Three Reviews: Why Not Now? by Denise Leduc, illustrated by Karin Sköld; Something Big by Jenna and Avery Wasylkowski, illustrated by A.E. Matheson; and The Day Petuna Had Pglets in the Strawberry Patch (Adventures of the Barnyard Boys) by M Larson, illustrated by FX and Colo Studio;

“Why Not Now?”

Written by Denise Leduc, Illustrated by Karin Sköld

Published by Lilac Arch Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$17.99  ISBN 9781778286933

 

I experienced quite the shock when I began Denise Leduc’s new book, Why Not Now? I’d recently reviewed the Aylesbury, Saskatchewan writer’s thoughtful children’s books—Poppies, Poppies Everywhere! and Letting Charlie Bow Go—and assumed this newest softcover was also for young readers. I dived right in—without reading the back cover text—and a glance at the large, well-spaced font also supported my notion that I was about to read a junior novel. Thus, the book’s first paragraph gave me a jolt: “Arriving at the Vancouver airport, Frank felt reinvigorated … He was glad his son, John, had insisted on coming.” What the …? I flipped to the back cover. Surprise!

Leduc had me laughing at the genre-flip and my own presumption; Why Not Now? is a hi-lo (high interest/low reading level) book for older readers, ie: seniors with dementia. It’s also part of a series of hi-lo titles described as “heartwarming tales … especially crafted for people experiencing cognitive impairment.” With Sköld’s soft and uncluttered wildlife (bear, eagle), landscape and activity-based illustrations appearing between each of the short chapters; an engaging, intergenerational family story starring the grandfather, Frank; and a handful of discussion questions following each of the ten easy-to-read chapters, Leduc has penned yet another success.

As we age and have less years ahead of us than behind, it’s natural to lose our sense of adventure. Fear and health issues are among the inhibiting culprits—even good old-fashioned common sense often prevents us from living our final years to their fullest. In Leduc’s story, Frank wonders what his life might have been like had he taken more risks. He’s now travelled to the west coast with his son, John, who “insisted” he come along to visit Frank’s cherished grandson, Max—who “reminded [Frank] of his younger self and what might have been”—and to “witness the life [Max] had created.”

Frank had not seen Max for years. Now a grown man with a fiancée and a career as a helicopter pilot “out here in the mountains,” Max is elated to host his dad and grandpa for ten days, and tells “Gramps” that the trip is “all about you.”

The author’s discussion questions arise from the story and include both specific and general questions, ie: “What is the prettiest place you have lived or visited?” and “Do you like eating fish? If so, what kinds?” I imagine this story working extremely well in both group settings and in one-on-one sharing.

I highly suggest you read this heartwarming and realistic tale to learn about the major adventure that begins Frank’s visit—he surprises himself and everyone else, and could even be on his way to becoming a “Youtube sensation.” I will say that Max is seriously impressed with his grandfather’s spontaneous escapade. “‘Gramps, you are the coolest guy I know,’” Max says.

Will another adventure follow tomorrow? Will that little voice inside Frank repeat those three important, titular words? Leduc shows us that aging can be an amazing adventure.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Something Big”

By Jenna and Avery Wasylkowski, Illustrated by A.E. Matheson

Published by aemWORKS Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$11.95  ISBN 9-78177-980702

 

Illustrator/publisher A.E. Matheson has done something big. She’s teamed  whimsical illustrations and a fanciful conversation lifted from “real-life” (I’m assuming, as the front cover declares the story’s a “conversation” between Jenna and Avery Wasylkowski), and created a delightful—and most unusual!—Christmas-related story that spotlights childhood imagination and belief.

I hadn’t even reached the first page of text before I was mesmerized: the book opens with a two-page, full-bleed spread of a green dragon with translucent wings chained to charcoal-coloured boulders. His eyelids are heavy, smoke vapours from wide nostrils, and one of his three grey horns appears like a party hat atop his fringy head. This well-crafted image inspires curiosity: what exactly is this clawed creature?

Turn the page, and one enters a completely different scene: a realistic family breakfast with a mother, father and son around a kitchen table. Here, too, I’m slow to flip the page, even though the opening text’s compelling: “So? Any thoughts on what you’re asking Santa for Christmas?” (We don’t know which parent’s asking this question, and this interesting lack of attribution’s another trait that sets this children’s story apart.) The boy responds: “Yup!—I want a dragon.”

The illustrator’s attention to realistic details and generous use of colour draw me into the image: Dad’s reading the weather forecast (-15 and sunny) on a tablet; Mom’s in a housecoat; the salt and pepper shakers are half full; beyond the window above the gold-piped radiator, it’s winter-morning dark; and there’s a design etched into the backs of the wooden chairs. All of these specifics cleverly demonstrate that the illustrator is telling this story along with the co-writers/conversationalists.

Turn another page and there’s the dragon again—it’s also featured on the glossy cover—and the child announcing that it’s not a pretend dragon he’s interested in, he wants “a real scaly, pointy, fire breathing dragon.” Even the cat on top of the fridge looks surprised at this response. As the story continues, the mother asks logical questions, ie: “How in the world will Santa fit that in the sled?” and “What will this dragon eat?” There are even a few funny pages about the dragon’s “poop,” and a corresponding illustration shows dad using a driveable snowplow to scoop the huge pile of dung. The child has a fun answer to each question, ie: the dragon “eats stars and there are lots of stars. And stop calling him dragon—his name is Torchy—without an ‘e.’” Again and again, the child “outsmarts” his rabbit-slippered mother as he gets dressed and prepares to go to school.

