Children's Picture Books: Looking Back on 2015

I love picture books. Fortunately, I have had more exposure to them than the average childless adult because of my work at the public library. It will be different now that I have retired; I'll have to make more of an effort to seek them out in the future. (Yes! Today is the first day of the new year AND my first day of retirement.)

My very favourite picture book of 2015, one that I could return to with pleasure again and again, is The Bus Ride by Quebecois author/artist Marianne Dubuc. A modern child's solo journey on public transit, with hints of little red riding hood and other fairy tales. So much is going on in each page spread, playfully illustrated in Dubuc's distinctive, naive style. Charming X 10.

Two more that came in at a very close tie for second place are also by Canadians: Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith, and The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton. Sidewalk Flowers, like The Bus Ride, has a bit of an urban little red riding hood thing going on. It's about paying attention to the beauty that surrounds us. The Princess and the Pony is a sure bet: subversive, feminist and hilarious.

All three of my favourites have got that perfect alchemy of artwork and story. I use the word "story" rather than "text" because two out of the three are wordless. It's the narrative appeal that makes a picture book more than something beautiful to look at. If you are an adult fan of graphic novels and you haven't been reading picture books, you are missing out on great visual storytelling. Looking back on the many picture books I read in 2015, the following stand out.

Missing Nimama by Melanie Florence and Francois Thisdale - for tackling the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women in a way that is appropriate for young children. (Francois Thisdale also illustrated Bird Child, reviewed here.)

Pool by JiHyeon Lee - for the wonder that builds as you turn the pages, and the wordless portrayal of a developing bond between two young introverts.

Ballad by Blexbolex - for its puzzle of a story and striking graphic design. (Published in 2013)

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman and Zachariah OHora - for its whimsical take on the idea of family.

La Science du caca by Frederic Marais - for its appealing combo of humour, graphic design, and scientific facts about poop. (Published in 2013; only available in French.)

The Secret Life of Squirrels by Nancy Rose - for the cuteness factor. (Published in 2014. Longer review here.)

Shackleton's Journey by William Grill - for its inventive visual presentation of historical information. (Published in 2014.)

The Potato King by Christoph Niemann - for a fascinating story told with unusual illustrations that combine potato prints and photos.

Toys Meet Snow by Emily Jenkins and Paul Zelinsky - because I was delighted to encounter another story about Lumphy, StingRay and Plastic (the book-loving ball), who were first introduced about ten years ago in Toys Go Out.

Float by Daniel Miyares - for masterful use of a limited colour palette, and for immersing me all the way back into the world of childhood.

Louis 1, King of the Sheep by Olivier Tallec - for pointed social commentary delivered with maximum humour. (See my review of Tallec's Waterloo & Trafalgar here.)

Bug in a Vacuum by Melanie Watt - for comedic genius in presenting the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief.

Are you a fan of picture books? What are your favourites?

The River by Helen Humphreys

Elegant. Poetic. Nature writing / fiction / memoir / meditation. Gorgeous book design: small, square format; translucent dust jacket; lavish full colour illustrations made up of contemporary and archival photos as well as historical images of flora and fauna. Helen Humphreys' The River is a gem.

Humphreys documents Depot Creek, the river near her home in Ontario, across years and across seasons.

"The test for how to tell if it's too cold for swimming is to plunge your hand into the river and if the bone in your wrist aches, then the water is too cold to enter."

"The British naturalist and writer Roger Deakin once said that watching a river is the same as watching a fire in the hearth. Both are moving and alive, and the feeling from watching them is a similar one." That feeling is beautifully evoked in The River.

Throughout the book, Humphreys incorporates fictional vignettes based on true stories, similar to those in her earlier nonfiction / novel / short story collection, The Frozen Thames. In The River, these all have environmental themes. They feature characters like a 19th century plume hunter, froggers, hungry boys shooting robins for their supper, and children catching fireflies for NASA in 1965. Two London women joining forces in their opposition to the barbaric fashion of feathered hats. Teenagers cooking at a frog festival where local population depletion necessitates frog leg imports from Indonesia.

