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Lunches with Lenin by Deborah Ellis

fernfolio — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:46:28 +0000

Matthew buys pot from Hammer, the high school football captain and local source for marijuana, though he knows he’s being overcharged and risks discovery by one of the sniffer dogs the school administration regularly bring in. Tahmina is proud of her expertise in harvesting opium from her father’s poppies, until disaster strikes and the local police move in and destroy the crop, leaving her father with few options to repay his debt to the local money lender. Fifteen-year old Brandon reacts with rage when he learns that all of his learning problems, and difficulties controlling his behaviour are consequences of his mother’s drinking when she was pregnant with him. Abandoned in Red Square, when he was a child of five, by his mother who said she was going to visit Lenin’s tomb, Valerin grows up in state institutions until, at sixteen, he is released to make his own way in the world, and is offered a chance at the Gates of Heaven, through an injection of heroin, by his only friend.
Deborah Ellis’ Lunch with Lenin is a collection of short stories that examine the human cost of illegal drugs and substance abuse through the eyes of teenagers in Russia, Afghanistan, Canada, the US, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Bolivia. Searing and tender and brutally honest, Ellis’ stories are nothing short of wonderful. A must-read for Intermediate students.
FernFolio Editor

My New Shirt by Cary Fagan and Dusan Petricic

fernfolio — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:19:17 +0000

David loves his Bubbie, and loves to visit her in her apartment above the Kuni Lemmel Bagel Shop. But he dreads going to see her on his birthday because each and every year, David’s Bubbie give him the same present for his birthday, a gift he neither wants nor appreciates. She gives him a stiff, white, collared shirt because, as Bubbie says, every boy needs a nice white shirt that makes him look like a “little gentleman.” How, David wonders, does a kid who thinks like him grow up to be an adult to thinks like that?!
David opens the box, and takes out the shirt, but, before he can try it on for his delighted Bubbie and parents, something unexpected happens, something that has everybody racing all over the neighbourhood in hot pursuit of the new shirt!
Written by the wonderful Cary Fagan and illustrated by the incomparable Dusan Petricic, this story about family and misguided presents is sure to become a classic!
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 Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale by Lydia Dabcovich

fernfolio — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:02:01 +0000

When an elderly Inuit woman, who is frequently forced to rely upon her neighbours for food, finds a small orphaned bear cub, she adopts him as her son and names him Kunikdjuaq. The little bear shares the old woman’s meager meals, plays with the village children, and forms a deep and abiding attachment to his adoptive mother.
Kunikdjuaq soon grows big and strong, and becomes a skilled fisher and hunter, sharing everything with the old woman and her village. But his skill causes the village hunters to grow jealous, and they decide to kill Kunikdjuaq. Warned by children who overheard the hunters’ plans, the old woman tells her polar bear son to flee but the faithful bear finds a way to remain true to his Inuit mother.
This old Inuit tale celebrates sharing, community, and the strength of a familial love. Beautifully retold, and illustrated, by Lydia Dabcovich, The Polar Bear Son is both a window onto Inuit culture and a reminder of the ties that bind all of us together.
FernFolio Editor

The List by Hazel Hutchins and Maria van Lieshout

fernfolio — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:27:52 +0000

When the kingdom of Thibodeau announces the birth of a royal baby, the Queen of Iddison sets out to gather the finest gifts both from her own kingdom and from the lands between her kingdom and that of Thibodeau. She composes a long list of items and eight great carts, pulled by eight elephants, are filled with treasures. Seeds and vegetables and livestock to feed the body, books and toys and musical instruments to feed the mind, cottons and wools and silks and precious jewels to cloth and ornament the body, marvellous plants and animals to create the most pleasant of environments, and coloured sands to inspire creativity are gathered for the new baby, for all of its neighbours have known the generosity of kingdom of Thibodeau, and all want to help to celebrate the royal birth.
Travelling with the Queen of Iddison and her great caravan of gifts, is her young daughter, Cassidy, who is just old enough to have learned the alphabet and how to spell her name. She, too, has made a list, one that she has tucked into a pocket and consults each time her royal mother checks her own list. After the gifts from the Queen of Iddison and her many neighbours have been presented to the King and Queen of Thibodeau, and each one has been admired and exclaimed over, the young Cassidy draws out her own list and proves that there is one gift much greater than all of the treasures of Iddison combined.
The List is a delightful story that reminds the reader of all of the many things that contribute to the upbringing of a happy child. Hutchins’ prose rolls off the tongue, making this a fun book for reading aloud to children. Van Lieshout’s illustrations are joyous and childlike. The List is bound to become a treasured classic.
FernFolio Editor

Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay

fernfolio — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:30:10 +0000

At eight years old, after she stood on a kitchen chair to read the names of paint colours off a chart posted on the wall, Saffron Casson discovered that she was adopted. She learned that her sisters, Caddy and Rose, and her brother, Indigo, were, in fact, her cousins, and that, following her mother’s death in a car accident in Italy, she was brought home to England by her grandfather, and had come to live with her aunt, Eve, her uncle, Bill, and their children. This revelation changed something inside of Saffy; somewhere deep inside her, she began to doubt her place in the world.
When her grandfather dies, after ten long years in a nursing home unable to communicate following a massive stroke, he leaves to Saffy, in his will, an angel. Though she has few memories of her life in Siena, Italy, now thirteen year-old Saffy dreams of a sunlit garden and, with the help of her new friend, Sarah, realizes that in that garden stood a stone angel, which her three year-old self adored. Sarah, whose unco-operative back and legs land her in a wheelchair, most of the time, possesses great determination and, when she hears the story of the stone angel, decides that she and Saffy will travel to Siena and find it. Together they set out to locate the sunlit garden, and retrieve Saffy’s angel.
Interlaced with Saffy’s story, are the stories of Caddy, Indigo, Rose, and their parents. Cadmium, at eighteen, has managed to fail every school-leaving exam and is bracing to do so again, is approaching her hundredth driving lesson and has fallen in love with Michael, her driving instructor, who endlessly praises the abilities of his girlfriend, Diane. Indigo, eleven, struggles to overcome his fear of heights by hanging out his bedroom window so that he can realize his dream of becoming a polar explorer, when he’s not cooking for the family or quietly reassuring his mother and his sisters, whom he views as his pack. Five year-old Rose spends her time painting at the kitchen table, sometimes with paint and sometimes with the contents of the fridge, and arguing with her father. Their mother, Eve, teaches art to little old ladies and juvenile delinquents, but lives to escape to her shed at the bottom of the garden where she paints nice little pictures that are snapped up by people who see them in the building society window. Bill, their father, is a serious artist, and lives, during the week, in London where he paints free of the distractions of wife and children, travelling home, on weekends, to the chaos of pet guinea pigs, unwashed dishes and family.
Saffy’s Angel, the second of four books by Hilary McKay about the Casson family children, won the 2002 Whitbread Children’s Book Award. It is a sad and funny celebration of a young girl’s search for herself, and her family’s efforts to help her do so.
FernFolio Editor

Never to be Told by Becky Citra

fernfolio — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:21:27 +0000

Twelve year-old Asia has lived with Ira and Maggy on their farm at Cold Creek for as long as she can remember. Abandoned by her mother at age three, she has found everything she needs in the elderly couple, their small house heated by its wood stove, and the fields of hay and sheep and cows. She loves helping Ira finish the beautiful wooden boxes he makes to sell at craft fairs and in gift shops, working with Maggie in her flower and vegetable garden, and climbing high in her old pine tree by the creek. She never thinks about the young mother who brought her to Cold Creek and then drove away one day, several months later, promising to return for her.
When Ira suffers a heartache and is hospitalized, Maggie and Ira’s son Harry comes home from California to help his parents. He tries to encourage his parents to return with him to California, where the warm climate will be easier on Ira’s heart and Maggie’s arthritis. Since he lives with his wife in an adults-only condominium, he begins to make alternative arrangements for Asia. Since they never tried to get legal custody of Asia, afraid that children’s aid would turn them down as suitable foster parents because of their age, Ira and Maggie have no rights with regard to the girl, and Asia quickly finds herself poised to lose the only home and family she has ever known.
But Asia is not the only one suffering the loss of everything she holds dear. Close to Ira and Maggie’s farm lies the abandoned ruin of a second farmhouse, the old Williams place. It is haunted by the ghost of Miranda Williams, a young wife and mother whose daughter, Daisy, died suddenly at the age of three, leaving Miranda bereft. Miranda’s ghost recalls the arrival at the Williams farm, nearly a hundred years before, of a man looking for work and accompanied by his young daughter, Beatrice. Miranda’s preoccupation with the child grows to be point of obsession and leads, eventually, to tragedy, one that has tied her ghost to the abandoned farm for over forty years.
The ghost of Miranda Williams reaches out to Asia, and asks for her help in locating something that has been lost for decades, something that will reveal a terrible secret and set her free. In aiding the ghost, Asia draws closer to her maternal grandmother, Beth, with whom she has gone to live, and finds within herself the courage to accept the changes that life has brought her.
Never to be Told is one of the novels nominated for the 2008 Silver Birch prize.
FernFolio Editor

