FernFolio » Intermediate Book Club

Haunted by Barbara Haworth-Attard

fernfolio — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:39:16 +0000

When the bones of a young girl are found on the mountain, buried under the tree where she used to play, and four years after many believed that she had run away with her lover, shock and grief soon turn to suspicion.
For fourteen-year Dee Vale, an illegitimate child living her with her stern and unemotional Gran, the body’s discovery begins a dark and difficult period. Her Gran, whose help during childbirth and whose teas and potions are asked for and consumed by neighbours too poor to call upon Dr. Hughes, the local physician, is called a witch by these same neighbours and, as the police investigation stalls, is accused of murder. Her long-time friend, Billy, suddenly announces he supposes he’ll marry her, before taking up with Vivien, a sly and unpredictable girl whose family has moved into the abandoned house next door. As she and her friend Clooey begin their final year at the school at Price’s Corners, Dee starts to dream of the two of them continuing onto the high school in the nearby town of Wallen, and of one day becoming a nurse, though she knows her Gran expects her to remain at home. She makes friends with Clarence, a young soldier who has returned from the trenches missing parts of his mind and memories.
Gifted, or cursed, with the Sight and able from her earliest childhood to see ghosts, Dee becomes aware of the presence of a dark shadow up on the mountain, a shadow that seems to creep ever closer to her home, one that starts to stalk her. Gradually, Dee becomes aware that a number of young girls have disappeared from the area around Price’s Corners and Wallen during recent years. Her Gift allows Dee to read the resting place of one girl, and to relive the death of one of another, and she begins to realise that she might be the only person able to uncover the identity of the monster killing these young girls. As the community’s mood turns ugly, and vigilantes threaten to take justice into their own hands, Dee must take a difficult stand against her Gran, her friends and neighbours, and risk her own safety, to find and stop a murderer before he can kill again.
Set in Ontario just after World War I, Haunted unfolds against the backdrop of small-town and small-minded fears and prejudice. Dee, whose give name is Defiance, is a strong and remarkable young girl whose steadfast belief in herself and her friends, in the face of ugly rumours and accusations, is a testament to friendship and courage. A tale that will haunt the reader…
FernFolio Editor

Not Suitable for Family Viewing by Vicki Grant

fernfolio — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:15:18 +0000

It’s hard to be the overweight and socially awkward daughter of a media superstar. Living in the shadow of her mother, Mimi, whose talk show, You, You and Mimi, is watched by hundreds of millions of people all over the world, seventeen-year old Robin Schwartz struggles with apathy and depression. Burned by classmates who became friendly with her only to meet Mimi and her celebrity friends, forgotten by her fun but irresponsible rock musician father, and ignored by her perpetually busy mother, Robin has everything that money can buy and nothing that she needs. She knows that the only person who loves her is Anita, her mother’s housekeeper, and the only person who listens to her is her senile grandfather. In recent years, the only contact Robin has had with her mother is by watching her on television.
When she finds a high school ring and photograph hidden inside a chair in her mother’s bedroom, Robin is perplexed. She recognises her mother’s face in the photograph, but cannot imagine when and why Mimi might have visited Port Minton, Nova Scotia, or why someone on their high school’s hockey team would have given Mimi his championship ring. Urged by Anita to get off the sofa and do something other than watch reruns of her mother’s show, and goaded by Selena, Anita’s teenaged daughter, Robin decides to go to Port Minton and find some answers.
When the bus driver drops her off at the side of the road in Port Minton, Robin discovers a fishing village that is largely abandoned, following the collapse of the fishery. A guy in a battered old van picks her up and offers to drive her to nearby Shelton, where there is a hostel, and Robin is strapped into her seat before she starts to question the wisdom of climbing into the vehicle of a tall, well-built stranger. She embarrasses herself by screaming and giving him a black eye, when he reaches across to let her out at the hostel, but Levi Nauss will help Robin by telling her about Port Minton, and introducing her to many of its former inhabitants. Too bad she can’t find the courage to tell him who she really is, or why she’s come to Nova Scotia with questions, especially when it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her.
Written by Vicki Grant, author of Quid Pro Quo, The Puppet Wrangler, and Pigboy, Not Suitable for Family Viewing tells the story of one teenaged girl’s journey in search of some insight into her emotionally absent mother, and about the friends, the self-acceptance and the mother she finds along the way. A terrific book for readers from grade 7 up!
FernFolio Editor