No bio notes are included with this book, so I consulted www.aematheson.ca to learn more about the illustrator/publisher. This “self-taught book person of all trades” has collaborated with several prominent Saskatchewan writers, including Alison Lohans and David Carpenter. Matheson works in an academic library, and has “written, illustrated, designed, published, and hand bound, many books.”

Something Big is a merry, welcome addition to the more traditional slate of children’s Christmas-season stories.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“The Day Petunia Had Piglets in the Strawberry Patch (Adventures of the Barnyard Boys, Book 3)”

Written by M Larson, Illustrated by FX and Color Studio

Published by M Larson Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$13.99  ISBN 978-1-7780956-2-7

 

How delightful to read The Day Petunia Had Piglets in the Strawberry Patch, the third illustrated children’s book in The Adventures of the Barnyard Boys Book Series by rural Saskatchewan writer and environmental consultant Melanie Larson. This glossy-covered and colourfully-illustrated softcover once again features six-year-old narrator Finn and his brothers Owen and Dez, and reveals a happy family in an enviable rural country setting—ah, those bright, sweeping prairie skies—amid a menagerie of farm animals. As with her previous titles, Larson’s subtle humour emanates from easy-to-read pages in this well-produced book, and some details in the full-bleed illustrations also amuse.

The boys’ latest adventure concerns searching the farmyard for their adopted pig, Petunia. Petunia’s no ordinary hog … she’s a Kunekune pig: “She has a very short snout and feeds on grass, like a cow or horse.” On page one, readers learn that Petunia formerly lived at a petting zoo, but “Her owners couldn’t keep her anymore because she was getting too big.” Kudos to Larson: I didn’t initially perceive that this largesse might be a clever clue to the porcine plot.

It's admirable how Larson puts a lot of proverbial “eggs in the basket” with her books. Aside from the boys’ adventure, this is also a counting book: as the children search for the missing Kunekune, they encounter their family’s litany of working and domestic animals, and each time discover that the animals have multiplied, ie: Dolly the donkey has a “brand-new baby donkey,” and at the goat pen, Dez finds “three goat kids with their daddy, but no Petunia the pig.” The illustration that accompanies the latter page shows the boys’ barefoot mother doing goat yoga—Downward Dog, to be specific—in the grass with a kid on her back.

Brother Owen checks the stable and again, no Petunia, but he does find the “cat Rosie with six baby kittens!” The image here shows Owen watching the kittens cavort while he reclines on golden bales; the use of yellow, orange and gold is found on several pages, and it echoes the “sunny” nature of this story.

Larson’s also included an activity at the end of the book: young readers are reminded that “Each animal has a job to do on the farm,” and invites children to flip back and locate the llamas, cattle, chickens, etc. and to consider their various jobs. Even the cats and dogs play important roles for farming families, which is something town or city children may not be aware of.   

I was curious to learn more about Kunekune pigs. A quick Google search unveiled that they are “a small breed of domestic pig rom New Zealand” with great personalities! They “flop over for a belly rub at just a simple touch” and “get along well with other animals.” (Wikipedia)

Readers may wish to check out Larson’s other titles, including Count Them! 50 Tractor Troubles. And on the subject of counting … eight is significant in this new book’s conclusion. Can you guess why?  

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

 

 

 

Two Reviews: I Never Met A Rattlesnake I Didn't Like: A Memoir by David Carpenter, and Danceland Diary, by Dee Hobsbawn-Smith

“I Never Met A Rattlesnake I Didn’t Like: A Memoir”

Written by David Carpenter

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-227-0

  

When I discovered that Saskatoon’s David Carpenter was releasing a new memoir, I Never Met A Rattlesnake I Didn’t Like, I immediately wanted to review it. I knew it would be illuminating, well-written and downright fun, because this is what I’ve come to expect of Carpenter’s work, whether fiction or nonfiction, and this latest title’s cleared the bar. Carpenter’s a bonafide storyteller and a “rabid conservationist,” and his entertaining stories and mind-broadening research into “this ancient cafeteria called nature”—and who and what threaten it—is an epiphanic read.   

The memoir’s an homage to “creatures with Fangs, Claws, and Other Pointy Things,” from mosquitos, snakes and weasels to the apex predators: wolves, cougars and bears. Over eighteen mostly short chapters that “follow the chain of predation,” we learn about Carpenter’s lifelong passion and reverence for the winged, finned and four-legged. “I seem to have a thing for predatory animals,” he writes. “My journals are full of them.” He’s been keeping field notes for fifty years re: his “sightings of and adventures with predacious creatures,” from boyhood memories of fishing on Lake Wabamun, Alberta to adult interactions with rattlesnakes in Arizona and black bears in Saskatchewan.   

Carpenter’s an avid fly fisherman, and his beloved brown trout get copious attention, too, as does Little Bear Lake, where in 1997 he and his wife, Honor Kever, bought a ramshackle cabin and transformed it into an idyllic retreat (difficult septic tank notwithstanding), where fish and friends are never far away, Kever’s planted trees and bushes, and “Eagles and ospreys patrol the skies.”

