Terrible Roar of Water

Terrible Roar of Water
by Penny Draper
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Karen Lawson
$8.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-414-9

Penny Draper once again hits the mark with her latest young adult novel in the Disaster Strikes Series. This exciting story is set in a remote fishing village in Newfoundland and focuses on the tsunami that hit there on November 18, 1929.

Draper is a gifted writer who understands how to combine historical facts and fiction. It is obvious that she conducts a great deal of in-depth research in order to maintain historical accuracy in her book. Draper weaves a page turner of a story that merges fictional characters and authentic historical facts. She also explores the culture and traditions of a fishing village to show what life was like at that time.

The hero of her tale is Murphy, a twelve year old boy who loves the sea and the life of a fisherman. He lives in a small outport with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. The life of a fisherman is full of struggle and danger but Murphy embraces it with passionate enthusiasm.

Murphy’s life is turned upside down in a matter of minutes one night when his community is demolished by a disaster called a tsunami tidal wave. Homes and buildings are literally torn apart and washed out to sea. Murphy is put to the test and is part of a rescue team that does its best to save as many people as possible. He is forced to grow up fast and live up to the meaning of his name which is “sea warrior”. His love for the sea has been challenged but in his heart he knows that he will do whatever it takes to help rebuild and restore the community after the devastating events of that night. His deep attachment to the sea never falters and he is more determined than ever to become a fisherman.

This book is not only a great adventure story but is also a valuable teaching tool.

Published in:  on 10 February 2010 at 3:11 pm Leave a Comment
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Fight for Justice

“Fight for Justice”
By Lori Saigeon
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shanna Mann
$7.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-405-7

“Fight for Justice”, a middle years novel by Regina author and inner-city elementary teacher Lori Saigeon, is unique in giving authentic voice to bullying in urban schools and vividly portraying bullying behavior as a precursor for gang involvement.

It was easy to sympathize with Justice’s motivations; his machismo, his responsibility as man of the house and his need to protect his twin sister Charity. Students and adults will identify with his slippery slope of bad decisions that leads to his isolation from the protection of adults and further vulnerability to the bullies.
But Justice isn’t stupid. He asks for advice, he studies the adults around them and assesses their behavior. How will they react if he tells them about being bullied? Will they do something dumb (from his perspective) like simply tell Trey to stop it? With maturity and clarity, Justice assesses the people in his life and puts them into categories. Are they his allies, does he protect himself from them, or is he their protector?

Lori Saigeon is deadly accurate in her portrayal of not only the instigation and escalation, but the reasoning that kids go through before deciding to ask an adult to intervene. They know that adults can’t be everywhere, and the choice they make is almost always to do damage control for when—not if—the bully catches them alone.

Not only is this a good book for students (for authenticity and applicability I can’t think of a better one)but it is also a good read for adults, especially those who don’t understand why their kids just won’t tell them who is bullying them so they can put a stop to it. It won’t mitigate the adults’ sense of helplessness, perhaps, but it will show you what’s going through their heads, and help you understand their reasoning. Their decisions are bad, from an adult perspective and experience, but from a child’s they are well reasoned and sound, because adults won’t always be around to protect you, and if you can’t protect yourself, you have to at least do what you can not to make it worse. “Fight for Justice” accurately and vividly portrays bullying and what to do about it when it happens to you.

Published in:  on 23 December 2009 at 12:27 pm Leave a Comment
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Fight for Justice

“Fight for Justice”
By Lori Saigeon
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Ryan Melnyk
$7.95 ISBN: 978-1-55050-405-7

School for a child can be one of the most terrifying places he or she might go. In the case of Justice, the main character of “Fight for Justice”, every corner is one worth worrying about. We all know that school is full of bullies and it is said that if you just mind your own business, no one will bother you. However, the modern bully in an elementary school these days has changed; it is now rare that one will do anything wrong without a group of people to help conceal his or her actions and torment the victim. They also do not resort to physical conflict without reason because they know more trouble will come if the victim had been physically hurt. Even the appearance of bullies today is different; you might think that the biggest kid on the playground is the one who picks on everyone. Bullying today is often mental abuse and even spiritual abuse. Bullies are good at finding kids’ weak points.

Fighting for Justice deals with every kind of bullying children might face in the early years and I recommend it to younger readers for many reasons. The first is that it deals with how to stand up to a bully who is one of those guys or girls no one in their right mind would dare to cross. It also shows young readers why other kids their age act the way they do, and it isn’t hard to realize why that affects their behavior.

