My Monster Mommyby Megan Ryan, Illustrated by Brenna SengerPublished by Meow! Pete’s PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$15.99 ISBN 9781069345912 The luckiest among us were read to as children, and long may that wonderful tradition continue. Giving children books as gifts—and spending quality time sharing these books with our loved ones—can lead to a lifelong love of literature. In today’s hectic technological era, I wondered if the sharing of “bedtime stories” is something that exhausted contemporary parents still have the time and energy for. After a little Googling, I learned that as recently as 2024, children’s and YA books [still] accounted for 40% of all English-language book sales in Canada. That’s great news—for writers and readers. With all the children’s books published over the centuries, coming up with original ideas can be challenging, but Saskatchewan writer—and busy mom—Megan Ryan has a delightful new children’s book that is indeed unique. My Monster Mommy is also timely: it addresses how mothers who also work outside the home might be extra tired, and require a little “alone time” as they switch gears between their jobs/careers and family time. The softcover My Monster Mommy—digitally illustrated by Brenna Senger— introduces us to young Sammy, who’s concerned that…

We are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Traditionby Sarah HernandezPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$39.95 ISBN 9780889779181 In We are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition, American academic Sarah Hernandez (Sicangu Lakota) examines the colonial dismantling of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota intellectual traditions, including “star knowledge through oral storytelling.” She writes that when missionaries arrived in the early nineteenth century, the “linguistic [colonization]” began. Hernandez teaches Native American literature and is the director for the Institute for American Indian Research at the University of New Mexico. She states that “missionary translations of the Dakota language set a dangerous precedent that denigrated Oceti Sakowin star knowledge and supplanted [their] tribal land narratives with new settler-colonial land narratives that ensured that many of our people converted to Christianity and assimilated to the American nation.” Missionaries learned the Dakota language and printed bilingual Dakota-English newspapers which contained “misinterpretation[s] of Dakota origin narratives” and essentially “delegitimize[d] the Oceti Sakowin’s intellectual traditions”—and Christians replaced them with their own. These settler-colonials subsequently “stripped the Dakota nation of 35 million acres of land” and forced them onto a “ten-mile-wide reservation” in Minnesota. Hernandez frequently makes…

GreenWritten and illustrated by Zachari LoganPublished by Radiant PressReview by Shelley A. Leedah$25.00 ISBN 9781998926251 In reading visual artist and poet Zachari Logan’s art/poetry hybrid collection,Green, I was struck by the recurring motif of seeing, and Logan’s recurrentinclusion of the natural world’s diverse creatures and plants. Awe and wonder areintegral elements in this innovative work, a fact that Logan asserts in hisilluminating introduction, which concludes: “[this work] is, ultimately, anexploration of my own enchantment with the world …”. The title also reflectsLogan’s artwork in this collection: the fifty-one pages of drawings—mostly ofleaves, branches and blossoms, and all done “in green ink, pen andpencil”—were completed in a sketchbook he purchased in Venice. Logan’s a well-known Regina, SK artist with a global curriculum vitae. Indeed,prairie gophers, “old wasps and potato bugs” are comfortably juxtaposed againstthe “turtles of Morningside Park” viewed at New York’s “East 96 th Street” and“Vitosha Boulevard’s/bulging trees in Sofia”. Logan was invited to exhibit his workin Bulgaria, and references Bulgarian painter Zlatyu Boyadzhiev (the “̒BulgarianBruegel’”) as well as Caravaggio, El Greco and Canada’s Tom Thomson in thissuperb collection. While employing a range of poetic styles, most of these reflective poems arewritten in free verse and many are narrative, including…