Expect offbeat, like Carpenter’s rescue of a drowning dragonfly (“a biplane with enormous opalescent eyes”), and his desire to see alligators and rattlesnakes in the wild (missions accomplished in the US). When it seems the author’s had fun writing, the reader has fun too.

Expect an education. I learned much, including the differences between weasels, pine martens, fishers, badgers and wolverines. “In the hockey game of nature, [wolverines] deserve a lot of time in the penalty box.” And until recently, mosquitoes (“draculating fiends”) killed “more than a million people annually,” but “Malaria-bearing mosquitoes certainly delayed the destruction of the Amazon rainforests,” too. Carpenter’s merging of anecdote and fact works.

There’s also much here I personally relate to, ie: the “near-galvanic pain” of a black widow bite (I was bitten in Sooke, BC) and the “burgeoning” presence of wild pigs (I found a skull near Middle Lake, SK). Cougars roam my current neighbourhood. Though long thought to be loners, Carpenter’s enlightened me: sometimes cougar do “socialize in diverse groups.” This book: terrific conversation starter.

Where did our fear of apex predators begin? Perhaps with the Goldilocks story: entitled girl breaks into bears’ home. “[Goldilocks] reminds us all too well of who runs the show in our present day Anthropocene. The bears’ habitat is her playground. The Goldilocks story sums up what human beings have done to the terrestrial wilderness, the ocean, the atmosphere, and now the climate.” Maybe, Carpenter posits, “Goldilocks is us.”

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Danceland Diary”

By Dee Hobsbawn-Smith

Published by Radiant Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.900  ISBN 9-781989-274828

   

‘Tis a wondrous thing to watch a writer’s oeuvre grow. I’ve had the pleasure of following Saskatchewan’s Dee Hobsbawn-Smith evolution as she’s published enviable books of poetry, short fiction and nonfiction—including the scrumptious Bread & Water: Essays—and now this hard-working writer’s earned another literary moniker: novelist. Danceland Diary, the award-winning author’s premiere novel, is saturated with poetic imagery, a juicy plot, and longing.  

First-person narrator Luka Dekker’s been born into an off-colony Hutterite family that harbours dark secrets—indeed, keeping secrets seems an intergenerational trait for these “gypsy Hutterites,” and Luka’s got a dandy of her own. It’s been twenty-two years since Luka’s unstable mother, Lark, abandoned Luka and her sister, Connie, and moved to the west coast. The girls were raised by their grandmother, the matriarch Anky, and never saw Lark again. At eighteen Luka left her rural Saskatchewan life to attempt to find her beautiful and elusive mother in Vancouver. The timing of Lark’s disappearance eerily lines up with Robert Pickton’s murders of women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Is there a connection?   

Luka’s thirty when the novel begins. She has horticulture and botany degrees, and a seven-year-old son, Jordan. Anky’s dying, and Connie’s called Luka back to Saskatchewan to help care for her. Luka and her son are “just staying until Anky kicks her clogs.” Every generation of this family’s plagued by the secrets they’ve held close, but when Luka finds Anky’s journals and learns what happened to her grandmother at Manitou Beach’s Danceland on a fateful day in June 1943, the narrator starts snapping puzzle pieces together.

The novel’s part mystery and part history­—Luka “want[s] to know who [she] is”—and a quiet love story’s percolating on the side. Readers will root for Luka, who’s lifelong search for her mother parallels a perennial desire for happiness. 

Fittingly, considering Luka’s education and dream of operating a market garden, Hobsbawn-Smith pays keen attention to what grows in prairie gardens and fields. Even her similes demonstrate this attention to flora, ie: at an old-time threshing demonstration, farmers’ wives are “relegated to the edge of the field like poppies,” a yellow lady’s slipper is a leitmotif, and at twelve, Luka “cut off [her] braids with the garden secateurs.” Food, too, gets spotlighting: these folks eat a lot of kuchen, and there’s the usual “sliced ham and coleslaw and homemade buns and squares and colourful jellied salads” at Anky’s funeral at the “old Hutterite country church” near the farm. I clearly see old Reverend Waldman at the service, “a faded, narrow-gauge man in a freight train of a tweed jacket two sizes too wide,” his voice “dissipating into the air like a spent train whistle.”

And what’s a proper prairie novel without descriptions of winter? “Hoarfrost like jewelry on tree branches. Smell of woodsmoke. Stars, the northern lights. The coyotes’ songs echoing like glass about to crack.” Fabulous.   

My favourite scene concerns Anky’s wedding night consummation at the Bessborough Hotel. I read it and howled. Bet you will, too.   

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

 

Four Book Reviews: Letting Charlie Bow Go, by Denise Leduc, Illustrated by Olha Rastvorova; Poppies, Poppies Everywhere! by Denise Leduc, Illustrated by Breanne Taylor; Not Here to Stay by Jesse A. Murray; and Falls Into Place by Jesse A. Murray

“Letting Charlie Bow Go”

Written by Denise Leduc, Illustrated by Olha Rastvorova

Published by Lilac Arch Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.99  ISBN 9781778286902

Dogs are extraordinary companions, but there are consequences to owning—and loving—a dog, and one of the hardest to bear is the fact that most of us outlive our beloved pets. Farewells are perhaps especially difficult for those families who’ve had a dog grow up alongside their children. How to imagine the family without the four-legged member that’s been there from the beginning? When is the right time to say goodbye?  