"The blackbird sings after every sip of water."

The River makes my soul sing.

Caribbean Fiction: A List

It's the time of short days and long nights in Edmonton. Join me in an escape to tropical island settings, creole cultures and vibrant socio-political histories with these novels by Caribbean authors.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
A novel of political oppression based on the real lives of sisters who were martyred in 1960 during the rule of General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique
A lush intergenerational epic that begins in 1917 when control of the Virgin Islands were transferred from Denmark to the USA.

The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke
A woman's confession of murder in 1952 Bimshire (Barbados) leads to a moving exploration of the island's rich and tragic history.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy
In a wry, saucy voice that brooks no nonsense, July Goodwin tells of her life that began in slavery in the 1800s on a Jamaican sugar cane plantation. My longer review is here.

Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo
Jonathan's search for a parent he hasn't seen since he was nine takes him from Canada to Trinidad in this moving portrayal of gender identity and the immigrant experience. My longer review is here.

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
A radiant portrait of a Haitian community, told in interlinked stories that center around a seven-year-old girl who disappears from her village. My longer review is here.

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
Yunior, the irresistible Dominican Don Juan with a foul mouth, whom Diaz introduced in his earlier books, returns in many of these dazzling stories. I previously reviewed another of Diaz's books, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Cuba, My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel with Jose Villarrubia
A fictionalized memoir by a woman whose idealism at 17 gradually faded after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. Told in graphic novel format with blocky, surrealist artwork in shades of grey and red. My longer review is here.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Winner of the Man Booker Prize, this story centers around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. The audiobook, read by an ensemble cast, is an ideal way to experience the multiple voices and the Jamaican patois. A Brief History of Seven Killings also won the Green Carnation Prize, which is awarded to LGBT writers for any form of literature. My longer review is here.

I created this list for the Edmonton Public Library, where you can find it with live links  directly to the titles in the library's catalogue.

Tormenting Left-handed People

Three books I've read in the past month have portrayed historical cruelty to southpaws. All three also feature lesbian characters, (none of whom are left-handed).

Meags Fitzgerald was born in Quebec in 1987. In Long Red Hair, she uses graphic novel format to tell how she has come to terms with her bisexual identity, including a dramatic coming out scene at her family's supper table when she was 16. As an adult, Fitzgerald was shown a copy of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger's The Malleus Maleficarum.

"It was published in 1487, the printing press was just invented so it became one of the first bestsellers. It spread the idea that people with abnormalities like birthmarks, moles, red hair, or left-handedness, were likely witches."

Fitzgerald's expressive inkwork in shades of gray and red captures the era and emotions very well. Grade 8 and up.

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge is an atmospheric mystery set in the mid-nineteenth century. Fourteen-year-old Faith's intelligence and curiosity about the natural sciences is routinely overlooked because she is a girl. Sneaking around is her only recourse to knowledge. Her father, the Reverend Sunderly, has brought many rare specimens back to England from China, but none are as unusual as the mendacity tree. It's a plant that feeds on lies.

Faith looks after her 6-year-old brother Howard after their family's fortunes take a sudden change. She often has to wrestle him into his special jacket. "Howard loathed the jacket, which he had to wear for all his lessons. The left sleeve was stitched to his side, trapping his left hand in his pocket so that he could not use it." Howard must learn to write with his right hand before he is sent to boarding school, but he would rather not go to school at all. It makes Faith so angry because she would love the opportunity to study beyond her father's library.

When her father is found dead under questionable circumstances, Faith gives up on being a good girl. "She did not feel hot or helpless anymore. She felt the way snakes looked when they moved." She is determined to find the truth.

This is a novel with a wide age-range appeal, and I hope other adults will pick it up. Grade 5 and up.

