The Last Green Dragonby Rud VerhagenPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Michelle Shaw$19.95 ISBN 9781988783918 The Last Green Dragon is a magical tale of courage, mystery and adventure between two very unlikely friends. Gus is a green dragon who has been raised by a pair of owls since he was a hatchling. Ev is a young girl who was left on the doorstep of a kind old lady named Granny Jenkins when she was a baby. But thanks to a magical opening in Ev’s backyard the two meet and become friends. Although they don’t know it, they are both on a quest and it’s only by joining together that they will each be able to unlock the secrets of their past. Both Gus and Ev are prepared to sacrifice something precious to help the other and they encourage each other when the challenges seem too hard. But just when their friendship seems unbreakable there’s a shocking discovery at the end of the book that threatens to destroy it forever. Fantasy is not usually my go-to genre, but I was absolutely delighted by The Last Green Dragon. Gus and Ev are interesting characters who each have their own personal challenges…

Tunnels of Treacheryby Mary Harelkin BishopPublished by DriverWorks InkReview by Michelle Shaw$19.95 ISBN 9781927570692 Time travelling tunnels, thrilling, heart-stopping adventures. It must be a Mary Harelkin Bishop book! Tunnels of Treachery is the third book in Mary Harelkin Bishop’s well known Moose Jaw Time Travel Adventure series. This is the 20th anniversary edition of the series, and the book has been updated with shorter chapters, illustrations, historical notes and new resources, as well as a gorgeous new cover by illustrator Wendi Nordell. I think it’s much less well known than the first two books so I’m delighted that more readers will get a chance to enjoy it. In Tunnels of Treachery, Andrea’s friends Kami and Eddie Mark accidentally fall into the time travelling tunnels below Moose Jaw. They discover that Chinese immigrants are being forced to work in terrible conditions in the tunnels until they can pay the government-imposed Head Tax. Kami and Eddie are of Asian descent and don’t have documentation to show that they can legally be in Canada. They are forced to work as indentured labourers in the tunnels. Will Andrea and her brother Tony manage to help them escape and find their way back to the…

Unsettledby Dawn MorganPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Madonna Hamel$24.95 ISBN 9780889778573 Subtitled A Reckoning in the Great Plains, Unsettled is a labour of love that, like all true reckonings, took a long time to take shape. The book revolves around four “lost anchor” events and the author Dawn Morgan’s urge to reconcile herself to them: the death of an old rancher who was gored by a bull bison named King, the death of King himself, the subsequent death of her father by suicide, and the disappearance of Assiniboine who once inhabited the land her ancestors settled. Morgan is a deft handler of the English language. She can weave disparate sources together to create connection and meaning where none was previously evident. In her heart-wrenching, sometimes comic, mostly conciliatory, search for release from her haunting past she introduces us to the poetry of Andrew Suknaski, examines the papers of the Palliser Expedition, dips into the diaries of Métis guide Peter Erasmus, detours into country-western lyrics, then veers into the writings of German philosopher Theodor Adorno. She reflects on Hemingway’s take on bullfighting, the life of Spanish gauchos, and Kafka’s novel “Amerika.” Reading Unsettled is a lot like being a…

Points of View: A Guide on Saskatchewan Projectile Points with Indigenous PerspectivesEdited by: Faith BoserPublished by Saskatchewan Archaeological SocietyReview by Toby A. Welch$29.95 ISBN 9781999530815 Right off the hop, Points of View struck me as a visually stunning book. It is a pleasure to hold and read. The cover features a graphic image that includes buffalo, trees, mountainous hills, and a wispy sky with a full sun. It’s so striking that I would like to have that illustration blown up to a massive size to hang on my living room wall.  Once you flip open the cover, you encounter a coil binding that is a huge asset as you work your way through the pages. (It’s so great when a book lays flat without you having to hold it that way.) Once into the book, you get page after page of colourful diagrams, breathtaking pictures, and charts and graphs galore. The entire book, from one cover to the other, is a feast for your eyes.  The over 200 pages of Points of View are glossy sheets, something I am a huge fan of. I love feeling the slickness between my fingers as I turn the pages. The smoothness is oddly…