The softer side to this story is played through Justice and his family’s Aboriginal background. Justice is very fond of his Mushum and Kokum (grandparents), even more so the reserve in Ontario where they live. Justice acts like a dog who wants to go outside when his mother tells him that his family is going to visit the reserve to see his grandparents. This is like a vacation to Disneyland for Justice and his sister Charity. Justice and Charity are both very outgoing, which makes this book a fast and interesting read that will make young readers (even reluctant ones) want to read more.

Published in:  on 10 November 2009 at 1:26 pm Leave a Comment
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Claudia

“Claudia”
by Britt Holmström
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Sandy Bonny
$ 21.00 ISBN-13 987-1-55050-395-1

Britt Holmström’s fourth novel Claudia moves along the fine boundaries of appearance and private truth. An upper middle-class widow living in Regina, Claudia Hewitt has framed her life perfectly. Childhood poverty in Sweden with her Latvian refugee mother is far behind her, as are the embarrassments of her ‘too big’ nose and adolescent chubbiness. Her grown children’s mishaps are glossed by white lies, and Claudia has carefully protected her family and aging mother from the fact that she has witnessed three brutal murders – first as a teenager in Sweden, later while backpacking in Spain, and finally from the window of her beloved husband’s study in Regina. Does bearing witness make her complicit in these tragedies? Does her silence? And what secrets, out of love or fear of judgment, have Claudia’s mother and children kept from her?

Claudia is written in a world where violence is inevitable, where female sexuality can corrupt and degrade as well as empower, and where love can nourish healing. Moving backward and forward in time, and between Winnipeg, Regina, Sweden, Spain, and Latvia, ‘Claudia’ covers a lot of ground. Details of place and era are well researched, often drawn from Holmström’s global experiences, and the narrative flows naturally throughout. This book is a meditation on relationships and identity, and challenges readers to examine their own lives alongside Claudia’s.

Claudia could be a heavy read, but the grittier details of this novel are readily offset by flashes of humour, beauty, and hints of magic. A cousin’s child, scarred by forced prostitution, regains confidence not through counseling but by mocking Jerry Springer TV. Claudia’s nose job inadvertently heightens her sense of smell, leading her to her husband, Simon, and allowing her to investigate the personalities of her children’s partners by their scents. Claudia’s mother, Malda, sheltered her by remaining silent about the horrors of pre-WWII Latvia, but in doing so left Claudia a minimal sense of family history or cultural identity – can it be a coincidence that Claudia’s great grandfather comes to both her and her grandson’s dreams, leading them beneath the tender green branches of Latvian lindens to a cozy ancestral cottage that both mistake for heaven? Or that, hours after Simon’s death, the cactuses in Claudia’s kitchen bloom bright, beautiful and out of season? In Holmström’s Claudia, despite and perhaps because of heartbreaking sadness, happiness can always be found in the details.

Published in:  on 28 October 2009 at 11:33 am Leave a Comment
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Sumac’s Red Arms

Sumac’s Red Arms
by Karen Shklanka
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-402-6

Must one live an interesting life in order to write interesting poetry? I would argue that no, this is not a requirement, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Vancouver poet, family physician, world traveler, and flamenco dancer, Karen Shklanka, draws from her own rich experience and has much to tell in her first book of poetry, “Sumac’s Red Arms”. She sets many of her often surprising poems against the various locales she’s called home: Moose Factory, Ontario; Sydney, Australia; Los Angeles; Houston; Salt Spring Island; and Regina.

The first poems reveal scenarios from the poet’s medical work in a northern Ontario community. We meet “James,” who “woke bleeding on a battlefield of empties\and limp friends” and has “been sitting all morning with a gun to his head”. And we’re introduced to “The Girl From Attawapiskat”: “She spits on me as they wheel her out on the stretcher”. These are no-nonsense
anecdotes, and Shklanka adopts a journalistic style to convey them, thus ensuring that sentimentality does not cloud the telling.

In the book’s radically different second section, “The Scent of Cloves,” readers are treated to disparate sensory delights-including many culinary ones-from settings including Mexico and Spain. In “Hands and Stories,” Shklanka writes: “We go inside and make guacamole,\black beans, salad with these strange fruits.\You don’t know a papaya\is a yellow football full of seed\like round black beads”. This poem ends with the delightfully exotic: “Purple and orange crabs fall out of the drainpipes.”

The third section, “Vocabulary: A Tango,” is almost self-explanatory. Here Shklanka shifts poetic gears, offering minimalist, lyrical poems that dance across the page.