In Letting Charlie Bow Go, a beautifully-produced softcover children’s book by Saskatchewan writer Denise Leduc and illustrated by Olha Rastvorova, the author journeys readers through the life and loss of a child narrator’s dog and best friend, an interestingly-named American Staffordshire: Charlie Bow. The cover illustration—Rastvorova is especially talented with dog images—shows a child hugging a dog who’s obviously loving the affection. Though the dog’s face is visible, we only see the child from the back. What’s remarkable here is that so much emotion’s transmitted through the cover image alone. It’s impossible not to want to read the story inside.

Leduc instantly establishes the connection between the young female narrator and Charlie Bow. “We do everything together,” the girl says. “She sleeps in my bed. Sometimes right on top of me! She is the snuggliest.” The use of “snuggliest” is endearing and gives the child’s diction credibility. We learn that the narrator likes to dress her dog up. “She likes all clothes, except for boots. Charlie Bow does not like wearing boots.” I’ve not known a dog that does! Including this detail also gives the story the ring of truth.

As the book continues we both see and read about the adventures Charlie Bow enjoys with her family, from lake swimming to car rides, including a “road-trip right across the country.” The gorgeous cover illustration shows up again— surrounded by plenty of white space so it really pops and also gives the words room to breathe on the page—when the girl admits that Charlie Bow helps her when she’s sad or mad: “ … she is there wagging her tail and wiggling her bum trying to help me smile.”

The story’s tone changes with this: “She is getting old.” Now Charlie Bow’s tired and “doesn’t want to eat,” so the concerned family takes her to vet Julie (perhaps real-life vet Dr. Julie de Moissac, whom I know), but nothing can be done. “The sun is setting” is an apt metaphor for the dog’s final days.

The remaining pages are dedicated to dealing with the grief that follows the loss of a dear pet, and the final page’s past tense echo of the first page is poetic and bittersweet.

It’s been said that the risk of love is loss and the price of loss is grief, but the pain of grief’s a mere shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love. For all the joy they give us, dogs are worth the eventual consequence of loss—Leduc and Rastvorova make that beautifully and abundantly clear.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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 “Poppies, Poppies Everywhere!”

Written by Denise Leduc, Illustrated by Breanne Taylor

Published by Lilac Arch Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.99  ISBN 9781778286919

 

Some writers make it look easy. Such is the case with Aylesbury, Saskatchewan writer Denise Leduc, who recently published Poppies, Poppies Everywhere!, a well-written children’s story that seamlessly explains the importance of Remembrance Day via a grandmother and her granddaughter, Charlotte.

It’s “a frosty November day,” but young Charlotte wants to go to the playground. “It had monkey bars and slides, her two favourite things!” Her grandma—depicted uncharacteristically and attractively with long grey hair and in trendy, rolled-up, stovepipe jeans—has other ideas. It’s Remembrance Day, and the woman leads Charlotte across the park to purchase commemorative poppies. “You wear it close to your heart,” she tells her still miffed granddaughter. After hot chocolate in a coffee shop—Louisiana-based illustrator Breanne Taylor shows Charlotte kneeling on her chair, as a child might—Grandma explains that they’re going to attend “a ceremony to show we care.”

It’s noteworthy that Leduc’s not fallen for the easy shortcut of naming emotions in this important story. When “Charlotte touched the poppy on her coat,” we know what she is feeling. Through descriptive writing, we experience the collective quiet when the mayor presents at the WW1 memorial: “The mayor stood at a podium and talked into the microphone. Everyone was suddenly so quiet you could hear leaves rustle on the breeze.” When a soldier plays “The Last Post” on his bugle, “Charlotte squeezed Grandma’s warm hand,” and when the chimes rang out the eleventh hour, some people “had a tear or two shimmer on their cheeks.”   

These descriptive details elevate the story and demonstrate respect—not only for those who fought for Canada’s freedom, but also for the readers of this book. The writer is essentially saying: I don’t need to spell everything out for the children who read this. They are smart enough to comprehend what Charlotte is feeling. Bravo.

And kudos to artist Breanne Taylor for making the story inclusive: multigenerational characters from various cultures and with different physical abilities are portrayed at the parade and ceremony, where naturally there are “poppies, poppies everywhere!” (I also spotted the dog Charlie Bow, from Leduc’s excellent Letting Charlie Bow Go, at the parade.)

Through the both solemn and joyful Remembrance Day event, Charlotte not only learns why it’s important to honour our veterans, but she also very much feels it. And that is one smart Grandma for gently guiding her through the experience.

After the story’s satisfying ending, the author’s included helpful “Questions for Discussion” to encourage children’s independent thoughts and spark further research into Remembrance Day, ie: “Why are we silent for two whole minutes?” There’s also a page of Remembrance Day Activities, ie: “Find and learn a Remembrance Day poem” and “Thank a veteran.” Such good ideas. Such a smart idea for a children’s book.

Leduc, who moved to Saskatchewan from Ontario, also writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She’s the founder of the registered charity Prairie Bear Books, which “[brings] books to children and youth through community partnerships.” Learn more at www.prairiebearbooks.org.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Not Here To Stay”

By Jesse A. Murray

Published by Off the Field Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.99  ISBN 9-781775-194682

 

Frank Sinatra famously sang “I did it my way,” and Saskatchewan teacher and writer Jesse A. Murray can echo this sentiment when it comes to Not Here To Stay, which echoes the themes of alienation, unworthiness, freedom, loneliness and a fierce desire to be remembered that Murray explored in his earlier self-published poetry collection, I Will Never Break.

