The Lil Grey Donkeyby Carolyn WilliamsIllustrated by L.E.StevensReviewed by Michelle ShawPublished by Ghost Mountain Publishing$20 ISBN 978-1-9994737-1-6 This is a beautiful story about a small grey donkey “with big brown eyes” who is injured in a fight with a cougar while guarding some sheep with her friend, the Llama. But rest assured, there’s a happy ending! She subsequently finds her forever home with the author where she takes “her place in the herd, becoming a buddy for the foals and … loved by all”. The Lil Grey Donkey is so loved in fact that she appears on the Christmas cards “all dressed up with bows and a Santa cap on”. She becomes part of the community and even goes to town to greet the hospital patients before they go home. Using simple language and cartoon-like drawings that ooze personality, I think the book is ideal for drawing the young reader in without feeling intimidating. And the delightful picture of the Lil Grey Donkey on the front cover will captivate young readers before they even open the book! Williams, whose previous book The Happy Horse was released earlier this year, doesn’t actually name the donkey in the story. But there’s a…

Trial by Winterby Anne PattonPublished by Coteau BooksReview by Michelle Shaw$10.95 ISBN 9781550509786 I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in a sod house in Saskatchewan during a winter blizzard. Now, thanks to Anne Patton, I have an inkling. Trial by Winter is the third and final story in Anne Patton’s Barr Colony Adventure Series. It’s 1903 and the Bolton family have built a sod house on their land in the North-West Territories. Running desperately short of money Dorothy’s father decides to travel to Edmonton to work for the winter, leaving ten-year-old Dorothy, her sixteen-year-old sister, Lydia and their mother to face their first harsh prairie winter essentially alone. Patton has the ability to transport the reader to another place and time in vivid detail, geographically, socially and climatically. She has clearly done an immense amount of meticulous research, but the research is always atmospheric and enhances the plot rather than crowding it. She vividly describes the everyday practicalities that are needed to survive during the brutal winter such as bringing wood inside to thaw before cutting it and scooping snow from the drifts outside the front door during a blizzard to melt for water. Then there…