A Home for Hairyby Maureen Ulrich, Illustrated by Brenda BlackburnPublished by Flatlands PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.99 ISBN 9781069113511 What I know about Saskatchewan’s Maureen Ulrich is that she understands how to engage readers, her genres and subject matter are varied, and her children’s picture books—ie: Sam and the Big Bridge, which I previously reviewed—are delightfully heartwarming. Ulrich, a former teacher, recently released another moving story for young readers. A Home for Hairy is a softcover featuring a foul-breathed cat (Hairy) with low self-esteem, and Alison, a busy healthcare worker and weekend-warrior (aka adventurer) who takes a chance on fostering the scruffy-looking feline at the animal shelter, and welcomes him into her life. Though Hairy’s weekdays are spent inside young Alison’s brick apartment building while she’s at work or reading medical texts and crashing, exhausted on her couch (the illustration for this page shows her asleep on her couch with phone in hand, kitty litter escaping the cat box, and household chores undone), he enjoys “watching the world go by” from his windowsill perch, and during the weekends he and Alison get up to outdoor adventures like hiking, canoeing, and, when winter blows in, snow-boarding. These are daring and questionable…

No Straight Linesby Ruth ChorneyPublished by 7SpringsBooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$25.00 ISBN 9781738323531 Chalk it up to interesting and relatable characters, dynamic plots, and rural settings so viscerally described, you can taste the prairie soil on your teeth: Kelvington, SK writer Ruth Chorney’s latest book, the contemporary mystery No Straight Lines, is another winner. From the police interrogation of protagonist Ingrid that opens the story—a clever device for providing readers with relevant background information—to the satisfying epilogue, I was quickly entranced by this novel—the author’s fourth—set in fictional Kettlebank in northeastern Saskatchewan. Ben Franklin’s credited for saying “nothing is certain except death and taxes,” and while there’s no mention of taxes in this beguiling mystery, death veritably abounds. First Person narrator, Ingrid, is on “extended compassionate leave” from her kitchen designer career in Toronto. Born and raised in rural Saskatchewan, the twenty-something returns to Kettlebank after her father, a farmer, is found dead in his hayfield “on the shady side of the baler”. Ingrid, “a home-town star who made good,” fled Saskatchewan two days after her beloved brother Eric’s funeral: he was killed in a questionable car accident six years earlier, and she’s not been back since. In Toronto, her…

“Nakón-wico’i’e né uspénic’iciyac/Practising Nakoda: A Thematic Dictionary”by Vincent Collette, Tom Shawl and Wilma KennedyPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$27.95 ISBN 9781779400185 Language and cultural identity are intrinsically connected, and for the Nakoda people, who believe that “language is a gift of the Creator,” the Nakoda language is, “through prayers and songs, the means by which important cultural values and spiritual knowledge are transmitted from generations to generations.” This is the first tenet I learned in the tri-authored book, Nakón-wico’i’e né uspénic’iciyac/Practising Nakoda: A Thematic Dictionary, published by University of Regina Press. In Canada, Nakoda (aka Stoney or Assiniboine) is spoken by an estimated 50-150 people … and they’re aging. Understanding the import of language to one’s culture, Vincent Collette—professor of linguistics at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi—teamed with Montana’s Tom Shawl (former Nakoda culture and language instructor at the Aannii Nakoda College) and activist Wilma Kennedy (d. 2020), who lived on the Carry the Kettle Nakoda First Nation in Saskatchewan and had previously worked with Collette on two other Nakoda books (including a concise dictionary), to create a “thematic” dictionary for Nakoda-learners. The thematic dictionary makes learning Nakoda easier as Nakoda’s a “polysynthetic language where…

Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskinby Johnathan A. AllanPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$32.95 ISBN 97817794003307 Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin is a well-researched interdisciplinary book by Manitoba professor Jonathan A. Allan, and though it’s structured like most academic books I’ve read—with an introduction, an appendix, an impressive bibliography and index, and conclusions at the end of each chapter—the subject matter is completely unique, and perhaps not one my aunt will be discussing in her book club. Uncut gets up close and personal with foreskins. It includes the age-old debates concerning circumcision; aesthetics; the penis in art; the topic of cut/uncut sexuality; foreskin restoration; and it speaks of “the ongoing fear of the foreskin, since the foreskin is so absent from American culture.” Allan’s no stranger to sensitive topics. The Canada Research Chair in Men and Masculinities at Brandon University previously authored Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. I was curious to learn why he writes about “really rather odd topics”—like the pros and cons of foreskins—and found my answer in his introduction: “While it may be tempting to dismiss the foreskin as an irrelevant object ofstudy, I argue the…