Tibet: Our Lives, Our Stories by the Tibetan Book Club of Parkdale Public School

fernfolio — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:44:43 +0000

In recent years the community of Parkdale, in Toronto, has become home to many immigrants from Tibet. In 2006, with the help and encouragement of their school principal and some teachers as well as adults from the Tibetan community, a group of students at Parkdale formed the Tibetan Book Club and set out to write a book about their experiences as young immigrants from Tibet, a homeland none of them have ever visited but to which they all feel a deep and abiding attachment.
Beautifully illustrated by drawings, watercolours and photographs rendered by book club members, Tibet: Our Lives, Our Stories, chronicles their memories of refugee life in Nepal and Northern India, their cultural traditions and celebrations, and their long journeys to a new home in Toronto. Many of these students spent years living with relatives, while their parents travelled to Canada, found jobs, and then began the long process of sponsoring their children. They speak movingly of arriving in Canada overjoyed and nervous at the prospect of being reunited with their parents, and tearful after saying good-bye to the only families many have ever known.
New lives in Toronto have meant adapting to a new language, new customs and traditions, and new challenges and opportunities. Some write that their parents struggle in physically-demanding and low-paying jobs in order to offer their children a better future. All of them have set high goals for themselves, and want to make those parents proud. Each writer states that they feel very lucky to be living in Canada, and all express the profound wish for a free and independent Tibet.
This lovely book is a must read for those who want to understand more about Tibet and its people, and the experiences of young immigrants to Toronto, or to learn just how successfully young writers can share the stories of their lives.
FernFolio Editor

The Maples on the Move! by Martha Davis and Molly Whittington

fernfolio — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:22:09 +0000

Most of us have dreamed about writing and publishing our own book but my friends Martha and Molly have done so! Following her purchase of a magnificent Victorian doll’s house about a year ago, Martha Davis conceived and wrote The Maples on the Move!, a novella about the Maples whose house becomes too small as their family grows.
Lack of space causes all kinds of small disputes among Kelly and Brian, their seven children, grandparents Henry and Rose, and Great Grandpa Albert. Eventually, they realize that it’s time to find a new and bigger house to accommodate all of their needs and interests. With the help of Henry’s realtor brother, they find the perfect house for their needs, but must overcome a number of difficulties, not the least of which is finding the money to afford the new house, before they can call the old Palmerston estate home.
Martha and Molly have done a wonderful job of explaining the process of home buying to children, including the job of the real estate agent, the importance of getting a home inspection, and the numerous small and larger surprises that await a new home owner.
The characters of Brian and Kelly, their children, aged 13 months to 16 years, and the grandparents are skilfully presented and engaging. The reader is rapidly drawn into the lives of the Maple family, and celebrates with them, when at last they are able to settle into their wonderful new Victorian home.
The Maples on the Move! is beautifully illustrated with photos taken in and around Martha’s and Molly’s two doll’s houses, as well as that of Molly’s friend, Esperanza.
Reading The Maples on the Move! just might inspire you to stop dreaming and start writing… and photographing! You can contact Martha and Molly at maples.move@hotmail.com.
FernFolio Editor

Kat’s Fall by Shelley Hrdlitschka

fernfolio — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 22:50:45 +0000

Estranged from his mother, neglected by his truck-driver father, and entirely responsible for his eleven year-old deaf sister, Kat, fifteen year-old Darcy struggles to cope with almost overwhelming emotional pain. Despite the efforts of his teacher, Ms. Rose, at the alternative school where he’s been sent because of his unwillingness – or inability – to establish social relationships with others, and the caring of Gem, a classmate who keeps reaching out even when he rejects her, Darcy is unable to stop himself from throwing up walls. He loves and trusts only two people, his sister, Kat, and young Sam, the four year-old deaf girl he baby sits after school each day.
Darcy’s life begins to spin out of control when he learns that his mother, sent to prison for throwing Kat off an apartment balcony when he was four, is going to be paroled and wants to see him and his sister. Their father makes it clear that he expects Kat, with whom he has never felt comfortable and never bothered to learn to communicate with, to go to live with her mother. Darcy is torn between his refusal to have anything to do with his mother, and his fear that he will lose contact with Kat.
Things become far more complicated when Sam makes an accusation against Darcy that leaves him isolated and bewildered. Then a sudden flashback to the day of Kat’s fall from that apartment balcony brings another shocking revelation.
To deal with his feelings of fear and guilt and loss of control and isolation, and although he’s promised Kat to stop, Darcy begins to self-mutilate. It is only when he acknowledges that he needs the help of those who care about him, and accepts that help, that Darcy can put the past behind him and begin to heal.
FernFolio Editor