She returns to medical matters in “Cradle,” but manages a certain elegance in her descriptions concerning “The Hidden Lives of Bones”: “oh beautiful clavicle, oh\easily broken\one, darling\how easily you repair\yourself”. Another poem in this section, “How They Divide,” is a back and forth poem about a splitting couple, and what each takes with them, ie: “He keeps the antique table without any chairs,” and “She keeps the prayer wheel\they bought on the road to Pokhara, which was pitted with meteor holes\and mating dogs”. I particularly like this piece for its appealing combination of personal and travel details.

In the final section, “The Under wings of Clouds,” romantic relationships take centre stage, and the book closes with a poem that leaves us considering endings, and beginnings.

When she’s at her best, Shklanka paints with words. Consider these lines: “An old man takes his cat for a ride\in a yellow crate with wheels” (from “El Viejo”); a flamenco dancer’s hands “curl upward like smoke from\burning leaves on a still day” (from “Waiting”); “a spoonbill’s wings flash pink in the long sun\as it strikes through the salt marsh looking” (from “Winter Day, Texas Coast”); and ” A purple jellyfish lies\like a placenta on\the beach” (from “Readiness”).

To read Shklanka’s “Sumac’s Red Arms” is to walk-and dance!-in some of the interesting shoes (like the pair gracing the book’s cover) that this multi-faceted poet has worn.

Published in:  on 30 September 2009 at 10:00 am Leave a Comment
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Longhorns & Outlaws

“Longhorns & Outlaws”
by Linda Aksomitis
Published by Coteau Books for Kids
Review by Sandy Bonny
$ 8.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-378-4

After losing his Dutch immigrant parents and sister to the Galveston TX Hurricane of 1900, twelve-year-old Lucas finds solace in his friends, his school work, and his favourite books – Wild West detective stories where ‘Pinkerton Agents’ track and capture outlaws. Then Lucas’s sixteen-year-old brother Gil shows up fresh off a cattle drive and Lucas is suddenly thrust into learning the ins and outs of being a cowboy.

Having heard of an uncle living in Canada, Gil signs the boys on with the J Bar J Ranch, a cattle outfit driving two thousand ‘beeves’ north through Montana to Saskatchewan along the Lewis and Clark trail. Greenhorn Lucas and his reluctant Nez Perce roan, Ebenezer, have a lot to teach each other, and their mishaps ‘riding drag’ behind the cattle are good entertainment. Watching the cowboys work and listening to their stories about the geography and history of the West, Lucas, who had never ‘thought about learning any other way than from books and in a schoolroom,’ comes to a grudging realization that Gil, who can’t read or write, has still ‘learned plenty.’

It takes longer for Gil to see Lucas as more than a boy, half-grown ‘between hay and grass.’ Gil tells Lucas to quit dreaming about being a Pinkerton Agent when he sees him examining outlaws on wanted posters. It looks like Gil may be right when, distracted by imaginary outlaws, Lucas becomes responsible for the death of a calf. But when Lucas stumbles across a real outlaw camp and overhears plans for a train robbery, Gil still won’t listen, even though Lucas is pretty sure that one of the outlaws was the Sundance Kid, and another the notorious Dutch Henry.

Once they cross the Canadian border, outlaws break into the J Bar J camp and steal Ebenezer along with the other horses. Lucas rallies his courage to rescue the his horse and save the J Bar J outfit, but in doing so he uncovers a secret that jeopardizes his dreams for a quiet schoolboy life with his uncle. Lucas faces a difficult decision at the end of the book, which sets family loyalties against the line of the law, and it is this decision that finally earns Lucas his brother’s respect.

Lucas’s adventure is set among real historical places and events in the Canada-US Wild West and is infused with details about Dutch, French, and Michif culture. Cowboy lingo, as well as Dutch and French words, are used throughout the book with a glossary explaining their meanings. The story itself is exciting, but these authentic details really carry the reader into 1900’s cowboy culture. Young fans of Western fiction are in for a treat with Aksomitis’s Longhorns and Outlaws.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR VISIT WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Published in:  on 26 August 2009 at 11:28 am Leave a Comment
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Dinosaur Blackout

“Dinosaur Blackout”
by Judith Silverthorne
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$8.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-375-3

It’s unusual to begin the fourth novel in a series without having read the three previous. Would the book stand on its own, I wondered? Or would it be like arriving late to a party and feeling lost? I needn’t have worried. Judith Silverthorne, the award-winning Regina author of “Dinosaur Blackout,” has created a time-travel adventure for juvenile readers that definitely pulls its own weight.

The rich story concerns young Daniel, who lives on a farm in Saskatchewan’s Frenchman River Valley near Eastend, home of the T.rex Discovery Centre. Daniel’s a budding paleontologist and a great kid. He helps his parents with chores; has forgiven the delinquent and bullying Nelwin brothers; cares for his toddling sister; assists tourists who visit the quarry’s archaeological dig-site and campground; and is a sensitive friend to elderly neighbour\paleontologist Ole Pederson. Daniel enjoys “the best of all worlds … living the rural life and being able to dig for dinosaur bones.”

