FernFolio » Award-Winning Books

Breakout by Paul Fleischman

fernfolio — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:58:25 +0000

Early one July morning, a seventeen-year old girl named Del Thigpin sneaks out of the home of her foster parents, and down the street to where she has parked her 1983 Datsun, purchased secretly with the money she’s earned working at a video store. After staging her own death from drowning at a nearby beach, she begins her journey into a new life as Elena Franco.
With a six-month supply of food, camping gear, and 134 dollars, Del plans to drive to Arizona, camp near a small town, and get a job to support herself. Though frightened, at times, by her complete lack of family or friends, and uncertain about the future, Del is determined to leave behind the endless foster homes and social workers, and the cynical, mouthy and defensive young woman she has become to survive the circumstances of her life. Adapting regularly to new foster parents and siblings, and new schools, has taught Del to keep her thoughts to herself, lie with creativity, and become whoever she needs to be in order to get by. It has also made her a reader, and a lover of old movies, especially French and Italian films, and she has cobbled together a convincing set of stories about her part Italian family from her reading and viewing. Del is also an observer of others, and has learned to mimic the behaviours of those around her as a way of entering into, in effect, borrowing, their lives.
On that July day, Del plans to get as far from Los Angeles as she can before her foster mother reports her missing, but a serious collision on the Santa Monica freeway stops traffic for hours, and she, and all of her fellow travellers, find themselves stranded in their vehicles.
Breakout is the story of that traffic jam, and what happens to Del and the others stuck on the freeway that day. It is also the script for Elena Franco’s one-woman show about a day-long traffic jam on the San Diego freeway, that opens in Denver eight years after Del stages her escape from L.A. Written by Paul Fleischman, it explores people’s obsession with running away from themselves and what happens when, for one day, they are forced to stop and confront that face in the rear-view mirror. Fleischman’s insights into the human psyche, as represented first and foremost by Del and her alter ego Elena, are both tender and searing.
FernFolio Editor

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

fernfolio — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:43:42 +0000

With her mouse-brown hair, glasses and braces, her sliding grades, and her penchant for getting into scuffles at school, Meg feels like the odd person out in the Murray family. Her beautiful scientist mother manages a household of four children while carrying out experiments in the old dairy off the kitchen, her physicist father is a Ph.D. several times over, her ten-year old twin brothers, Dennys and Sandy, are popular athletes, and her five-year old brother, Charles Wallace, though he never speaks outside the family, is absolutely brilliant.
At school, teachers have expressed exasperation that parents so intelligent could produce a daughter so backward, the principal has warned her to face facts and focus on her school work, and fellow students whisper taunts about her “moron” baby brother, and her absent father. Gone for several years on a top-secret government project, Dr. Murray’s letters came regularly at first, but no one has heard from him in over a year. Though her mother has tried contacting the government agency her husband works for, and even travelled to Washington, she does not know where Dr. Murray is, or when he is expected to return. Neighbours have begun to whisper that Dr. Murray has run away with another woman, and abandoned his family.
School children and those same neighbours also gossip about five-year old Charles Wallace, who never talks. When they call him a moron, Meg reacts in anger, often getting into altercations with classmates. Meg’s mother thinks that the little boy might be more than just brilliant; she believes he may be different, something beyond merely human. He possesses the uncanny ability to read Meg’s, and his mother’s, feelings, and seems to understand things that ought to be unknowable.
When three odd elderly women break into a nearby abandoned house, Charles Wallace befriends them, and takes Meg to meet them. Also drawn to the old house is Calvin O’Keefe, a fourteen-year old boy, whose athletic prowess hides a keenly intelligent and inquiring mind. Charles Wallace judges Calvin to be acceptable, and introduces him to Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. He then invites Calvin home to dinner at the Murray house, where the boy becomes captivated by the Murray family, and by Meg, in particular.
After dinner, Calvin and Meg go for a walk, and are soon joined by Charles Wallace, who announces that it’s time to go. When Meg asks where they are going, he replies that he doesn’t know where, but that they are going to find Dr. Murray. The arrival of the three Mrs. W signals the beginning of an adventure that will take Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace far across the universe to visit distant worlds in search of Meg’s father, and to struggle against the Darkness, the black shadow of evil that threatens many planets, including Earth.
First published in 1962, and winner of the Newbery Award, A Wrinkle in Time has become a classic of children’s literature.
FernFolio Editor

