FernFolio » courage

Pigboy by Vicki Grant

fernfolio — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:31:23 +0000

Daniel is not looking forward to the class trip to a heritage farm. Small, skinny, and bucktoothed with coke-bottle glasses, he has enough problems as the bookish class runt without the added hassles of a day around pigs. Daniel’s last name is Hogg, and the class bully, Shane Coolen, has already taken great pleasure in making every hog and pig joke he can think of.
The trip up to the farm in a schoolbus has been tough; Shane has managed to corner Dan in a seat at the back of the bus, and, for Dan, the results of this little interlude include broken glasses and a bloody nose. Dan figures his best bet is to stick close to the supply teacher, Ms. Creaser, and try not to draw attention to himself.
Though his regular teacher has talked a lot about, Mr. Van Wart, the owner of the heritage farm, Dan is surprised to discover that the man looks more like a biker than a farmer. Mr. Van Wart seems surprised to see that class and, initially is unwelcoming and, even, rude. After a brief conversation outside with Ms. Creaser, the farmer returns to say that Ms. Creaser is feeling ill and has decided to rest in the school bus. He warns the students not to disturb their supply teacher, but, when Dan sneaks off to find his allergy medication, he finds both the bus driver and the teacher tied up and unconscious. So begins Dan’s race to save both his classmates and his teacher from a situation that escalates quickly from dangerous to desperate.
Vicki Grant’s Pigboy is a terrific adventure, one that will keep the reader turning the pages until its exciting conclusion!
FernFolio Editor

Sophie and the Sea Monster by Don Gillmor

fernfolio — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:11:36 +0000

Sophie is afraid of big dogs, thunderstorms, snapping turtles, and the moon falling on her house, but most of all, she’s afraid of sea monsters. However, when she finds a little blue sea monster under her bed, she realizes that he is even more afraid than she. He’s scared of leopards and anteaters and whales and eels and sharks. He’s even afraid of water and… sea monsters!
It takes a while, but Sophie draws the little sea monster out from under the bed and helps him confront and overcome his fears, and, as she helps him, Sophie conquers her own worries!
This fun story is beautifully illustrated by Michael Martchenko.
FernFolio Editor
After listening to this story, children in the Primary division talked and wrote about what scares them and tried to come up with plans to deal with these fears!

Insects
Spiders – Get away from them, take their webs out of your way, and vacuum up the spiders.
Scorpions – Do not go to the place they live.
Big Ants – I can march the ants outside in a line.
I am scared of Mosquitos. I use bug spray, and I swat them, and squish them!
I am scared of black widows and my shadow.
I am scared of spiders. I see them everywhere. I see tarantulas.

Ghosts
Flush them down the toilet.
Call a ghost buster.
Leave a vacuum cleaners on all night.
Run to the house, go to your mom’s room, and shout!
I will hold onto my teddy bear. I will say, “Go away!”
I am afraid of ghosts at night. I calm myself with saying they only come at 12:00, and if I’m not sleeping at night they’ll take me!

Robbers and other maniacs
Maybe I could shut all the windows, shut all the curtains, lock all the doors, and turn of all the lights. Maybe that would help.
Go to my bed and snuggle with my panda at the corner of my bed and scrunch up the covers.
Monsters – Throw water on them.

Bullies
Stand up to the bully.

Other Scary Things
We’re scared of the subway.
I am scared of a Big foot.
I’m afraid of rhinos and this is what I do. I look at the pandas.
Bears – drop to the ground and play dead.
Mice – Ask my cat to catch them.
Guns – Do not get near strangers. And dodge bullets.
Walking Alone in the Night – Just don’t. And thank God I cannot go outside at night until I am 13.
Clowns – Go to the circus, go to a clown and hold its hand, and talk to the clown.
Elevators – Go up and down with someone, keep on doing this, and learn more about elevators.

Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick

fernfolio — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:02:07 +0000

Twelve year-old Maxwell Kane’s life is transformed when he meets Kevin. Despite the odds, the hulking giant who’s “never had a brain” and the fierce, mouthy genius locked in a crippled two-foot body become friends, and then more than friends. When they discover that, together they are more than the sum of their parts, Max and Freak become Freak the Mighty. Together they slay dragons and rescue damsels in distress. When Max’s killer father gets paroled from prison, and when Freak’s body begins to fail him, those dragons become all too real. Yet Freak the Mighty, and the boys’ friendship makes it possible for them to confront, and slay, even the most fearsome of dragons – fear and death.
Freak the Mighty was chosen by the Girls’ Book Club to be their second novel, along with Bridge to Terabithia. What an extraordinary piece of luck it is that these two novels both examine the power of friendship, the triumph over adversity, and the importance of remembering.
Rodman Philbrick’s novel is a must read!
FernFolio Editor

Penelope and the Monsters by Sheri Radford

fernfolio — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:53:39 +0000

“I’m never, ever, not in a million trillion gazillion years going to sleep,” Penelope announces when her father tucks her into bed. Penelope is afraid of monsters and her bedroom seems to be full of them! Gnomes in her dresser drawers, trolls in her closet, and giants under her bed. When her father tells her that they don’t exist and that she should go to sleep, Penelope decides she’s going to have to confront her fears.
This is a fun story about those monsters that keep us huddled under the covers at night. Wonderfully illustrated by Christine Tripp, Penelope and the Monsters is a sequel to Sheri Radford’s Penelope and the Humongous Burp!
Children in the Primary Division made shadow paintings after listening to this story. Click on the pictures, below, to see them!
Fern Folio Editor

Angel Square by Brian Doyle

fernfolio — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:58:48 +0000

It’s Christmas of 1945, the first Christmas since the end of the War, and Tommy is troubled to learn that his best friend Sammy’s father has been beaten up and left in a coma. Is it because somebody wants his job at the streetcar barns, or because he’s a Jew? Tommy, who is a big fan of the popular radio show, The Shadow (Who know what evil lurks in the hearts of men… The Shadow knows!), decides to do some investigating, with the help of his friends Coco Laframbroise and Gerald Hickey.
Tommy attends York Street School, one of three schools that borders onto Angel Square in Ottawa’s Lower Town. While York Street students are, for the most part, Jews, the students of St Brigit’s are Irish Catholics, Dogans, and the students of Brother Bréboeuf are French Canadians, Pea Soups. To get to school each day, Tommy must cross Angel Square, a place where groups form along ethnic and religious lines, and where, each day, rivalries are sorted out, in the time-honoured way of boys, through fights. What seems initially to be almost shockingly violent and un-PC proves, as the story unfolds, to be a complex and civilised form of social interaction. The boys of Angel Square, quite literally, settle their problems, whether large or small, themselves.
Tommy, as The Shadow, doesn’t quite belong in any of the gangs of Angel Square. He isn’t Jewish, or Catholic, or French Canadian; he’s nothing, but the three boys he calls best friends come, each of them, from one these groups. Tommy fights and plays with boys from each community. He also works both at Talmud Torah, the local synagogue, cleaning floors, and at St Brigit’s, where he serves as an altar boy. He also sings in the choir at St Albany’s Anglican church.
Tommy calls upon his friends in each of Lower Town’s communities to help him uncover the identity of the man who has assaulted Sammy’s father. French Canadians, Irish Catholics and Jews, they lend their support to Tommy as he follows up the leads and interviews potential witnesses. The final settling of accounts with the villain is true to the spirit of Angel Square.
Brian Doyle is a wonderful writer. Angel Square is the first novel of five about Tommy and his friends from Lower Town. Doyle won the prestigious NSK Neustadt Prize in 2005 for Children’s Literature. He is one of Canada’s very finest writers for children.
FernFolio Editor

