Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Easter by Marion Mutala Illustrated by Wendy Siemens Review by Michelle Shaw $ 14.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-70-5 Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Easter, the enchanting sequel to the award-winning Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Christmas is sure to delight Marian Mutala’s many fans. This time it’s spring, and we join Natalia as she is once again swept magically away to a far off land for another uniquely Ukrainian adventure. Natalia is sent outside while the paska, the Easter bread her mother is baking, rises. She’s meant to be collecting the eggs but instead finds herself reflecting on her beloved Baba, her grandmother, who has recently died. Suddenly she feels raindrops brush her cheeks. The raindrops turn into a babushka that covers her hair and then she’s off… “up and away, high in the sky… racing through time and space”. Natalia finds herself in a crowd of people in the early morning in front of a village church. It’s Easter and Natalia is caught up in the celebrations as she joins the procession of people carrying candles, as they follow the priest through the darkness singing Khrystos voskres! (Christ is risen!)” . This time when she catches…

Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond by Muriel A. Jarvis and Mary E. Vandergoot Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-73-6 Patience pays big dividends, perhaps not all at once, but slowly over time. Muriel Jarvis relates how her patience and persistence paid off in her book, Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond. Nominated for a 2013 Saskatchewan Book Award for non-fiction, the book is written by Mary Vandergoot, based on interviews and conversations with Muriel. Vandergoot writes in the first person, as though Muriel herself is telling the story of her life and accomplishments. Growing up in Kenaston, SK was a quick and brutal learning experience for Muriel, but she applied those life lessons throughout her career as a nurse. Her father died when she was only six and a half, and she had to help her mother, who was then only 26, raise her four younger siblings. A turning point in Muriel’s young life was when she assisted her mother in the birth of a child. She decided then that she wanted to become a nurse. The thin pink lines refer to the long…

Wagons East by Victoria Taylor Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $14.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-88-0 Have you ever felt like taking off – to nowhere in particular? That’s what Victoria Taylor and her partner Carl did, virtually on the spur of the moment. It was this spontaneity that led to the great adventure she relates in Wagons East. Following their dream, the couple set out from British Columbia on a cross-country tour, roughing it as they made their way east. They only got as far as Saskatchewan, but they took the scenic route. They travelled by covered wagon, accompanied by their team of horses, Hoss and Tracker, whom Victoria refers to as “the boys.” Plodding along on a wagon seat at three-and-a-half miles an hour provided a different sensation than driving in a car. Victoria uses a chatty, conversational writing style with a wry sense of humour, saying that indoor plumbing consisted of a cold water tank with a tap. She describes crossing a logging bridge with “no side rails and a million miles to the river bottom.” Despite this and other harrowing experiences, she displays an optimistic buoyancy throughout. The couple stopped at farms and ranches…

Glacial Erratics by Peter Sarsfield and Kim Mann Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Sandy Bonny $ 19.95 ISBN 378-1-894431-72-9 A current of migration compels this partnership of poems and pictures from writer Peter Sarsfield and photographer Kim Mann — the book captures animals in movement, seasons in change, and landscapes etched by shadows that, with the lift of a page, allude to lengthening and contraction. Between photographs, poetic offerings travel between the Canadian North and southern prairies, tracing avenues of time and maturity, circling anchor-stones of hope and regret. The collection’s title, ‘Glacial Erratics’, refers to boulders deposited by the ice sheets that once covered our prairie landscape. These provide evidence of our geographical heritage, offering themselves as touchstones to a history of dramatic change. And yet they are accidental legacies, monuments borne of glacial fatigue, of failure and release. These poems echo their title. Read separately, it would be difficult to thread them to a theme. But linked and grounded by Mann’s photographs, they plot a journey. A raft of incidents, a life’s hopes and lessons. There is a risk in this trust of fate to organize the poems, which Sarsfield alludes to in ‘message found’:…

Terror on Turtle Creek by Jean Freeman illustrated by RoseMarie Condon Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $14.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-77-4 As a longtime admirer of Jean Freeman’s work, I knew I was in for a good read when I saw she was the author of Terror on Turtle Creek. The story follows the exploits of Barry Richards, a youngster prone to anger and negative thoughts, who works hard to avoid work. He volunteers to help fill sandbags when Turtle Creek floods over, but slinks away to relax in an unmoored boat. When it slips into the raging river and starts to sink, Barry struggles to steer himself to a flooded house. There he meets the stranded occupants, Sara McKeever and her three younger siblings, ranging in age from eight to three – Sam, Josh, and Emily—and Emily’s doll, Angelina Poot. Each chapter title is actually a time stamp that allows the reader to follow the story in real time. Teeming with challenges, each chapter ends in suspense. Just as the children are coping with one crisis, another comes crashing down on them. I immediately felt compelled to read the next chapter to see how, or if,…