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

fernfolio — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:43:38 +0000

Ten year-old Lucky Trimble lives with her guardian Brigitte in a cobbled-together trailer home on the edge of Hard Pan, California, population 43. Perched in the Mojave Desert, on the site of an old gold mining town, Hard Pan is home to an odd collection of individuals who have known hard times. The Captain, a former airline pilot, has lost his family and his career. Short Sammy, who lives in an old water tank, only gave up drinking when his wife left him, and took his dog with her. Mrs. Prender is grandmother to five-year old Miles, who wanders around Hard Pan asking for cookies, but really looking for affection. Ten-year old Lincoln, who is fascinated by knots, but who parents want him to grow up to be president of the United States. Since there are no businesses in Hard Pan, there are no jobs; everyone who lives in the town relies on government assistance and receives monthly food allocations.
Life for Lucky is both wonderful and terrible. She loves Hard Pan, the only home she has ever known, her friends, Lincoln, and Short Sammy, and her dog, HMS Beagle. She loves Brigitte, the French woman who came to look after her following her mother’s death. But she is afraid that Brigitte wants to go home to Paris and her mother and sisters, and hates the feelings of sadness, uncertainty and powerlessness that this fear has created in her. So Lucky is trying her best to prepare for any eventuality, by always carrying her survival kit and by attempting to find her higher power.
Lucky has learned a lot about the importance of her higher power by eavesdropping on the meetings held at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Centre, meetings held by Alcoholics’ Anonymous, Smokers’ Anonymous, Gamblers’ Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. After she has finished her regular job of cleaning up the museum patio of beer cans, cigarette butts and candy wrappers, Lucky puts her ear to a hole in the wall and listens to stories about how people found their higher power, that power that allowed them to take back control of their lives. Lucky figures that, if she can just find higher power, she will be able to find herself a real family, either by convincing Brigitte to stay in Hard Pan, or by locating a proper mother.
The Higher Power of Lucky is a the story of a girl who delights in the small joys and friendships and beauty of her broken-down town at the end of the road, yet fears that she will lose everything she loves. So she sets out to secure her world, as best she can, and discovers that home and family are sometimes closer than you realize. Author Susan Patron’s writing is simple, evocative and poetic. Her weaving of Charles Darwin’s voyages and discoveries, of Twelve-Step Programs, and of Brigitte’s French endearments and syntax, of Tarantula Hawk Wasps, and of the history and traditions of knots into Lucky’s story combine to create a tale that will stay with the reader long after the last page has been read.
The Higher Power of Lucky won the 2007 Newbury Medal.
FernFolio Editor

Chester by Mélanie Watt

fernfolio — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:02:25 +0000

When Mélanie Watt, the award-winning author and illustrator of Scaredy Squirrel, tries to write a book about a mouse, her story is taken over by a large tortoiseshell cat named Chester. Armed with a red marker, Chester packs the mouse onto an air plane destined for someplace far, far away, and moves into the story. Literally. When Mélanie tries to regain control of her mouse story, Chester outwits her, and soon the author-illustrator and the cat are engaged in a hilarious game of strategy and one-upmanship to get their story told!
Engagingly written by Mélanie Watt and Chester, this picture storybook about an unexpected character who runs amok, is funny, fast paced and sure to capture the hearts of both young and old!
Chester won the 2009 Blue Spruce Prize!
FernFolio Editor

Dear Sylvia by Alan Cumyn

fernfolio — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:08:19 +0000

What’s a guy to do when the girl he likes gives him a box of note paper and stamped envelopes before she moves away to a nearby town? If you’re Owen Skye, you start writing her letters telling her about life, about your two brothers, Andy and Leonard, about your dog, Sylvester, who has a thing about carrying around stones, and about your new baby cousin, Fillus Phyllis, who’ll only calm down and go to sleep if your mother drives you over so that you can pick her up and talk to her a while. But, if you’re Owen Skye, you’re also going to be too embarrassed about your spelling and too shy about telling Sylvia how you feel about her to actually send those letters.
Through his letters, which he writes and stores in a box in the basement of the old farmhouse in which his family lives, Owen shares his growing concern when his father quits his job as an insurance salesman to write a novel, throwing the family’s finances into turmoil. He tells Sylvia all about the book, how it’s about an invisible insurance salesman turned super hero who falls in love with a waitress named Rebecca, and how his parents starts to argue when the book starts to take a long, long time to get written, and his mother has to go out and find a job. And he expresses his feelings of uncertainty and frustration when, after inviting him to join her Scottish dancing group, Sylvia then decides that she prefers to dance with Danny Bainman.
Deer Dear Sylvia is a lovely story about a family struggling through hard times, about dreams and disappointment, and about a boy’s first love. A terrific sequel to The Secret Life of Owen Skye, and After Sylvia.
Dear Sylvia won the 2009 Silver Birch Express prize.
FernFolio Editor

