Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson

In Nalo Hopkinson's latest urban fantasy, Sister Mine, Makeda and Abby are twins with mixed heritage: demigod and human. They were born conjoined, but when they were separated, Abby got all the magic. At 24, Makeda decides it's time to put some distance between herself and her sister, so she finds her own place for the first time. She also finds that she just might have some serious mojo of her own.

I listened to the audiobook [Dreamscape: 11.5 hrs] narrated by Robin Miles, who also did Bulawayo's We Need New Names. I have a lot of respect for Miles' versatility, since these are such different stories, even though both are told in first person. Both books employ a lot of dialogue, mostly by Black characters of different backgrounds, expertly interpreted by Miles. She also conveyed Makeda's personality very well -- her jealousy, short temper and general impatience.

Sister Mine is packed with mythological references, shapeshifters and even a flying carpet... in Toronto, Ontario. There's a sexy guy who used to be a guitar... belonging to Jimi Hendrix. Makeda and Abby's mother has been turned into a sea monster. Their father's soul is possibly held in a kudzu vine named Quashee. Their extended family includes celestials like tricksy Uncle Jack... the grim reaper.

The sisters bicker too much for my liking, but they redeem themselves by being there for each other when it counts the most. There's lots of action and it's all great fun.

Readalike: Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman).

The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles De Lint

A brave and plucky orphan girl gets turned into a cat in The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles De Lint and illustrator Charles Vess. This fantasy novel is greatly expanded from a short story by the same duo, A Circle of Cats, published about 10 years ago.

The setting appears to be the southern Appalachians in the early twentieth century. Aspects of The Cats of Tanglewood Forest brought to mind Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls, but this story is suitable for much younger audiences. Beautiful full-colour artwork and liberal borrowings from the Brothers Grimm, Native American mythology and Uncle Remus tales make this a perfect family read-aloud choice.

Readalikes: The Old Country (Mordicai Gerstein); Tree Girl (T.A. Barron); and The Flint Heart (Katherine and John Paterson).

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

In Ask the Passengers, 17-year-old Astrid Jones could be the poster child for 'questioning' in the multiple choice list that is GLBTQ (or similar). It isn't that Astrid doesn't recognize her mutual attraction to another girl, it's that she resists being defined by a category. A.S. King's latest book is the most realistic depiction of identity confusion I've encountered yet.

Astrid reluctantly agrees to join her queer friends in their plan to sneak into a nearby town's gay bar in the chapter 'It Is Way Too Easy to Get into Atlantis.'

"Looking confident and looking twenty-one are two entirely different things. [...] At first I was scared the bouncer might say, 'Sorry, kids, I need ID,' but then I realized that would be fine. Then we could go home. Kristina could go back to meeting Donna at McDonald's or the parking lot out by Freedom Lake and double-dating with Justin and Chad on Fridays like always, and I could go back to keeping my secret love for Dee stowed away in the deepest regions of my baffled heart."

The Jones family is dysfunctional to the max, but King manages to portray Astrid's sister and parents as broken human beings, rather than one-dimensionally horrible.

Astrid doesn't feel safe giving her love to the people in her life, so she spends her free time lying on a picnic table in her back yard, sending her love up to the people in airplanes overhead. Vignettes in the viewpoint of random passengers are interspersed throughout the story. The juxtaposition of their problems and preoccupations with Astrid's similar woes makes Ask the Passengers even more appealing. I was reminded of King's deft use of multiple points of view in one of her earlier novels, Please Ignore Vera Dietz.

The final passenger is a teenager being sent to a gay conversion camp. I thought of her when I heard the good news that Exodus International would be closing, the director apologizing for the harm the ex-gay group has done to gay people.

There's a lot of other great stuff in Ask the Passengers, like Astrid's enthusiasm for Greek philosophy and the bizarre relationship between Astrid's mother and Astrid's best friend. I loved this book so much that I hugged it before putting it down whenever my reading was interrupted. It is tender, honest and moving. Astrid is in my heart now.