Diary of a Fairy Godmother by Esmé Raji Codell

fernfolio — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:16:26 +0000

Hunky Dory is at the head of her class at Charm School. She is first in spelling and almost always Miss Harbinger’s class pet. But, when she makes an uninvited visit to a Christening party with her Auntie Malice, something in this young witch begins to change. She can’t help herself from offering the baby a little gift in the form of a spell to mitigate the one her aunt has given, and is startled by the tingling feeling she gets after her good deed. It’s also when she first hears of F.G.s, fairy godmothers, those trite little beings who go around granting wishes. Hunky begins to question whether she truly is destined to be the “Baddest Witch Wherever the Four Winds Blow”, as her mother predicts, and starts to think that possibly, just possibly, she’s really cut out to be a fairy godmother.
Armed only with her wand, her diary and her copy of ‘Be the One with the Wand’, Hunky sets off to discover her destiny. What she learns it that witches and F.G.s aren’t nearly as different as she expected, that sometimes you have to make your own path in life, one that is unique and entirely right for you.
Diary of a Fairy Godmother is a fun, smart book for girls. I’m glad that the Girls’ Book Club chose it for their first novel.
FernFolio Editor

Casey Little Yo-Yo Queen by Nancy Belgue

fernfolio — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:52:28 +0000

Casey has spent the summer pet sitting to earn enough money to buy her favourite horse, Lightning, from the riding stable at which she takes lessons. Zelda, the owner of the stable, needs the money and can’t wait much longer for the $1500 she’s asking for Lightning.
When Casey learns that Geronimo Patchett, the wealthy owner of the Patchett Yo-Yo Company, wants to buy Lightning for his stuck-up daughter, Deirdre, she despairs. But just as she thinks she’s lost any chance of buying Lightning, Casey’s mysterious and elderly neighbour, Mrs. Lombardi, decides to hold a carnival for the neighbourhood, a carnival that will feature a yo-yo contest with a $1500 first prize.
It just so happens that Casey Little is a yo-yo queen and stands a good chance at winning that first prize, if only she can overcome her stage fright!
FernFolio Editor

Peggy’s Letters by Jacqueline Halsey

fernfolio — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:27:32 +0000

London, 1945. When their house is bombed, 10-year-old Peggy, along with her mum and baby brother Tommy, go to live with her granddad, a difficult old man whom Peggy doesn’t know very well, and who doesn’t seem happy to have them stay. Peggy must go to a new school, where she is ignored by her classmates, and must endure her mother’s worries and her grandfather’s complaints. She meets Spud, a boy who likes collecting shrapnel from bomb sites, but gets mad at him when he wants to dig through the ruins of her house. Lonely and missing her best friend, Norah, Peggy shares her experiences, both happy and sad, with her father, to whom she writes frequent letters. She tells him about things at school, about the arguments between her mother and her grandfather, and about little Tommy.
Although things, both at school and at home, seem very troubled, at times, Peggy discovers that, when they need to, she and her family and friends are strong enough to overcome any adversity.
This is a wonderful story about the courage of the human spirit.
FernFolio Editor

Mella and the N’anga by Gail Nyoka

fernfolio — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:01:00 +0000

King Chinembira lies gravely ill, and his kingdom, whose fate is tied to the king’s health, is in the grips of serious drought and is threatened by uprisings. Mella has watched many healers try and fail to restore her father to health, and finally goes to the Rangarirai, a respected elder, to ask for help. Rangarirai teaches Mella how to summon the Great N’anga, a powerful magician and wise woman, who announces that someone must travel to the cave of the Great Python Healer, for only he can cure the king.
Mella, and her friends Revai and Shamiso, will have to learn the ways of the ancient Daughters of Hunt, and brave many challenges and fears, if they hope to save the king’s life and safeguard the kingdom.
Mella and the N’anga is a beautifully written tale of about wisdom and courage set in the long-ago time of the Great Zimbabwe.
FernFolio Editor

Terror at Turtle Mountain by Penny Draper

fernfolio — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 22:41:55 +0000

During the early hours of April 29, 1903, the top of Turtle Mountain come crashing down, sealing the mine entrance, burying part of the town of Frank, Alberta, and taking out the CPR rail lines, shortly before the Spokane Flyer was due to come through.
13 year-old Natalie Vaughan rushes to help in the rescue efforts. Although, her widowed mother has warned her to expect the worst, Natalie is determined to search for her missing friends and their families, and to comfort those who have lost loved ones both in town and in the mine. Though Natalie has struggled all her life to the knowledge that she is a disappointment to her mother’s family, she shows, by her courage, that she is a fighter.
FernFolio Editor