The book’s black cover is overlaid with a white cityscape, as if we’re seeing city lights on a dark night. This is symbolic, as throughout this book Murray jumps between dark and light musings—some as short as a single line, several just two or three lines—and in his Introduction he discusses his search to find a place where he felt he belonged as he wrote these poems. “I found myself in many different places, and I always knew that I wasn’t there to stay.” After two months in Nashville, he saw “what it was like for people that followed their dreams.”

This collection reads like an intimate journal. It’s to be noted, however, that Murray includes the disclaimer that “This book is a work of fiction.” He admits that the poems appear chronologically as they were written, and “they are unchanged.” Unedited? Gasp. Many professional writers assert that much of the magic of writing actually happens during the editing, and it’s our responsibility to edit to ensure that readers have the best experience re: our work. First drafts are just the beginning. What daring Murray gives us are the raw goods, even if, as in the first line of the second poem in the book, words are missing: “My mind is like whirlpool,” he writes. During editing we also find grammatical and tense issues, ie: “When we are young,/We drowned in our own problems” (from “Wisdom”).  

Stylistically, the poems are centred, many are columnar and contain rhyming lines. Again, the desire (and failure) to stand out underscores the work. In “The World Keeps Spinning” he writes: “No matter what I do, I remain hopeless,/But they don’t even notice.” In the title poem we read: “ …. I just want to be heard” and “I just want to be great”. While many of these pieces reflect dark nights of the soul (again, the cover’s apropos), those white lights also pop through and the narrator’s emotional pendulum swings to the opposite side: “my rock bottom would be success to everyone else” and “I see myself as a star …” Several of the titles read like self-help affirmations, ie: “Go Out And Get It,” “Move Forward,” and “Follow Your Dream”.            

Dreams, fresh starts, transience, failed romance … some will relate to the emotional “revolving door,” and reading this may help them with their own self-acceptance and evolution toward contentment, and even joy. That journey begins, however, with an unscathing look at oneself, because “You can’t love anybody,/When you don’t,/Love yourself …”.

Jesse A. Murray has much to say, and this “blacksmith of thoughts”—my favourite phrase in the book—does it his way.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Falls Into Place”

By Jesse A. Murray

Published by Off the Field Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.99  ISBN 9-781777-591328

 

Saskatoon writer and teacher Jesse A. Murray recently released his sixth book, the poetry collection Falls Into Place. While many writers toil several years over a single book, this prolific writer has self-published five poetry collections between 2020 and 2022—this could be a record! As the title suggests, his poems just seem to “fall into place,” and this proved especially true during the global pandemic. “When the pandemic hit, my life changed. My writing changed. I had to work from home … I started to go through all of my piles of writing that I hadn’t looked at in years,” he states, and says that most of the poems in this book were written “before bed”. Transitions also included a new job, a marriage, and impending fatherhood.   

I’m familiar with Murray’s work via two of his other poetry collections—I Will Never Break and Not Here To Stay—and find many similarities here. Physically, they’re large poetry collections, and the oft-rhyming poems tend toward introspection—and, specifically, not quite measuring up to the yardstick the narrator’s set for himself. The first several poems hint at a failed romance, and memories of that distant lover “who went away” haunt the narrator: “But I don’t know, what,/I’d actually do,/ If I ever set eyes on you,/ Again.” In his piece “Love Of A Lifetime,” he blatantly spells out grief: “Who knew the love of a lifetime,/Would become the regret of a lifetime.”

Some of the poems are astoundingly brief, and readers might question if indeed a piece like the one below, presented in its entirely, even qualifies as a poem.

                                                               Always Easier

 

…It’s always easier,

Said than done …

 

But Murray, as I’ve learned, is an individualist when it comes to style and practises re: contemporary poetry. For one thing, his work is unedited, and this is evident in poems with spelling mistakes like the ones in “When You Went Away,” where he writes: “The lights are shinning,/The lights are shinning,/Down on you.”

Several of the poems ask questions, ie: “How are things supposed to look up,/If I’m always looking down?”, “Why do we look at one thing,/And say it’s something else?” and “Why do some minutes feel like days,/And some days feel like minutes?” There’s even one poem—aptly titled “Questions”—that contains only questions, five of them, presented in couplets and ending with “If you could go anywhere,/where would you go?”

This young writer is at his best when he includes concrete images (“When a window is needed,/Put down the bricks,/Grab some glass,/It’s an easy fix”) and metaphor (“I’m a lonely lighthouse”). Many of the poems with repeated lines could be set to music.

There’s much searching across these pages—for love, a home, and for recognition. One hopes the narrator will eventually find what he’s looking for, and take his own advice: “You need to quit searching for things you don’t have,/Quit living in the future, quit living in the past./It’s all about the things you do have.”  

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Book Reviews: Grandfather's Reminder, by Alberta-Rose Bear & Kathleen O'Reilly, illustrated by Lindsey Bear and Buddy: A Farm in the Forest, by Jena Wagmann, illustrated by Alana Hyrtle

“Grandfather’s Reminder”

Written by Alberta-Rose Bear and Kathleen O’Reilly, Illustrated by Lindsey Bear

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-781988-783826

 

Grandfather’s Reminder is a warm and relatively simple contemporary tale with an “oral storytelling-feel,” but it is an ambitious undertaking: aside from its gentle teaching about respect for the land and all it provides, the handsome illustrated children’s book is written in English, Plains Cree and Saulteaux, and contains an introduction to these languages, plus a glossary. Proceeds from the sale of the hardcover book go to the Touchwood Agency Tribal Council Education Fund. 