“#BlackInSchool”by Habiba Cooper DialloPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$20.95 ISBN 9780889778184 Young Halifax writer Habiba Cooper Diallo has much to say about being a Black student at a Halifax high school that prides itself on being the “most diverse school east of Montreal”. #BlackInSchool is her non-fiction account of the International Baccalaureate student’s frequent experience with racism, and it clearly airs her frustrations with the “complete absence of cultural competency on the part of staff/administrators and many students,” and with the school’s curriculum itself. The writer decries the “graphic whitewashing of school through posters;” says “Africa, the hashtag, [is] inserted like a punctuation mark wherever empathy is needed;” and disparages “the Eurocentric approach to learning”. She writes letters to politicians and administrators, and creates a petition re: equity for Black students at Dalhousie University. Interestingly, this unsettling story’s told via journal entries Cooper Diallo wrote in Grades 11 and 12 (2011-2014). The author’s articulate and mature, but some of her activities (ie: “chatting for hours in the mall’s food court” with friends) are also youthful, and she adopts the Twitter-world’s # (hashtag) in her title—a symbol rarely used in formal writing—and throughout the book to reiterate…

The Discovery of Finnegan Wildeby Caroline Pignat, Illustrations by Alan CrannyPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$16.95 ISBN 9781771872874 It’s daunting to receive a 406-page novel for review. If poorly-written, it’s a tremendous slog to read. On the flip side, if the story’s seeped in richly-described settings, features distinct and memorable characters, and showcases deft plotting (including a major twist), the pages quickly slip by. Fortunately, The Discovery of Finnegan Wilde—a historical novel for young adults by Governor-General Award-winning writer Caroline Pignat—fell firmly into the latter camp. My first surprise was that the title character is a girl. Fifteen-year-old Finn lives rough on the streets of 1913 Dublin. She “was in the business of surviving,” which included pickpocketing, and “lying was Finn’s mother tongue.” The scrawny lass has no memory of family, is targeted by another young urchin, Dooley, and—when she can escape the Woodhall Workhouse orphanage where she’s kept in a medicated fog—she sleeps beneath “a rusted sheet of metal,” cold, hungry, and among rats. This lively book’s two other important characters are Eddie, a lonely apprentice archaeologist (under his archaeologist father) at the National Museum, and the 9th century monk, Tomás, who penned a mysterious illustrated manuscript,…

Fireboyby Edward WillettPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$22.99 ISBN 9781998273423 There are several things I can count on each time I open a book for young readers by Regina author Edward Willett: the story will be technically well-written; the characters credible and clever; and whatever weird, fantastical situations the young cast finds themselves in, there’s bound to be laughs along the way. In short, I know I’ll be impressed. Fireboy is the Aurora Award-winning author and publisher’s latest title, and with this blaze-paced novel it’s clear that Willett’s lost none of his … fire. The story’s told by thirteen-year-old Samantha “Sam” MacReady, who missed out on her Grade 7 overnight field trip (“a camping-trip-and-astronomy-adventure”) in May and thus was spared when her fellow “Limberpine,” Alberta classmates were involved in a tragic school bus accident. The bus was driven by Grade 7 science teacher Dr. Ballard, and he and a single student—loner Meg, from the wrong side of the tracks—were the sole survivors. The remaining nineteen students mysteriously vanished, and no one can say for sure what even caused the bus to flip on its side. After the news crews left the small town folks alone and “The rest…