I wrote about Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's The War that Saved My Life in a previous post. There was a puzzle partway through the story about why Ada's little brother Jamie was coming home with bruising and wounds on one wrist. It turned out that his teacher was tying his left hand to his chair to prevent him from using it. When she was asked why Jamie couldn't use that hand, she said:

"Everyone knows that's the mark of the devil. He wants to write with his left hand, not his right. I'm training him up the way he's supposed to be."

This is another children's story that will appeal to adult readers, particularly if you are looking for an audiobook for a family car trip. Grade 4 and up.

A Reading Life, Or, All Reading, No Blogging

I'd rather read than write, so blogging falls by the wayside sometimes. Then I'm sorry that I don't have a record of some of my favourite books this year. So here are a few notes about the amazing connections I've noticed between books that I've read in the last month or so:

Alex + Ada (by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn) is a 3-part comics series about sentient robots that I loved. Alex never wanted a robot but Ada is a gift from his grandmother. A complicated situation that turns out well in the end. Then I listened to the audiobook The War that Saved My Life (by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley; read by Jayne Entwistle) and the narrator is a crippled 10-year-old girl named Ada. She and her little brother are evacuated from London before bombing begins during the second world war and they get placed with a reluctant host, a crotchety single lesbian. It ends up being the best thing that could have happened to all three of them. (And I'm game for more heros named Ada.)

In The Thing About Jellyfish (by Ali Benjamin), a 12-year-old girl studies jellyfish as a way to understand her friend's death by drowning. She also follows the failures and eventual triumph of Diana Nyad, who successfully swam from Cuba to Florida. I hadn't remembered hearing about Nyad before, but encountered her name soon afterwards in The Argonauts (by Maggie Nelson). The Argonauts is an exciting literary memoir about motherhood and living queer; I listened to the audiobook read by the author and was tempted to start back at the beginning as soon as I finished it. Then I picked up Red Jacket (by Jamaican-born Canadian author Pamela Mordecai). Within the first few pages, when the central character Grace is still a small child, she encounters a jellyfish for the first time:

     "'Well, it's never stung me,' Gramps say the day Grace ask him about the pretty purple-blue bubble lying on the sand at Richfield. It was the first day she put her eyes on so much water, big shining acres of it that blind her as the truck emerge round corner from the dark of the forest. 'However, I know plenty people who it sting and make well-sick,' Gramps continue. He sound serious, like parson at a funeral."

Red Jacket is set on a fictional Caribbean island, St Chris, and follows Grace from babyhood into her adult years, when she works toward a global strategy to combat HIV/AIDS. Another novel that I recently read was also set in the Caribbean and also revolved around family secrets: The Land of Love and Drowning (by Tiphanie Yanique) is a compelling saga set in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

As part of my job, I'm going out to schools to book talk the contenders for this year's Bataille des Bouquins, a French-language reading program for children in Grade 4 to 6. When I talk about Bine: L'affaire est pet shop (by Quebecois author Daniel Brouillette) I mention that Bine wants to catch the eye of the coolest girl in Grade 6, Maxim, who can burp the entire alphabet. Should I have been as surprised as I was to encounter another burping genius? One of the minor characters in Circus Mirandus (by Cassie Beasley) can burp the Greek alphabet. I listened to Circus Mirandus in audiobook, narrated by the incomparable Bronson Pinchot. It's a charming tale about believing in magic.

Okay, I'm going back to my books now. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

The Pemmican Eaters: Poems by Marilyn Dumont

On November 16 in 1885, Louis Riel was hanged for treason. There will be a commemoration ceremony to pay tribute to him today at the Alberta Legislature, starting at 11 am. It is Metis Week in Edmonton: see details of events online here.

The following review was part of a longer post that I wrote three months ago when my reading project was book bingo.

The beautiful cover image
is by Linus Woods.

I grew up on an Alberta farm in a francophone community that was originally called St Paul-des-Métis. When I was younger, I thought all Canadians considered Louis Riel to be our greatest national folk hero. And that Gabriel Dumont, Riel's general in the 1885 rebellion, was famous too.

