Category: book reviews

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The Colony by Audrey Magee My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book was so wonderfully written. Magee’s style of dialogue somehow emphasizes the lilt of this Irish dialect and the tension between the characters. Other critiques have said it’s about art and war but I think it’s about voice — young James and the […]

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Recently I had the opportunity to hear Brandi Morin speak in recognition of Canada’s national day of Truth and Reconciliation. Brandi expertly spliced together news reels that she had covered about the Indigenous stories across the globe of their struggle for recognition and reparation. She finished her talk by reminding us that the Indigenous struggle […]

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Coming Họmẹ by Tu Vuong My rating: 4 of 5 stars When I read poetry, I try to let it sort of wash over me like rain, because to capture all of the nuance in meaning at once isn’t possible at the first read. I admire Tu’s ambition of trying to create an arc to […]

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The Centaur’s Wife by Amanda Leduc My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book must have been like a difficult birth as it was so ethereally emotional for me to read, that I can’t begin to understand what it would have been like to write. I find it really hard to read anything dystopian in […]

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The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales by Emily Brewes My rating: 4 of 5 stars I want to confess that I’m having trouble reading anything dystopian these days because the truth is just too imaginable during the pandemic. I absolutely loved the setting of this book….something homegrown where I can imagine the PATH system in […]

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The Witch’s Hand by Nathan Page My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m totally biased towards graphic novels and include a lot of them in collection development. This reads like a cross between Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Road to Riverdale Vol. 1 and Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted Castle. For a first in a series, […]

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He Must Like You by Danielle Younge-Ullman My rating: 3 of 5 stars Caution spoilers ahead! I realize that last year’s Danielle Younge-Ullman book Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined was stellar….like I gave it 10 out of 10 and it was in my top 3 of the year. So I had high hopes for He […]

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The Dime Box by Karen Grose My rating: 5 of 5 stars For a debut novel, this is an author to watch. Karen Grose carefully weaves the present with the past in the story of Greta….neglected, abused and isolated with her parents in the woods of Muskoka. In the present, she is the prime suspect […]

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Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m still uncertain about the difference between magic and mythology. The more I read, the more I’m not sure it matters.  The vision-like dreams that Evan has in this book that seem prescient and the way he follows his instincts seem […]

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Sadie by Courtney Summers My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m part of the White Pine Steering Committee this year for the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading. Part of my role was to read Sadie, and develop teaching resources for it. I enjoyed it on so many levels.  Did you ever see that episode […]

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Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Eden Robinson you have created such delicious characters. If Jared or Georgina or any of them knocked at my door and said, “There’s an emergency! The coy wolves are eating the dolphin people and they need your help!” I’d shape-shift into my amphibious alter-ego, […]

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Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson My rating: 5 of 5 stars A set of this book was generously purchased for our school by our First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI)consultant at the board office. 5 pages into it many of our teachers were too scared to teach it and put it down. Boldly […]

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