, and tries to make it fun, but doesn’t, at the same…
“Too Big to Fail?”–the tension between institutions and individuals in The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely
I love novels like Brendan Kiely’s The Gospel of Winter. Besides being an engaging read, it thoughtfully examines wide-ranging and important issues in society—indeed, the questions that Kiely explores imply issues well beyond the novel’s premise of a young man…
Scar Boys by Len Vlahos
Len Vlahos’s Scar Boys explores a friendship between two boys, one who feels inferior (the protagonist Harry) because of his scars from a terrible accident when he was young and the other (Johnny) who takes advantage of Harry’s feelings of…
Tigers, Sunsets, and Tangerine Dresses
Honestly, the trailer for Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino might do the book more justice than anything I can say about it. I picked up a copy of this delightful picture book from Groundwood Books at…
Music IS the Weapon: A review of Coda & Chorus by Emma Trevayne
A documentary of one my favorite musicians, the Nigerian Afropop star Fela, is titled Music is the Weapon (http://vimeo.com/8818071). Fela used music as his way to speak truth to power—it was such a powerful weapon that the government arrested him…