Book Clubs

fernfolio — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:41:23 +0000

The school’s three book clubs have wound up for the summer. After a year full of reading and discussion, shared lunches and case loads of Oreo cookies, playing with Photo Story to create book trailers, two electronic conferences and a wiki, and one abortive author visit, student readers are heading out of the school library and into the bookshelves of friends and family, public libraries and bookstores.
The Girls’ Book Club walked to High Park, last Monday, for a picnic. Once the picnic table was laden with home-made lemonade, brownies, cupcakes, cheese and veggies, watermelon, and spring rolls, we settled on picnic rugs to watch the girls’ ‘party pieces’. Girls recited poems, told riddles, read ghost stories they had written, acted out skits. It was a perfect summer afternoon, one made for lying on the grass and looking at the clouds. A perfect end to a lovely year.
On the following afternoon, members of the Boys’ Book Club walked around the corner from the school to Noah’s house for an Italian afternoon. We started with pizza in Noah’s lovely back garden. Then we watched The Thief Lord, based on Cornelia Funke’s wonderful novel, which boys read last Fall. Though I generally prefer books to their screen adaptations, this was a delightful movie. The small changes in plot added to the tension and helped to make up for the loss of some of the magic of Funke’s written text. After the film had ended, we ate dishes of ice cream with Italian treats. I enjoyed an expresso with biscotti! Many thanks to Noah’s mother, who opened her house to us!
The Intermediate Book Club had planned to go to High Park, last Thursday afternoon, but the day was cool and rainy. By lunchtime it became clear that we needed to find another venue. I begged the key to an empty classroom and we took our picnic there, spreading out the food on tables cleared of science projects, and sitting on the floor, since the room is virtually empty. Students started by eating. I will never become accustomed to how much food adolescents can consume! And their food choices! Mind you, I thoroughly enjoyed the jam sandwiches on whole-wheat bread, something I haven’t eaten a lot of since I graduated from Grade 8.
Then it was time for the readers’ pieces. Kate and Gen, who’d come dressed at the Weasley twins, acted out a scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Ella read a passage from Pride and Prejudice, complete with characters’ voices, shifts in location to indicate changes in speaker, and explanatory asides. Nuala and Emily sang while Emily played the guitar. There was a very funny reading of a poem by Shel Silverstein, an uproarious ‘singing’ of The Lonely Goat herd by Kaitlyn, helped out by Lauren, a scene acted out by Maxine and Diane from The Way Lies North, one of the novels nominated for the Red Maple prize this year, a poem about Book Club written for the occasion, and more. It was a simply magical afternoon.
To everyone who took part in Book Club this year, have a wonderful summer, and read lots of great books!
FernFolio Editor

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

fernfolio — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:11:28 +0000

In the spring of 1939, a nine-year old girl named Liesel Meminger comes to live with Rosa and Hans Hubermann in their tiny house in Himmel Street, in Molching, a small town near Munich. Having recently survived the death of her younger brother, and separation from her sickly mother, Liesel is angry, defensive, and driven by nightmares. But she recognizes a certain caring and acceptance in her combative and foul-mouthed foster mother, and falls in love with the gentle Hans, who sits up with her every night when the dreams of her brother’s death visit her.
With Hans, Liesel learns to read, starting with her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, which she has taken from the gravedigger’s apprentice who dug her brother’s grave. Though Hans, a housepainter by trade, is not a very good reader himself, he recognizes Liesel’s determination to learn, and agrees to help. Together, they read each night, after Liesel awakens from the nightmares, slowly memorizing the letters of the alphabet, then making their stumbling way through the first chapters of the handbook.
At school, Liesel finds herself in the infant class, ridiculed by the other students for her apparent stupidity, since she has never attended school before. But she makes friends with Rudy Steiner, who also lives in Himmel Street, and they are soon inseparable, playing soccer in the road with the other children, delivering laundry to Rosa’s wealthy customers, stealing fruit and vegetables from outlying farms, avoiding the nasty Frau Diller, owner of the corner store, who idolizes the Fûhrer, and commiserating with each other about their experiences in Hitler’s youth movements.
At first, the war does not encroach too far into Molching and Himmel Street, but then the Hubermann’s son is set to the Russian Front, Rosa begins to lose her customers, and rationing becomes restrictive. Then one day a stranger approaches Hans, and reminds him of an old and dear friend, a Jewish friend, one who taught him how to play the accordion and saved his life during World War I. This old friend’s son, Max Vandenburg, twenty-two, needs a place to hide, and Hans agrees to have the young man come to them in Himmel Street.
So it is that Max moves into the cellar, where he lives in a small space under the stairs during the day, only creeping upstairs to sit by the fire after dark, when the curtains can be closed against curious eyes. Sworn by her papa, Hans, to secrecy, Liesel learns to live two lives, one in the street with Rudy and the other children of Himmel Street, and a second with Max, in the cellar and front room of the Hubermann house. The young girl grows to love Max, a slightly-built young man with a surprisingly pugnacious past, who participates in fist fights each night with the Fûhrer, and cuts out the pages of a copy of Mein Kampf, then paints them white so that he can use the pages to tell his own story, in a book he entitles The Word Shaker.
Narrated by Death, who provides a perspective on the Nazi years that is both poignant and searing, The Book Thief is the story of a handful of ordinary people caught up in madness who manage, despite the odds, to remains true to what is important. Written for young adults, it is a novel that will appeal to students and adults alike.
FernFolio Editor