Abelard by Regis Hautiere and Renaud Dillies

Abelard looks like a graphic novel for kids because of the big-eyed anthropomorphic characters. It isn't. Regis Hautiere (scenario) and Renaud Dillies (art) have created a whimsical tale for adults about friendship and the value in living a life filled with gratitude.

Abelard is a long-legged boy-chick who lives in a marsh where there are few women, in a fictional early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. A brief encounter with a bird-girl leaves him besotted and determined to win her affection. Abelard is given dubious advice: "To seduce a gal like Eppily, you got to offer her the moon. Or, at the very least, a bouquet of stars."

"Nobody's innocent!" says Gaston.

Being a total innocent, Abelard decides to travel to America, where he's heard that flying machines have been invented. He hopes to get to the moon in one. I almost gave up on the book at this point, because it seemed rather too sentimental for my taste. Luckily, I didn't, because things picked up after about 30 pages. Abelard encounters many obstacles on his journey, including being severely assaulted for being perceived as a "faggot" and a "poet." A grumpy man-bear named Gaston becomes Abelard's unlikely friend.

While travelling with Gypsies, Abelard consults Madame Zaza.
Dillies' dark contour lines and brushy stroke style can be seen here.

It was fun to find jokes slipped into the illustrations, like the Gypsy clairvoyant who advertises extra lucidity. There's a dead leaf with a note: "God rest its soul." There are two road signs pointing in opposite directions: "Towards America" and "Towards America Too (But It's Farther)."

This charming fable, translated from French by Joe Johnson, is suitable for Grade 9 to adult.

Readalikes: Good-bye, Chunky Rice (Craig Thompson); Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Eric Shanower and Skottie Young); Robot Dreams (Sara Varon); Bone (Jeff Smith); The Little Prince Graphic Novel (Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Johann Sfar); and Set to Sea (Drew Weing).

The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie

A stranger comes to town and then all kinds of secrets come bubbling to the surface in Mia McKenzie's Lambda award-winning The Summer We Got Free.

The Delaney family has lived in the same house on Radnor Street in west Philadelphia for decades. In 1950, George and Regina Delaney, 6-year-old Sarah, and 4-year-old twins, Ava and Geo, were immediately welcomed into the church on their block from the first day in the neighbourhood. Something major happened after that. By 1976 the Delaneys are shunned by everyone and the grown daughters still live at home. The story shifts back and forth between the 50s and the mid-70s.

Helena, the long-lost sister of Ava's husband Paul, arrives at the Delaney house unexpectedly.

"When Helena crossed the threshold into the house, Ava felt the temperature rise. The chill that had held in the corners since the previous night's rain, that had penetrated the wood floors and clung to the gray-red wallpaper like an invisible frost, melted away in a moment. Ava felt it instantly, a sudden warming on her skin, as if she had just left the shade and was out into the sun on a hot day."

When Ava was a girl, there was something about her that enchanted other people. She was a gifted artist from a young age, and she was wild and fearless. Her unfetteredness was peculiar and yet appealing:

"Up close, the good feelings Ava inspired had been doubled, tripled in some cases. Grace Kellogg found that the little girl's laugh somehow reminded her of the pajamas she had worn as a child -- thick, feet-in pajamas that had kept her warm in the drafty house her family had lived in for many years. Looking into Ava's eyes, Jane Lucas remembered the smile of her love, her young husband, who had died in the war. When Ava tripped and fell over the edge of the rug while running by at full speed, Chuck Ellis lifted her up and in that moment he was sure he smelled morning, though it was six in the evening at the time."

In 1976, Ava is a hollow husk. A line from one of Mary Oliver's poems made me think of Ava:

"sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild and want it back." (From Green, Green Is My Sister's Home in A Thousand Mornings.)

Once Ava starts remembering, it can't be stopped. Everyone in her family seems to shake off the spell they've been under. It's a wonderful thing to witness. Ghosts, secret gay and lesbian lives, and unsolved murders are all part of this intriguing story about stepping into our true selves. I loved it.

