Confessions of a Dance Mom by Alison R. Montgomery Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-28-7 Saskatonian Alison R. Montgomery recently published Confessions of a Dance Mom, and simply put, I love this book. From the outside, it’s an honest, naturally-voiced retrospective of the author’s son’s journey from a child with an interest in dance to his employment with the prestigious Stuttgarter Ballett. But it’s much more. It’s a compelling story about family, and a strong treatise on dedication, pride, loss, and letting go. Maternal love is at the heart of this beautifully designed and well-written testimony. Interesting, then, that my out-of-province daughter was visiting days before I began this book. She saw it on my desk, and said: “Alison was one of my high school teachers.” Of course. I hadn’t made the connection, but then I also remembered Montgomery, and my daughter and I recalled the tragic loss of her elder son, who died at 24 while mountain-climbing in BC. This is important, because that early loss forms the bass-line in this story: a mother fully supports her now only child’s rise from Brenda’s School of Baton and Dance in Saskatoon to…

for what it is by Joan Newton Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Kris Brandhagen $16.95 978-1-894431-90-3 The first things I noticed about for what it is by Joan Newton were its title, and its cover image. The cover shows a painted image of a floating table on top of which sits a pair of reading glasses next to a book set facedown to save the page. The objects seem about to slide off the table, providing tension although it appears, at first glance, to be very calm and relaxing. Throughout for what it is, I noticed a variety of poetic devices. Newton pays close attention to how she uses vowels and consonants in each poem, including conversational language, affecting the way the poems sound. Newton’s approach to writing is playful; her lines sometimes continue without pause, and at times she uses rhythm, rhyme, and circular structure. In the poem “Moment” Newton explores a pleasurable experience with which many readers will likely identify: She upends the paper bag over her small son’s cupped hands shaking into them the last of the sugary crumbs. Snuffling up the sweetness, he rubs his face laughs and they are happy. This poem…

Dementia Prevention Naturally: Evidence-Based Strategies to Enrich Cognition by Felix Veloso M.D. with Roxanne Veloso-Tang and Joanne Veloso Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Regine Haensel $18.88 ISBN 978-1-927756-11-9 We are all getting older. “If you live long enough,” writes Dr. Felix Veloso, “you will either develop dementia or care for a loved one with the mind-robbing curse.” Felix Veloso, M.D., F.R.C.P. (C), F.A.A.N. is a Saskatchewan neurologist who has been practicing for over forty years. He is a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. His book, Dementia Prevention Naturally, does not claim to diagnose, cure or treat any disease; rather it suggests strategies that can help keep us cognitively healthy. The book gives definitions and information about various memory impairments, such as Age-Associated Memory Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and disease driven dementias. Statistics, information from patient case studies, as well as data from reports and research studies are provided. Also useful are the notes at the back of the book, as well as a glossary and index. The reader is taken through some of the tests, evaluation methods, and criteria to…

113 Boathouse Hill by Joyce Olesen Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Regine Haensel $17.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-26-3 “The land breathes life – of the ancient times when the first tipis stood over those stone rings, of the days when five children romped over the hills and fields, and of a time when those children, now grown to middle and older age, came home again.” So writes Joyce Olesen in the last chapter of her memoir. It is a wonderful journey she takes us on, with evocative writing that brings the 1950’s of a farm family to life for the reader. Olesen was born and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan, and has lived in various parts of Canada, including British Columbia, New Brunswick and Alberta. For the last forty-two years Swift Current has been her home. She is a member of the Prairie Quills writers’ group. The book takes us all the way back to Norway in the late 1800’s, where Olesen’s paternal grandfather and grandmother were born. “…I touched the big rock near her old home and thought about her as a young woman …” We follow the young people to the United States, and in 1915, to…

What Did You Draw by Ruth Chorney Illustrated by Nicolas Chorney Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Jessica Bickford $14.95 978-1-894431-91-0 The mother-son team of Ruth Chorney and Nicolas Chorney have created a charming little story about a boy and his big sister having an imaginative art session in What Did You Draw?.  Ruth’s story is fun and shows a brother and sister pair who actually get along in a way that is both realistic and adorable while they draw together.  The sister’s drawings are realistic animals, while Danny, her younger brother, depicts his own fantastical, hybrid creations.  Even Danny and Sister themselves are depicted in their own art styles, which is really interesting and gives the whole story the feel that the kids are the ones telling it. The story itself is simple and follows Danny and his sister as they draw various things.  Danny’s sister draws different animals for him, and tells him what they are, and then Danny draws his own versions, asking his sister to guess what he has drawn.  Almost all of these are silly hybrids of what his sister has just drawn, including a hippopotamoose.  Danny and his sister keep drawing until,…

Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding By Marion Mutala Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Alison Slowski $14.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-06-5 Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding is an engrossing picture book, rendered in beautiful detail by author Marion Mutala and artist Amber Rees, that tells the heartwarming tale of a young woman named Natalia. Natalia, aided by the memory of her grandmother, goes on a magical journey to learn more about her family’s – and people’s – rich history. During Natalia’s walk down memory lane, she visits all the important moments which involved her grandparents’ time together as young people. The story details her grandparents’ courtship, including the meeting of their two families before and during their seven-day Ukrainian wedding. Mutala uniquely and accurately depicts the Ukrainian customs that are special to a couple’s wedding, such as the gift- or pumpkin-giving before a couple agrees to marry, and the giving of sheshkeh, pinecones made of dough, to welcome their guests in their village to their wedding. Most special of all, this book incorporates the tradition of the korovai, the traditional braided wedding bread, into its mention of the festivities. The inclusion of a korovai recipe in the back…

Crown Corporations in Saskatchewan by Boris W. Kishchuk Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-95-8 Few issues in Saskatchewan stir up as much controversy as Crown corporations. One need look no further than recent provincial elections. But Saskatoon author Boris Kishchuk deliberately steers clear of politics in his book, Crown Corporations of Saskatchewan. Instead, he focuses on their history and evolution. Kischuck divides Crown corporations into three categories: for job and wealth creation; for investment and financial services; and to provide services to the people of the province. Crown corporations have a long history in Saskatchewan. The Territorial government created the first Crown in 1901, selling hail insurance to farmers, before Saskatchewan even became a province. Some Crowns may not exactly be household names – like Saskatchewan Government Airways, Saskatchewan First Call Corporation, and Saskatchewan Box Factory Ltd. – but they nevertheless played an important part in the province’s history. Crown corporations sometimes invested in private enterprise, some with unusual names such as Hollywood at Home, Inc. and Clothing for Modern Times, Inc. Kishckuk brings his personal knowledge to the subject. He served as chair of the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel for five years….

Tomorrow It Will Be Fine by Joseph Vida Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-927371-34-3 It should be said at the outset that Joseph Vida’s Tomorrow It Will Be Fine is an outstanding achievement. It is entertaining and absorbing, socially conscious and sure-footed, linguistically extravagant and methodically plotted, sprawling and detailed, witty and trenchant. Its themes are so engrained in Canadian consciousness that the novel’s title can be read as prophetic of the eternal wish and frustrations of immigrants anywhere. Vida has a fine ear for the dialects of both the transplanted and native. His observation of social attitudes and tendencies and his depiction of idioms and jargons are spot on. Yet, the novel goes a little further than that, a little deeper. Few Canadian social novels read like a symphonic work. Joseph Vida’s does. At its heart, the work is a social novel set in Toronto, which is experiencing a boom after the Second World War. It’s protagonist, Endre, is a Hungarian immigrant seen at an anxious, but illuminating, time in his life. He is beginning to tire of working job after job without any reason to expect a better future. He has suffered…

My Battle of the Atlantic by Donald A. Bowman Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-99-6 There’s something about the sea that seems to attract men from the Prairies. Donald Bowman was one of them, and he records his personal experiences in his memoir, My Battle of the Atlantic. Born and raised in Saskatoon, Bowman enlisted as a teen at the outset of World War II. After trying his hand at bayonet practice, and reading about rats in the trenches during the First World War, he realized the infantry was not for him. The Air Force appealed to him, but only if he could be a pilot, and he didn’t think he had the qualifications for that. So the Navy it was. While on leave in Saskatoon, he married his sweetheart, Muriel Beatty. They booked a room at the Bessborough Hotel, but the war cut short their honeymoon. Bowman regales readers with his adventures as an officer on HMCS Edmundston, a corvette intended for coastal duty but used to escort convoys across the Atlantic, and named for a city in New Brunswick. In heavy seas, it would be flung about with as much grace…

Black Fury, Help Me, I’m Naked: Book One by Donna Miller Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Catherine Fuchs $19.95 ISBN 9781894431798 This riveting book takes the reader to knee level to peer into the keyhole of the marriage of the author’s parents. Outwardly they were a good looking and glamorous couple who both tried to hide the abuse that was always smouldering beneath the veneer of their image as “a happy couple.” Their young daughter, Saskatchewan author Donna Miller, gives us a first hand account of what it was like to grow up watching her father physically abuse her mother. Her father, Joe, was a very socially intelligent yet insecure man who was extremely jealous and controlling of her of mother. He was also a textbook abuser, who would explain away his behavior with his unenlightened remarks such as, “ I admit I’ve slapped her, but only when she deserved it.” Worse, he would mock her bruises by saying to her, “You look so beautiful in blue.” His actions did always seem to come back to haunt him though, like the time he slapped her so hard she fell into a coma and lost the twins boys…