The Third Eye by Mahtab Narsimhan

fernfolio — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:00:04 +0000

While the other people in their village celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, Tara and her seven-year old brother Suraj sit watching from the front step of the family hut, mourning the anniversary of their mother’s disappearance. One year earlier, the kind and beautiful Parvati had crept to Tara before dawn and told her that she had to go away for a while. When they awake, hours later, Tara and Suraj and their father, Shiv, discover that not only has Parvati gone, but her father, Parbala, the village’s powerful healer, has disappeared as well.
The year that follows is a very difficult one for the two children. Not only must they cope with the loss of their mother and grandfather, but with the unexpected remarriage of their father to Kali, a unpleasant woman whose doting love of her spoilt daughter, Layla, is in stark contrast to her cruelty toward Tara and Suraj. With their formerly loving and affectionate father suddenly cold and remote, and Kali treating them like servants in their own home, Tara watches with growing alarm as her younger brother grows thin and sad. She begins to think that she must take Suraj and set off into the forest that surround the village in search of their missing mother and grandfather.
However a new danger lurks. The villagers have begun to whisper that the forest is inhabited by Vetalas, the undead, who prey upon those who venture there alone. As men start disappearing and fear mounts in the village, a stranger appears, claiming that he can save them from the Vetalas. Zarku, as he calls himself, possesses a third eye, in the middle of his forehead, that allows him to see into the hearts and minds of all he meets. Though several of the villagers voice their concern about his arrival, Zarku is rapidly appointed as the village’s new healer. Yet Tara senses that he is evil and realizes that finding her mother and grandfather may be the only way to save the village.
Tara’s desperate quest takes her into the forest and then up into the mountains, where she meets Lord Yama, the God of Death, and must undertake a harrowing voyage underground to find the fountain from which flows the Water of Life.
Part adventure, part fairy tale, The Third Eye is a marvellous story about one young girl’s discovery that true strength lies within and that, with a pure heart, all is possible.
The Third Eye won the 2009 Silver Birch prize for fiction.
FernFolio editor

Out of the Cold by Norah McClintock

fernfolio — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:22:10 +0000

Worried and hurt when her boyfriend Nick takes off without a word to anyone, Robyn Hunter decides, after some fruitless searching, that she needs to find a new preoccupation in life. Her friend Billy, a dedicated do-gooder, suggests that she volunteer at a local drop-in centre for homeless people and so Robyn finds herself helping out in the kitchen there, baking thirty-six dozen cookies on her first day. At the centre, Robyn meets the director, Mr. Donovan, Betty, the cook, and some of the centre’s clients, including the sweet and shy Andrew and the rather scary Mr. Duffy. She also meets Ben, another volunteer, who takes one look at her new boots and her expensive coat and sneeringly labels her a two-four, a twenty-four hour wonder who turns up once to get in some community service hours or as a sop to their conscience at Christmas.
Goaded by Ben’s attitude and unable to say no to Billy or Mr. Donovan, Robyn finds herself returning to the drop-in centre to help with their Christmas preparations. She wins the cautious approval of Ben, only to lose it again after she is attacked by a client intent upon taking food from the kitchen’s storeroom and reports the assault to the police, which results in the man being barred from the drop-in centre just as the weather turns very cold. Tragedy strikes when the man freezes to death in an empty alley.
Though her friends and parents tell her that it is not her fault, Robyn is convinced that, by speaking to the police, she is responsible for the homeless man’s death. Looking for a concrete way to deal with her guilt and grief, she approaches the contemptuous Ben, who informs her that he wants to hold a memorial service for the dead man, but that no one seems to have known much about him. Assigned the job of learning who this man was, Robyn interviews clients at the drop-in centre, haunts the man’s regular spot outside a downtown office building, and makes the acquaintance of someone who just might hold the clues to his identity. In the process, Robyn discovers far more about both the dead man, the clients and volunteers at the drop-in centre, and the problem of homelessness than she could have ever anticipated.
The fourth in Norah McClintock’s Robyn Hunter mysteries, Out of the Cold is a suspenseful and fast-paced adventure, that will keep the reader engaged to the final, and unexpected, revelation.
Out of the Cold won the 2009 Red Maple Fiction prize.
FernFolio Editor

Northern Lights The Soccer Trails by Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak and Vladyana Krykorka