Authors Alberta-Rose Bear and Kathleen O’Reilly immediately immerse us into the prairie landscape, and illustrator Lindsey Bear provides the colour and detail in full-bleed images that depict a chokecherry-picking family in the woods beneath summer-blue skies. Many of the illustrations are bordered in a floral beadwork design. It’s August, “well before the leaves started to turn colour” and “the foxtails waved gently in the wind.” The story’s narrated by a child whose grandfather lives nearby, and when this nimosôn (Plains Cree)/nimihšōmihš (Saulteaux) Elder arrives with “white buckets” for everyone, they follow him “behind his house towards the hill” where “behind the willow trees [there] were rows and rows of chokecherry bushes.”

Grandfather places an offering of tobacco before the bushes and says a prayer of thanks “in [their traditional] language” before the foraging begins. The young female narrator notes a small scar on her grandpa’s arm, and he explains that it is his “‘reminder.’” This leads to his childhood story about picking chokecherries with his grandmother and extended family on “the alkali flats.” In his haste to reach the best berries, high on the bush, he fell, hurting himself and breaking a berry-loaded branch. His grandmother used the accident to teach him, as he explains, to “be happy with who I am and to always care for and respect Mother Earth, who provides us with what we need.” And as the practice of chokecherry picking has continued between generations of his family, the berries the grandmother and grandson deliberately returned to the earth from that broken branch populated chokecherry bushes for years to come.

I grew up in northern Saskatchewan and often heard the Cree language spoken, so it was fun to recall the rhythms of my youth and to try pronouncing some of the words, ie: paskwâwinîmowin (Plains Cree). The Cree Plains translation is by Solomon Ratt—associate professor of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at First Nations University of Canada, originally from Stanley Mission; and the Saulteaux translation is credited to Lorena Cote—also a Language and Linguistics professor at First Nations University of Canada—and Margaret Cote, who was an educator from Cote First Nation. The book’s dedicated to “the Elders who share their stories of the land, ceremonies, and languages. And for all the children who continue to learn and carry on these teachings.”

Maintaining traditional languages is an important and honorable responsibility, and it’s undertakings like the publication of this group-effort story that encourage youth to learn—in such a fun way—more about “traditional teachings and values” while also learning vocabulary.       

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Buddy: A Farm in the Forest Story”

Written by Jena Wagmann, Illustrated by Alana Hyrtle

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 9-781988-783895

 

It’s not uncommon for children’s authors to transform a scenario from “real” life into a story for a picture book, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In the case of Goodsoil, SK writer Jena Wagmann’s new title, Buddy: A Farm in the Forest Story, the actual-experience-to-the-page formula works doggone well.

The retired school administrative assistant-turned-farmer (and writer!) has paired her talents with Nova Scotia illustrator Alana Hyrtle—and if I’m guessing correctly, this is actually a mother-daughter team—to create a heartwarming story with delightful watercolour illustrations about adopting a scruffy Shih Tzu who’d been abandoned in the forest by its previous owner. “Buddy” was “definitely not the handsomest dog they had ever seen—his eyes bulged out of his head, his teeth stuck out on one side of his mouth, and his little black nose did not sit in the middle of his face.”

Buddy appears on the cover facing the moon and a star-filled sky above a forest, and it was easy to fall for the “little bit crooked” canine hero who at one time had a loving owner, but was passed on to a neglectful man. In time, the “dirty and matted” dog “who had nobody to play with” even forgot his own name. We empathize as the dog becomes weak in the forest, and rejoice when a crowing rooster (the dog and Barred Rock rooster are able to speak to one another­) alerts him to the clearing where Buddy finds “a farm in the forest,” and works his way into the heart of the female farmer and her family.

I appreciated the colour and variety of illustrations in this 63-page book for young readers. They range from a double-paged, full-bleed of the entire farm—complete with round bales, various animals, a porch swing on the farmhouse verandah, a weathervane on the barn, and a well-hoed garden—to tiny close-ups, and there are several illustrations that show Buddy with his five new human “siblings” and his new “parents.”         

I also enjoyed the humorous touches, especially evident in expressions like “The sight of you would probably scare the manure out of her!” (this from the anthropomorphic rooster) and, after the children teach Buddy a repertoire of tricks, the “farmer’s husband” (love the play on the more common “farmer’s wife”) says “Well, I’ll be a beaver’s dam!”

There’s also a character in the book who is not a fan of the new pet. “Aunt Bea found him to be so ugly she even refused to eat if they were together in the same room.” Ah, but here’s the moral: “… it’s what’s inside that makes us beautiful,” the farmer tells Buddy.

In Wagmann’s afternotes we learn that Buddy enjoyed nine years with the author and her family, a time in which is “destroyed a lot of socks” and “rolled in cow manure every chance he got.”

This book is everything an effective children’s title should be: well-written, fun, relatable, and lovely to look at. Another fine YNWP publication.