The boy has learned how to use prehistoric foliage to travel back to the Cretaceous Period, where dinosaurs like the Stygimoloch – a fossil of which was discovered on his family’s land – roar and roam. When the Stygimoloch bones disappear before Pederson and his cohort, Dr. Roost, can “retrieve the entire fossil and verity it,” they and a reluctant Daniel return to the “treacherous world of the dinosaurs” for observation and photos.

Silverthorne invents a credible Cretaceous landscape and creatures by appealing to readers’ senses and by seamlessly weaving facts – ie: “Edmontonosaurus were thought to have had sixty rows of teeth” and were “almost twice the weight of a rhinoceros” – into her story. She also does a superb job of local colour. It’s easy to visualize the buttes and coulees, where “Obvious deer and antelope trails criss-crossed on the hard ground, amid tufts of grass and the occasional clump of black-eyed Susans.” The breeze “rippled foxtails like waves on a gentle sea,” she writes, and “Meadowlarks and red-winged black birds fluted.”

She’s done an exemplary job of establishing the farm scenes, where everyone works together, whether that’s “Loading pitchforks with manure and heaping it onto the stoneboat” or saddling up the trail-ride horses for tourists. Daniel’s family and another operate these ventures “as a way of providing extra income to keep their farms alive.” Pretty realistic.

There’s much spirited dialogue in this easy-to-read novel, and it never rings a false note. The writer’s skills are also apparent in her offering of just enough information about Daniel’s previous trips to prehistoric time to make us feel we’ve been along on all the other journeys.

And speaking of journeys … once back in the past, how will the characters stop T.rex from annihilating them? What might they you use to “knock out a dinosaur,” and how will they apply it?

The greatest tests for a novel series are whether its individual books can stand alone, and whether reading one compels readers to seek the others. “Dinosaur Blackout” passes these tests with (Pterodactylus) flying colours.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Published in:  on 6 August 2009 at 11:16 am Leave a Comment
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The Cult of Quick Repair

“The Cult of Quick Repair”
Written by Dede Crane
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$18.95 ISBN 9-781550-503920

There’s a marvelous short story in Victoria, BC writer Dede Crane’s collection, “The Cult of Quick Repair,” about the bizarre circumstances that follow after a man’s one night-stand – the “act” is committed in his marriage bed – with a woman met at a staff party. Called “Raising Blood,” the tale begins with the man’s realization that a menstrual blood stain has been left on the $500 “pure Egyptian cotton” sheets his wife’s just purchased, and when he rinses them in hot water instead of cold, the stain, naturally, sets. The wife will be returning within hours from a business trip, and the race to erase the evidence is on. In the delicious romp that follows, the husband attempts to “raise his own blood” to explain the stain. One thing he tries is “a good hard trip up the stairs.” Crane writes: He “knelt down on the cement landing, and began to draw his knee back and forth. Scrape, scrape, scrape, he thought positively …” But this doesn’t work. An electric knife handily does the trick, but lands him in hospital for surgery to reattach tendons. Crane’s crafted a
brilliant surprise ending. What a play this would make: a sure sell-out.

If this side-splitting story alone isn’t enough to induce readers to pick up the collection, there are several other good reasons to do so. Aside from her obvious gift for humour, Crane’s also adept at writing about the more staid side of life. Many of her main characters – mostly women – find themselves in relationships that leave them wanting. They are mothers who perhaps shouldn’t be; wives who get birthday gifts from their husbands like “an Anne Geddes calendar, a renewal of [a] Canadian Living magazine, a duster made from ostrich feathers and Billy [the talking, Big-mouthed Bass]“. These couples eat “Dinner in front of the news,” and afterward, the husband might challenge his wife to “‘best out of three’ Yahtzee.” This is hardcore realism, and that’s why it works so well.

Crane’s range is admirable. In “Best Friend’s,” the wife of an NHL hockey player must deal with the emotional fallout after he scores a goal and spontaneously kisses a teammate on the lips; the game is televised and the media goes wild. In the title story, a woman’s terminally ill mother insists upon having her “buddha team” – three people who whisper “gobbledygook” into her ear – present as she departs. In the tragic “What Sort of Mother,” a woman leaves her alcoholic husband – the parent her children undeniably prefer – and Crane reveals how the world can be rife with irony and unfairness. “Next” concerns a spicy phone exchange between a woman and the technician who eventually (we’ve all been there) answers the computer helpline: “Now go to file, “the voice says, and before she’s had time to think, the young mother finds herself saying, “You have a sexy voice.”