fernfolio — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:23:59 +0000

When Kataujaq was small, she loved her mother. She loved sniffing her, because that is the way that the Inuit kiss, and hugging her. In the spring, she loved holding onto her mother while they travelled across the melting sea ice in a canoe tied to the dogsled, slipping precariously from ice to open water and back again, while her father ran along and called to the dogs. In the summer she loved picking flowers and finding rocks for her mother, which her mother loved and kept on the windowsill. In the fall, she loved picking berries with her mother and watching as she juggled and sang.
But then a big sickness comes, and Kataujaq’s mother goes away in an aeroplane and never returns home. No one tells the little girl what has happened. Kataujaq picks flowers for her grandmother, but it’s not the same. She thinks about her mother when she picks berries in the fall, or finds a pretty rock for the windowsill. And she cries for her mother at night.
In the early winter, the people of Kataujaq’s village go out onto the sea ice and play soccer under the stars for hours. Sometimes the Northern Lights come out, and then her grandmother comes down to the sea ice to watch. She tells Kataujaq that the Northern Lights are the spirits of the dead come out to play soccer in their new home in the sky, and that, when they play they are filled with joy, just as they were when they were mortal.
Kataujaq looks up and can see her mother up among the Northern Lights, smiling down at her as she turns to chase the ball, and the girl is happy to know her mother has not gone away after all.
Northern Lights The Soccer Trails is another wonderful story by Michael Kusugak that celebrates the Inuit belief that these magical lights are the souls of the dead playing their game of soccer in the heavens. A lovely book to share with someone grieving the loss of a loved one, it won the Ontario Arts Council’s Ruth Swartz Award.
FernFolio Editor

Arctic Memories by Normee Ekoomiak

fernfolio — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:39:39 +0000

Born in 1948, Normee Ekoomiak lived in a snow house in the winter and in a tent made of animal skins during the summer months. With his family, he followed the animals, moving to the sea ice in the winter to hunt seal, to the river in the spring to fish for Arctic char, and inland in pursuit of the caribou during the warmer months.
In Arctic Memories, he shares his childhood experiences of traditional Inuit life, and gives insight into the spiritual beliefs of his people through his art. Accompanied by his reflections in Inuktitut and English, are drawings, paintings and embroidered pieces that celebrate the daily lives of the Inuit, both children and adults. Ekoomiak’s work details life in the snow house, games to provide entertainment and build strong and healthy bodies, and the circle of nature among Arctic creatures.
It also explains the traditional Inuit spiritual beliefs through pictures of Sedna, goddess of the sea, and Okpik, who protects all living things in the North. Ekoomiak’s scenes of the nativity point to his Christian faith, one that exists side by side with his traditional Inuit beliefs.
Particularly interesting are Ekoomiak’s pictures, The Body Needs to Travel, in which he explains how the Inuit spread around the Arctic Circle, and Ancestral Hunters, where he depicts hunters killing a wooly mammoth in a painting completed a year before the remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered in the Arctic!
is a wonderful celebration of Inuit culture and history. Both the art and accompanying text provide a window into the lives and beliefs of the Inuit people.
FernFolio Editor

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

fernfolio — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:44:59 +0000

When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert request an orphan boy to help around the farm, they are sent, instead, a little girl named Anne Shirley. The child has red hair and freckles and big green eyes, and possesses plenty of spirit and imagination. Shy, gentle Matthew Cuthbert, who is sent to fetch the orphan from the train station and knows he ought to tell her that there has been a mix-up, promptly falls under Anne’s spell, but his sister Marilla, who is far more pragmatic, insists that she will have to go back to the orphanage. But the story of Anne’s lonely childhood and her grief at learning her dream of a real home is not going to become reality, touch Marilla and eventually she, too, concludes that Anne must stay.
Anne’s first months at Green Gables are difficult, at times, for, while she know how to work and tries hard to do her best, Anne is sensitive about her red hair and unable to always control her fiery temper. She becomes very angry when Mrs. Rachel Lynde, a friend and neighbour of Marilla’s, makes disparaging remarks about her hair and looks and character, and, cracks her slate over the head of Gilbert Blythe, a fellow classmate, who calls her “carrots.” Yet she makes good friends among the other students in Avonlea School, and becomes best friends with Diana Barry, whom she adores with all the pent-up affection of her lonely early childhood, and finds in Matthew Cuthbert a kindred spirit, someone with whom she can share her thoughts and dreams.
Though Anne settles into life at Green Gables and Avonlea, she finds herself in plenty of scrapes and misadventures. She accidentally gets her friend Diana drunk on home-made wine, breaks her ankle trying to walk the ridge pole of the Barrys’ kitchen roof, and dyes her hair green trying to rid herself of the hated red colour. But she also studied hard at school and soon shows herself to be an able student, writes deliciously tragical stories which she shares with fellow members of the Story Club, and wins a place at Queen’s to study to become a teacher.
One hundred years old this year, Anne of Green Gables is a Canadian children’s classic, that has been read and enjoyed by countless millions of children all over the world. I recently reread my copy of Anne, given to me on my 8th birthday by my parents, and laughed and thrilled and cried with Anne, just as I did when my mother first read it to me so long ago. Montgomery’s words celebrate the sights and smells of the Prince Edward Island countryside; I defy anyone to read this story and not be transported to the fields and meadows and woods around Green Gables. They also bring to life one small, extraordinary girl, so full of life and exuberance and imagination and spirit, Anne Shirley.
FernFolio Editor