 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Book Review: Shoot Out (Jessie Mac Hockey Series) by Maureen Ulrich

“Shoot Out” (Jessie Mac Hockey Series)

Written by Maureen Ulrich

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$18.99 ISBN 9-781989-078648

 

In 2009 I reviewed Maureen Ulrich’s YA novel Power Plays—the first title in her Jessie Mac Hockey Series—and all these years later it’s been a pleasure to read her fourth and final book in this action-packed series. As with the earlier books, Shoot Out concerns hockey: 14-year-old protagonist Courtney’s debut with a U15 boys’ team (Moose) in Estevan, and her 19-year-old sister Jessie’s second season with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies Women’s team in Saskatoon. Ulrich’s successfully “passes” the spotlight back and forth between these two athletic characters: the siblings’ narratives alternate throughout this adeptly-written novel. Interestingly, Ulrich’s melded real-life Huskie hockey players and experiences–based on the schedule and statistics of the 2013-2014 women’s team, for which her daughter played—with fictional ones, and it’s a win-win.           

There’s plenty to admire, from the crisp writing to the personal growth of the McIntyre girls, who have much more to navigate than hockey ice. Romance simmers on the back burner for both gals, and there are mercurial friendships, family dynamics, educational upsets, and injuries to attend to. The major conflicts, however, are how young Courtney will perform on the ice with her male teammates and whether the boys—and their parents—will actually accept her. Hockey’s one of the most physical sports. Is she strong enough? Talented enough? What about dressing room protocols? And even though hazing is forbidden in the Saskatchewan Hockey Association, the practice continues today, as a few of the rookie hockey players learn in this fast-paced story.  

One can feel something insidious building. Will one of the Moose bullies— Brandon or Michael—seriously harm Courtney? Will it happen at one of the team’s rookie gatherings, where alcohol’s in abundance?

Jessie’s trials include a difficult psychology professor, Dr. Kerr. Here Jessie faces the woman in her office to discuss an exam vs. hockey scheduling conflict: “She has thin lips and perfectly penciled eyebrows. Beats me why she plucks the hairs out and draws them back in.” I love this observation, and several of Jesse’s other comments. “Fresh ice smells like hope,” she thinks at the first game of the Canada West Conference. “Every weekend is a dogfight in Canada West.”

And this wouldn’t be a realistic Saskatchewan novel unless there was a nod to winter weather. Jessie and her teammates often travel to games via bus, and I almost shivered reading “A winter squall pummels our bus as we retreat westward on the TransCanada Highway. I rearrange my pillow to stifle the draft sneaking down my neck.” Brrr.  

Ulrich clearly knows hockey, inside and out. Jessie tries to “saucer a pass” that’s intercepted, and another character—based on real-life former Huskie Julia Flinton—“has a shot like a howitzer.” And if you’re not hockey literate, not to worry: The Jessie Mac Dictionary at the book’s end explains all the hockey terms you need to know, from Assist to Zamboni.

Maureen Ulrich lives and writes in Lampman, SK. See maureenulrich.ca for more on this fine writer’s work.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

 

Two Book Reviews: Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems by Robert Currie and Baba Sophie's Ukrainian Cookbook, Written by Marion Mutala, Illustrated by Wendy Siemens

“Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems”

Written by Robert Currie

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-218-8

    

Multi-genre Moose Jaw writer Robert Currie has been an integral contributor to the Saskatchewan literary scene for as far back as I can remember, and I’ve been reading – and enjoying – his poetry and stories across the decades. Currie’s also worked hard behind the scenes as an educator, Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild board member, and founding board member of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words. He’s also headed the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. In short, Currie’s earned his Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

I’m so pleased that Thistledown Press has released a “Best Of” collection of Currie’s poems. Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems is an attractive highlight reel that begins with a glowing essay by poetry veteran Lorna Crozier. She lauds Currie for position[ing] his poems in the local” and “find[ing] a way to rhapsodize the prairies without ignoring its starkness, its closeness to elemental things, and the long, long months of cold.”

Nine sections are dedicated to previous poetry collections (including chapbooks), and New Poems – what I’m especially interested in - begin on page 211 of this novel-sized book. In the new work, Currie continues to mine the rich territory of his childhood and adolescence in Moose Jaw. There are family and sporting memories, including a recollection of racism against a ballplayer in his poem “The Old Ball Game,” and many of the poems make mention of the music that impacted the poet, ie: The Gaylords, Pat Boone, Gene Autry, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash.

Currie makes poetry of his first job as a teen: he worked at a feed lot “forcing cattle into the shoot, a needle jabbed into their haunches/while [he] attacked those with horns, sliding a two-by-four/over their necks to hold them, then straining at the/dehorning tool, horns lopped off, steers bawling.”  

These mostly nostalgic poems recount scenes of visceral gore and also frequent tenderness. I smiled at the thought of the kids in “Back Then” who raided gardens, yes, but they did this “with care and predetermined rules/two carrots each, always from different rows.” I could see Currie as a tree-climbing child, hands “sticky with sap” while he watched “the whole world turn below.”

People do things in these variously-styled poems. They walk, rake, play sports, read, watch movies, “dance on the band of broken pavement” beside the highway and “[ache] with love, honour friendships, and, in the pieces from the powerful “Klondike Fever” section, they “go blind with staring,” because “Everywhere on the glacier/snow burns in the sun.”       