When I began working at Edmonton Public Library in 1989, I signed up a brown-skinned young woman for a library card and made a comment about her historic family name, "Dumont." She looked at me blankly. I said, "Gabriel Dumont." Still nothing. After telling her we had books about him in the collection, I proceeded with the library card. Later, I quizzed Edmonton friends and colleagues and discovered that Dumont, and even Riel, were not as well-known as I had assumed.

There are other books about Riel and Dumont, but Marilyn Dumont's latest collection of poetry does something different. With potent, dexterous verse, it connects contemporary lives to Canadian history.

"Upon discovery that our Gabriel, Gabriel Dumont Senior, our great-great-grandfather and uncle of the famous Gabriel, had held the position of leader at Lac Ste. Anne, I finally understood why our family's annual summer visit to the pilgrimage was so important to us."

In Dumont's poems, Louis Riel is sometimes 'Louis' and sometimes 'Riel,' but Gabriel Dumont is referred to always by first name: either 'Gabriel' or 'Gabe.' Riel is 'Our Prince' - "Louis / the one who gave us Manitoba / brokered pluralism / and language rights."

Elizabeth Brass Donald in front of
Frank Oliver's house.
(photo reference link)

Women are in these pages too, nurturing other humans and the earth, their needlework like prayers.

A photo of Elizabeth Brass Donald is referenced in 'The Land She Came From.' She was one of the victims of land swindles that are a part of Edmonton's early history: "crow woman dig down / scrape away the layers / of sleeping memory / down to the stake lines of river lots / in Rossdale and beyond / far down to the Métis family names / still breathing there: Donald, Bird, Ward [...]" 'To a Fair Country' is about wholesale land thefts through "official trickery:" "I want to forget the number of Métis / less than one percent / who hold property from that scrip today."

Much hardship is summed up in a few words in 'Letter to Sir John A. MacDonald' - "we were railroaded / by some steel tracks that didn't last / and some settlers who wouldn't settle."

Language is another aspect of Métis culture: "neither Cree, Salteaux nor French exactly, but something else / not less / not half / not lacking" - 'These Are Wintering Words'

The Pemmican Eaters is a history book with so much heart, and it's one I would have loved to suggest to that young library patron back in 1989. I will recommend it widely from now on.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

What can I say about Marilynne Robinson's Lila except that I love her writing style so very much. Beth Kephart wrote about what is meant by beautiful writing in her blog post about Lila last month. Kephart herself is no slouch in the writing department, and I encourage you to read her thoughtful words.

Following are just a few excerpts from Lila that capture the distinctive voice of the main character and the philosophical nature of the prose.

"The days came and went on their own, without any praying about it. And still, everywhere, meetings and revivals, people seeing the light. Finding comfort where there was no comfort, just an old man saying something he'd said so many times he probably didn't hear it himself. It was about the meaning of existence, he said. All right. She knew a little bit about existence. That was pretty well the only thing she knew about, and she had learned the word for it from him. [...] The evening and the morning, sleeping and waking. Hunger and loneliness and weariness and still wanting more of it. Existence. Why do I bother? He couldn't tell her that, either."

"Plenty of times he was called away to do what he could where comforting was needed. The last time it happened he came in the door after midnight, grumbling to himself. He said, 'Asking a man to apologize on his deathbed for the abject and total disappointment he was in life! that does beat all." He took off his hat. 'So I took them aside, the family. And I said, If you're not Christian people, than what am I doing here? And if you are, you'd better start acting like it. Words to that effect.'"

"The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them. Well, this world isn't one either."

It is rare for me to read a novel with all-out positive portrayals of Christian religious figures, and I appreciated that very much. Yet I, a former Catholic and now non-Christian, also felt a strong negative reaction to the story's Christian underpinnings.

"There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them."

The section quoted above is an example of what troubled me. The whole issue of guilt, of original sin. Of whether or not it is necessary to be absolved by a higher power. We had a great discussion about this at my book group meeting last month. I adore a novel that can engage me so fully, as this one has. And Lila is a character that will remain close to my heart.