Six Saskatchewan BunniesWritten and illustrated by Sharla GriffithsReview by Michelle Shaw$17.00 ISBN 9781999560003 It’s always fun to read a book set in a familiar place, and children, especially, love reading about places they know and can actually visit. So Sharla Griffiths’ new children book is a delight. It’s an entertaining invitation to explore the joys of summer in Saskatchewan along with six little bunnies. The bunnies hop their way through the province, climbing the branches of the Crooked Trees, sliding down the sand dunes at Athabasca Provincial Park and feeding the geese at Wascana Park in Regina. They crawl through the tunnels in Moose Jaw, paint rocks along the riverbank on the Meewasin Trail in Saskatoon, discover the skeleton of a T-Rex in Eastend and lie back in the waving prairie grass, watching the clouds drift across Saskatchewan’s endless sky in Grasslands National Park. The book features 24 full page color illustrations that are interesting and fun. Each destination is helpfully labelled at the bottom of the page and there’s a map of the province at the end of the book showing where the bunnies (and the reader) have travelled. Griffiths also introduces the concept of counting. The story starts…

Wake Up, Jacob!by Neil SawatzkyPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$14.95 ISBN 9-781988-783451 I’m a huge fan of collaborating with family members on creative projects, thus was delighted to read that Neil Sawatzky—the author of the new illustrated children’s book Wake Up, Jacob!—is the father of Heather Nickel, who owns and operates Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing, and is responsible for bringing hundreds of books into the world. This father-daughter team has produced a heartfelt softcover that “parallel[s] the daily activities of a young boy and his grandfather,” and to even further extend the familial connection, Sawatzky’s dedicated the book to his own father, and a photograph of the author and his two grandchildren reading a book together appears inside the back cover. Here’s the truth: I had a lump in my throat after reading just two pages of this brightly-sketched story. On page one we find young Jacob’s mother rousing him from sleep in his bed, and on the opposite page, a healthcare aide in a seniors’ facility is similarly waking the same-named elder. Child Jacob—in green pajamas, and with his wide-eyed teddy bear nearby—stretches simultaneously with his white-moustached grandpa on the facing page. The story continues…