The smart and scrappy Mia McKenzie has created an activist blog Black Girl Dangerous. Check it out.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Darling, 10 years old at the start of NoViolet Bulawayo's debut novel We Need New Names, is a unique and unsentimental narrator. I really enjoyed hearing her voice performed by Robin Miles in the audiobook format [Hachette Audio: 9 hrs].

The first part of the book is set in the turbulent times following the independence of Zimbabwe. Darling's family has been displaced and lives in a shantytown called Paradise. She and other children go on guava raids to a richer nearby community, Budapest, in order to assuage their constant hunger.

I'm fond of novels for adults that have child narrators, especially when they are done as well as this one. I can imagine the heat when Darling describes it: "the sun ironed us and ironed us and ironed us." She is asked to hold a baby with a surprised look on its face, as if he had "just seen the buttocks of a snake."

Later, Darling goes to live with her aunt in Detroit. Her ferocity increases in the second half of the book as Darling recounts her teen years. I've never before encountered the words "we smiled" written to contain so much anger. Darling, like other immigrants, struggles to find an identity that fits, and to feel at home. She describes that uncomfortable place of being between two worlds. She is no longer considered Zimbabwean by those she left behind, but she isn't American either. Darling wonders what America is for, if you can't fulfill your dreams there.

We Need New Names is expanded from Bulawayo's short story, 'Hitting Budapest,' that won the Caine Prize for African writing. The episodic style of the novel lends itself well to being read a little at a time, in chapter installments. I was so attracted to Darling's voice, however, that I gulped it down quickly.

Readalike: Ghana Must Go (Taiye Selasi). Contrast We Need New Names with Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Alexandra Fuller), which gives a Caucasian child's point of view of Zimbabwe.

Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole J. Georges

Nicole Georges' memoir in comic strip format is sweetly endearing. In Calling Dr. Laura, Georges portrays her younger lesbian self in search of the truth about her father -- a man who had supposedly died when she was a baby. Along the way, she negotiates relationship minefields with her unpredictable mother and her surly girlfriend.

Georges' blended lesbian household includes an assortment of chickens
(kept outdoors, unless injured) and five dogs (sharing the bed here).

I learned new words from the cover of the book: 'zinester' (someone who creates zines), 'Portlandy' (of Portland) and 'femme gay' (a lesbian femme). These words aren't in the text, by the way. They are used by others to describe Georges, a lovable and multi-talented artist with retro sensibilities.

Fans of poultry will appreciate the details in the panels that include chickens. I smiled to see a speech balloon containing a small heart and an exclamation point: a chicken's response to being fed.

Interior scenes give a lovely sense of Georges' home.
Lots of black ink in the illustrations helps to set apart the later time frame from the earlier one.

Georges describes the time she used baked goods to lure a romantic interest into her home. "Chocolate peanut butter cups were a really popular item during this time, as they were the only fail-proof recipe in the vegan cookbook my Portland friends all owned. The book was from Canada, and had somehow gone awry in the conversion from metric. As a result, 'cookie bars' were hockey pucks, and brownies like biscuits. The peanut butter cups were a stroke of luck, delicious and unscathed." (The cookbook isn't named, but my guess is that it's likely How It All Vegan, by the tattooed, vintage-attired Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer.)

Flashbacks to Georges' childhood are done in a different, less realistic style with lots of white.
Nicole's much older sister is also a lesbian.

Georges' sister Liz did not have a good experience coming out to their mother. "'The verbal beating of my life,' as Liz recalls it. Liz and Mom stopped speaking shortly thereafter. I didn't imagine my coming out would go any better, and so... I didn't tell my mom." Secrets always make life difficult, however, and Georges eventually figures out how to deal with them.

Calling Dr. Laura is a heartfelt, funny and charming memoir.

Readalikes: Fun Home (Alison Bechdel); Likewise (Ariel Schrag); The Floundering Time (Katy Weselcouch); The Imposter's Daughter (Laurie Sandell); and Drinking at the Movies (Julia Wertz).