Read “The Cult of Quick Repair,” and you’ll recognize thoughts and situations you’ve experienced yourself. Crane stick-handles human emotions like a pro.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE
SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Published in:  on 22 July 2009 at 11:36 am Leave a Comment
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Run Like Jäger

“Run Like Jäger”
By Karen Bass
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Marie Powell Mendenhall
Price: $ 12.95 CDN ISBN: 1-55050-377-4

This young adult novel takes us across enemy lines and into the trenches of World War II – from the German side.

Canadian exchange student Kurt Schreiber chooses Germany to improve his German, and to discover why his Opa or grandfather is so silent about the Second World War.

When the school bully Peter calls him a coward like his grandfather, Kurt becomes haunted by dreams and possibilities. He is also falling in love with Marta, his best friend at school.

Marta’s grandfather, Herr Wolfgang Brandt, turns out to have been Opa’s best friend. Brandt, a former town mayor, is writing his memoirs and Kurt convinces him to talk about their wartime experience.

Brandt calls Kurt’s grandfather Jäger, or hunter. They were common soldiers and not members of the dreaded Nazi Secret Service or “SS.” Yet they were trained in the Hitler Youth and believed in the “Führer,” Adolf Hitler.

Karen Bass manages to get inside the head of a German soldier from World War II. Through Brandt’s honest recounting of his experience, from wartime battles to being overcome on the Kanada building site at Auschwitz, Kurt develops a new respect for his grandfather. Readers move with Kurt past blame to greater awareness.

Other threads woven into Kurt’s story include his thoughts as a Canadian high school exchange student in a foreign country, and his growing love for Marta and for his new home.

Karen Bass works a librarian in northern Alberta. “Run Like Jäger” is her first published novel.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR VISIT WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Published in:  on 3 June 2009 at 9:34 am Leave a Comment
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Waiting for Elvis

Waiting for Elvis
Written by David Elias
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$21.00 ISBN 9-781550-503944

Winnipeg writer David Elias is making a name for himself as a writer of increasingly interesting books. Coteau Books recently published his fourth, the novel “Waiting for Elvis,” and because I was ardently cheering for these hardluck characters, I had a hard time putting the book down.

This time Elias focuses on the people that own “Betty’s Diner — Home of the Giant Cinnamon Bun,” a typical highway truck-stop, and on those who pass through its humble doors. Truckers and the odd tour bus of casino-patronizing seniors are its major clientele, but Betty and husband Arty’s miscreant son, Tony, and the criminal crowd he chums with, also make appearances. When a strange, mute, and beaten man stumbles into the diner from the surrounding forest, nothing is ever the same again.

For Betty, this is a wonderful thing. As a child she lived a life of relative privilege, and was known as “Elizabeth”. An alcoholic mother living in a squalid Winnipeg flophouse is a constant reminder of how far, and quickly, her life regressed. Now Betty’s bored, and thinks that “a bulldozer might be the best thing that ever happened” to the diner. Her family is a crucible. She has a hard time loving her only child: “She and Arty have made all the rounds with the social worker and psychologists. Put up with all the looks from the teachers and principals at school. Jumped through all the hoops with the probation officers and lawyers and priests. It’s been one thing after another with him right from the start … She could never understand how it happened that he got so bad so fast … Making her cry is what Tony had always done best.” Elias does a laudable job of showing how Tony’s evil and self-destructive ways began at an early age. It’s shocking.

And there are more shocks. Sal, who was horribly abused by his mother’s partner, “Clothespin Harry,” now lives like an animal in the forest beside the highway. He exists on the food travelers discard, and has created a shanty among the trees. But Sal’s ghosts have followed him. He has visions, and nightmares, and has created a “garden of pain” with car accident refuse (twisted metal, shattered glass, chains) which he’s strung from the pines. When his inner pain is too much, he “[Runs] into that garden of pain full tilt … Make it cut … Make it bleed … A crankshaft comes out of nowhere … He tackles a chrome bumper, then a rusted muffler … crushes the muscle and bone of his shoulder and still he will not stop.”

Now here’s the wondrous thing: Elias’s novel is a story of redemption. Betty “Sees there the thing [Sal] carries around with him always, the bold beauty of his quiet humility.” And she makes a kind of unexpected peace with her son.

“Waiting for Elvis” is the kind of book that would inspire much discussion and debate; it would be a terrific title for book clubs.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Published in:  on 13 May 2009 at 9:39 am Leave a Comment
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