Over the Dragon’s Wallby Alanna VanePublished by Cold Blue PressReview by Kelli Worton$15.99 ISBN 9781738023325 Book One in the Children of Koshluk series, Over the Dragon’s Wall is a tremendous surprise of a book. In it, we are introduced to 13-year-old Sage, who lives in the woods outside a small village in Koshluk with her mother, father, and two younger siblings, Violet and Wren. Here, they live a simple life. Sage’s mother is a musician, and often sings and plays the violin for the family; Sage’s father makes furniture, and while they don’t have a lot, they have a home filled with love and warmth. This ends when Sage’s mother dies. Overwhelmed by grief, Sage’s father is unable to take care of even the children’s most basic needs. He finally abandons them, leaving Sage responsible for her siblings, and thrusting them into a tenuous, uncertain future. Then one day, Sage finds a picture of a dragon named Nytari, who is said to be the Guardian of Fate. Searching for a way to keep her siblings together and hoping to appeal to Nytari to change her fate, Sage undertakes a journey to find him. A gate to a mysterious world where…

School Readinessby Ashley Vercammen, Illustrated by P Aplinder KaurPublished by Home Style TeachersReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$25.00 ISBN 9781778152993 Ashley Vercammen’s illustrated softcover, School Readiness, is—as the title clearly states—a book about prepping children for their first days of school, and sharing the story with new students could well ease the jitters that sometimes accompany this transition. The writer is a Registered Behavioural Technician (RBT) and her book “is based on the proven techniques of the School Readiness program at Saskatchewan Behaviour Consulting,” where specialists work with families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities. Vercammen also holds a BA in International Studies from the University of Saskatchewan, and taught English to students in China. The Redvers, SK-born writer’s education and interests have informed the text in School Readiness, published by Home Style Teachers. The book follows a culturally and ability-diverse group of students as they consider how to conduct themselves at school, ie: how one uses a “quiet, inside voice” in the classroom, and how students should raise a hand “to speak or leave [their] chair”. There’s information here for students who might be anxious about school structure, as well, ie: scheduling. “I…

I Think We’ve Been Here Beforeby Suzy KrausePublished by Radiant PressReview by Brandon Fick$25.00 ISBN 9781998926220 The biggest compliment I can give to Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before is that it is a comforting, fuzzy-sweater-type book about the bleakest topic imaginable: the end of all life on Earth. Spanning three months, mostly in southwestern Saskatchewan, partially in Berlin, the novel follows Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen and their daughter Nora, along with Hilda’s sister Irene and her husband and son, Hank and Ole, and Hilda and Irene’s father, Iver, as they grapple with news of an impending cosmic blast. Those expecting an apocalyptic, sci-fi disaster narrative will be disappointed. I Think We’ve Been Here Before is about love, family, and community, the fundamental things that matter to all of us. It is about forgiveness, acceptance, and making the best use of a finite – or perhaps not so finite – life. Krause also injects some high-concept physics that are eventually tied to the characters’ recurring sense of déjà vu. What grounds this potentially baffling story that raises concepts like quantum entanglement is the family unit. Marlen, already diagnosed with terminal cancer, has written a book that mirrors the…

Get Your Footprints Out of My Gardenby K.J. MossPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.99 ISBN 9781990863509 Poetry can sometimes be obscure and leave readers feeling that they just don’t “get” the work, and thus, they’re unable to connect with it. No one could accuse Moose Jaw resident Karran Moss, a longtime Registered Massage Therapist and new poet, of writing ambiguous work: the poems in her fifty-piece collection, Get Your Footprints Out Of My Garden, are clear-eyed, plain-spoken and easily understandable. Moss explains in her introduction that at age twelve, during a Grade Seven school trip, she was “trapped in an elevator with a predator.” Further trauma occurred when a “well-meaning group of people” tried “to ‘pray’ the trauma out of [her],” which served only to exacerbate her PTSD: “religion became a trauma trigger,” she writes, and this collection is her “journey of growth and healing.” During therapy, “these poems started flying out of [her] soul.” As she continued working on her diagnosed c-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with a psychologist, the healing began. The tone and “frenzy” of the poems changed, and her “life started to make sense.” The vulnerable and hopeful meditations are organized into…