A Fraidy Pants Lair By The Turk & Toph Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Reviewed by Jessica Eissfeldt Price $24.95 ISBN: 978-1-894431-47-7 Colorful illustrations help underscore the rambunctious monsters that populate the page in this lively and vivid children’s book about the monstrous consequences of lying. The main character, Freddie, fears her older brother will kill her when she breaks a string on his shiny new guitar. She lies about it to her mother. And that’s when the monsters start appearing. The more lies she tells, the more monsters appear. Cleverly weaving together an entertaining tale with multiple, vivid drawings on each page, A Fraidy Pants Liar serves as a great, yet gentle, guide to help youngsters realize “it’s important to be honest with ourselves to create a world where love is power,” as the reader’s note states. With this ingenious twist on a morality tale, the authors The Turk and Toph use ugly, persistent monsters to illustrate the point that lying is not the path to follow. Being afraid of the consequences of lying is far scarier than being able to speak up and tell the truth. Children will love the cartoon-filled book – the illustrations seem to jump…

Cyclone! The Regina Tornado of 1912 by Warren James and Carly Reimer Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Michelle Shaw $14.95 ISBN 9 781894 431712 One hundred years after the legendary tornado of 1912 left the city of Regina devastated, tornadoes are once again touching down in Saskatchewan. So it’s not surprising that I was a little reluctant to pick up Regina author Warren James’s latest book! Warren James is a storyteller with a passion for history and folklore. Cyclone! The Regina Tornado of 1912 is a carefully researched picture book with an old silent movie feel. It’s simply written and filled with vivid details which give a sense of the magnitude and devastation of the tornado. Children will especially appreciate the numerous detailed images which his words conjure up, such as the fact that the switchboard at the Telephone Exchange literally fell into the basement with the operators still in their chairs. He also relates how the tornado sucked up tons of water, a canoe and two boys from Wascana Lake. Although the book is obviously aimed at young children, its appeal is far broader. At the back of the book are four pages of detailed notes…

Bee Yourself by Kerry Sather and illustrated by David Mark Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Gail Jansen $19.95 978-1-894431-66-8 At one time or another, most of us will have looked in the mirror and wished we were “someone new,” especially as children, where one look around the schoolyard could often have us seeing others who seemed to be more talented, more attractive, and smarter than we could ever hope to be. That’s why first time children’s author Kerry Sather’s book Bee Yourself offers both parents and children alike a wonderful opportunity to see for themselves that sometimes just “beeing” yourself is the best thing around. Taking you on a fun whimsical flight around the countryside, Bee Yourself shows you, through the eyes of a quirky little bee, that every creature has an upside and a downside to its existence and that truly, no one is perfect. Complemented by David Mark’s wonderful illustrations that showcase the imagination of a little bee as it tries on different personalities and personae, you’ll laugh out loud when you see what a bee would look like dressed up as a butterfly,a frog, a bird, a bunny, and more. The hilarity includes an…

Rear-View Mirror by Eleanor Moline Sinclair Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by William Wardill $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-64-4 Eleanor Moline Sinclair isn’t a social historian. Instead, she is a keen observer of history as she has lived it. In a memoir written for grandchildren who were living in Taiwan at the time, she identifies herself as the daughter of Swedish and German immigrants, the eighth in a family of ten children, student, nurse, farmer’s wife, and mother. Her slice of history begins with what she knows of her grandparents and continues with the stages of her own life to 2010, when, although more comfortable with a simpler lifestyle, she makes use of the products of technology’s headlong race. Sinclair is not an academic making clinical conclusions. She has been, and still is, a participant. Her colloquial account is touched by love and tinged with longing. In the Epilogue, she writes ( for her grandchildren): “Survival, rigour, grit and determination brought us to what and where we are today. Life has dictated that. But we won’t be going back …Grandpa Mac and I Grammy El, are 70 years old now, and hope that reading this story will provide you with…

Stroke Prevention Naturally: Proven Non-Pharmaceutical Stroke Avoidance Strategies by Felix Veloso, M.D. F.R.C.P.(C), F.A.A.N. Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Y.M. Smith $18.88 ISBN 978-1-894431-57-6 Stroke, brain attack, and cerebrovascular accident all mean the same thing – interruption of blood flow to the brain. Dr. Felix Veloso, a neurologist and clinical professor in Regina SK, has witnessed the devastation of stroke to patients and their families countless times in his over 40 years of practice. “Stroke is the leading cause of permanent disability” and the “second leading cause of death worldwide.” Yet there is a bright light in this picture. “Studies continue to confirm that a healthy lifestyle reduces the risk of stroke by up to 90%.” And at the same time a stroke is being prevented, heart attack and vascular dementia are also being prevented. In addition to the improved quality of life for people, imagine the impact on our healthcare system. “In Canada, direct and indirect cost of stroke is at least three billion dollars yearly and climbing.” Dr. Veloso is passionate in his belief that the general population be active participants in decisions that impact their health; give people the knowledge they need to make…