The Way Lies North by Jean Rae Baxter

fernfolio — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:58:54 +0000

Escalating hostilities between Tories, loyal to the British Crown, and Whigs, who demand independence for Britain’s Thirteen American Colonies, have exacted a heavy price on fifteen-year old Charlotte Hooper. Her three older brothers have all ‘accepted the King’s shilling,’ and two have been killed in fighting. The third is missing and feared dead. She has had to shoulder a large part of the chores on her family’s farm in New York’s Mohawk Valley, helping her father in the fields and with their livestock. She has not seen her sweetheart, Nick Schyler, for five months, ever since they quarrelled about politics. Though Nick has sworn that he will always love her, their prolonged separation sets Charlotte to wondering if he has forgotten her.
When stories reach the Hooper family that Tory friends and neighbours are being attacked, robbed of their possessions, and turned out of their homes or, worse, burned to death in them, Charlotte’s father announces that it is time for them to leave. After burying the family papers and their silver tea service, Charlotte and her parents set out on the long walk to Lake Oneida where Charlotte’s father has arranged an old Mohawk friend to meet them and take them by canoe Fort Haldimand, the British encampment at Carleton Island, in the St. Lawrence river near the mouth of Lake Ontario. The journey is long and dangerous. Forced to travel by night, since roving gangs of thugs who call themselves the Sons of Liberty regularly assault and kill fleeing Loyalists, the Hooper family struggle through bad weather, accidents, and a casual attack to reach the shores of Lake Oneida by the agreed-upon date. Along the way, they are joined by other refugees, often travelling with babes in arms and nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
Charlotte’s experiences, both on the journey to Carleton Island with her fellow refugees and the Mohawk warriors, and then living in a cold and crowded tent encampment at Fort Haldimand, confirm her strength of character, but she watches with growing concern as her mother’s health weakens and her father grows old. And she thinks about and longs for news of her sweetheart, Nick.
The Way Lies North is an historical adventure set against the backdrop of the American Revolutionary War. The main character, Charlotte, is a young woman tested by war and adversity, but whose indominable spirit is never broken.
Fern Folio Editor

Book Clubs – A New Year Begins!

fernfolio — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:33:52 +0000

Last week, I held information meetings for three Book Clubs, the Boys’ Book Club, for boys in Grade 4, 5 and 6, the Girls’ Book Club, for girls in Grades 4, 5 and 6, and the Intermediate Book Club, for students in Grades 7 and 8.
The boys met at lunch on Monday. There was little advance notice and only 5 boys showed up, though I did speak later to a couple of boys who hadn’t been able to get to the meeting. I am hoping that more boys will show up, since we had between 20 and 25 members last year. We are going to start the year with Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord, a mysterious tale about two brothers, Prospero and Bo, on the run from a weathly and unpleasant aunt who wants to adopt the younger child and put his older brother in a boarding school.
On Tuesday, I held the first meeting of the Girls’ Book Club and 46 girls came, all eager to begin reading at once! Fortunately, given the large numbers, a couple of Grade 7 and 8 girls came out to help. On the recommendation of one of my most trusty library assistants, the Girls’ Book Club is going to read Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke, in anticipation of the movie’s release this January. I have read this book twice, and loved it. It is the story of a young girl, Meggie, and her bookbinder father, Mo, who share a remarkable and dangerous gift, one that makes them the focus of an evil villain’s nefarious plans.
The Intermediate Book Club came on Thursday, fourteen girls and boys who love reading and who, among them, have a wide and deep knowledge of Canadian and international fiction for adolescents. In turn, sort of, students talked about books they have read recently, presented titles for the Book Club’s consideration, and argued, argued, argued. I think perhaps a talking stick might lend some order to the proceedings, but I don’t want to stifle their discussions or their ideas! I have no idea what we are going to read, but went out and bought a copy of The Amulet of Samarkand after hearing one member talk about it! I have set up a wiki so that these students will have an online forum to share their thoughts about the books they are reading. I look forward to reading their reflections.
I look forward to another interesting year of reading and talking with readers!
FernFolio Editor

Sketches by Eric Walters

fernfolio — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:00:30 +0000

Fourteen year-old Dana is a runaway, living on the streets of Toronto. Begging for spare change to buy coffee and a doughnut, and protecting her rapidly dwindling possessions from thieves is a far cry from her comfortable life in the suburbs, but she cannot go home.
Fortunately, Dana is adopted into a street family. Sixteen year-old Ashley has been on the streets since she was twelve and, though she puts on a tough act and grumbles about the added pressures of looking out for an underage runaway, proves herself when things get difficult. At seventeen, Brent shows a sometimes alarming tendency toward drug use, and possesses a level of cynicism and pessimism that hints at the struggles he has known, but is steadfast in his care and protection of the two girls. It is Brent who knows all the squats and finds them somewhere safe to sleep each night. It is Brent who figures out each day how they are going to make some money, either by choosing a subway entrance at which to beg for change or by cleaning windshields at stoplights. Both Brent and Ashley are there to calm her down and get her safely away when Dana is propositioned by a man in a business suit who then accuses her of solicitation when Dana starts making a scene.
Dana learns about the realities of life on the street, the constant discomfort of dirty clothes and hair, of hunger and of fatigue. She discovers that street people such as she are invisible, and that most passers-by either become hostile when asked for money or give out of the selfish desire to make the unpleasantness go away.
Dana’s only escape from the tediousness and fear of street life is making art. When she is caught spray painting underneath an overpass by a worker from a local centre for street youth, she is invited to drop in. At Sketches, Dana finds art, industrial arts and computer design studios, and friendship in the form of the centre’s director, Nicki, and a former street youth and now up-and-coming artist, Becca, who volunteers at the centre.
Though Brent and Ashley are initially sceptical about Dana’s increasing involvement in Sketches and its programs, they quickly recognize the potential of making sidewalk chalk pictures, after Nicki and Becca teach Dana and others how to create them. Soon the three young people are earning some decent money through the donations of admiring passers-by, and are thinking that, just possibly, they can make it off the street.
This is a good story about street youth and the hardships of life on the street. It explores some of the compelling reasons that push young men and women to leave home, and as well as the difficulties they face in making it off the street and into homes and jobs. Perhaps our politicians ought to be reading this. Sketches is the Intermediate Book Club’s choice for its second book of the year. I know there will be plenty of discussion about social justice.
FernFolio Editor

Intermediate Book Club, or How I Came to Be Investigated by Canadian Border Services

fernfolio — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:33:14 +0000

The Intermediate Book Club has decided to read Deborah Ellis’ Sacred Leaf, sequel to I am a Taxi (see my review). While we await the arrival of our books, book club members have spent a very enjoyable couple of lunch hours talking about books and debating the relative merits of one author over another.
Today I suggested that we go online and try to find information about the importance of the coca plant in the lives of the traditional peoples of Bolivia. Through their research, Book Club members discovered that the leaves of the coca plant are believed to have many medicinal properties, that, while chewing them might produce a feeling of euphoria, they do not lead to hallucinations, and that records suggest that the Incas were chewing coca as early as the 6th century. They learned that Coca Cola was originally made with coca, and that, with the rise of the international cocaine trade, the plant has become suspect since coca is one of the central ingredients in the production of this illegal and highly addictive drug.
One of the readers found out that one can purchase coca tea bags from Amazon.com, but, when we checked, we discovered that it is not available at Amazon.ca. We believe that coca leaves are illegal in Canada, but, in the interests of research, I have e-mailed the Canadian Border Services to learn more. I hope they take my query in the spirit in which is was intended!