In poet Mark Abley’s Afterword, he discusses Currie’s poetics and how Currie often “begins with an apparently straightforward memory and turns it into something unexpected, almost magical.” I agree.

 When I’d reached the book’s end I flipped to the first poem again, “Poet’s Walk,” and read: “bright as blood upon the brambles/as the blackness shoulders in.” Even in his earliest work, I see this poet was doing a kind of singing. We need more singing. And the world could use more Bob Curries.   

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM 

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“Baba Sophie’s Ukrainian Cookbook”

Written by Marion Mutala, Illustrated by Wendy Siemens

Published by Millennium Marketing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-7773713-3-3

 

I’m no great wonder in the kitchen and if I am cooking I usually turn to the internet for recipes. Recently, however, I’ve started buying cookbooks. Two reasons for this: firstly, each time I click on a recipe online I have to wade through paragraphs of unnecessary text (ie: “My uncle Bob just loves these blackberry muffins”) before the author even gets to the ingredients, and secondly, I just love actual books, and seeing the recipe on a printed page - often beside a photograph of whatever I’m attempting to make - feels like the right tact.   

I was thus duly pleased when Marion Mutala’s latest book arrived in my mailbox, because this time the prolific and award-winning Saskatchewan writer has penned Baba Sophie’s Ukrainian Cookbook. I’ve previously reviewed Mutala’s excellent children’s books and poetry, and I know that from the words to the design, production to the print, this would be a quality book, and downright practical, too (and I need all the help I can get).

The Sophie of the title is Mutala’s mother, Sophie Marie (née Dubyk) Mutala (1918-2007), who was born near Mayfair, SK. The book’s dedicated to Sophie, and her daughter’s penned a one-page, glowing tribute. Sophie was “born with a bag of flour in one hand and a Kaiser deck in the other” Mutala writes, explaining that even as a child Sophie helped her mother bake and “make perogies, wash clothes on a washboard, cut wood with her brother using a double-handed saw, fill mattresses with clean hay to sleep on, and make feather quilts.”

Yes, it was a different time, but the recipes that follow include “Ukrainian Specialties, Breads, Main Courses, Desserts, and Beverages” that have stood the test of generations and are considered mainstays for many, even Norwegian-German-Irish Canadians, like me. There’s also a section called Canning and Preservatives, and a Miscellaneous section, which includes two recipes I’ll not need – for Cooked Playdough and Sugar Starch for Doilies, and two I will: Non-Toxic Drain Clog Remover and Stain Remover.

Reading through this cookbook reminded me of visiting Ukrainian friends as a girl in rural Saskatchewan. There are recipes for Perogies, Pyrohy, Varenyky; Holubsti (Cabbage Rolls); and Borsch. It was also like going to a community supper, where Carrot Loaf, Potato Casserole, and Saskatoon Berry Pie are up for grabs. There are also many original recipes included here, like Sophie’s Homemade Noodles and Mama’s Cookies. The dessert section is the largest in the book, and I think I gained weight just reading these scrumptious recipes!

There’s also a nod to the familiar, Rosettes, which my Norwegian grandmother made every Christmas, and in the Bread section, Mutala’s included “Bannock (In the Spirit of Truth and Reconciliation)”.

Each page is bordered in a colourful Ukrainian-stitch graphic, and recipe sections are fronted by a colour food photograph. I’m pleased to own this book, and I’ll be putting it to use – the Low Calorie Soup recipe looks tasty and would be a good budget meal – this week.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

 

Three Reviews: Blue Moon, Red Herring by Angeline Schellenberg; The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko by Jay Semko; and Race to Finish by Marion Mutala

 “Blue Moon, Red Herring”

Written by Angeline Schellenberg

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-39-9

  

Clever, layered, original, fun. These words leap to mind after reading Winnipeg poet Angeline Schellenberg’s colourful limited-edition chapbook—bound to resemble a paint swatch—Blue Moon, Red Herring.  Each of the twenty-five prose poems in this 2019 collection were inspired by a colour, and the colours themselves appear where a Contents page normally would. No need for titles when the paint-chip colours do the work, and each poem’s colour-matched with its sample. What results is candy—for the eye and the mind.  

Schellenberg employs a kind of controlled stream-of-consciousness in these delightful and deceptively simple poems, but don’t be fooled: much research went into this. My best analogy: microwaved popcorn. The poet’s hue-inspired thoughts seem to pop around, but they stay “in the bag” of her theme, and each poem’s written in a single controlled paragraph. Colours aside, Schellenberg’s myriad references are gleaned from art, literature, science, nature, religion, history, philosophy, pop culture, advertising slogans, cliché’s and personal experience, and this rich gallery of inspirations makes for genius mélanges.

In “Magenta” she writes: “like soul mates and democracy, magenta exists only in your mind”. We also get a miniature history lesson: “The French dye, christened for the fuchsia flower, was renamed for Napoleon III’s victory near Magenta, Italy”.  Her piece “Chartreuse” demonstrates her wild juxtapositions: the colour “coats the roots of grass you chewed at recess,” it’s “the heart of an avocado,” and it’s “the VW van we could push-start to Mexico, a bed of Scotch moss where you could lay me down”.

It's often the final line of a poem that matters most; get it right, as in the “VW/Mexico/Scotch moss” line above, and the whole poem sings. Schellenberg’s also been published by the venerable Brick Books and her work’s earned much critical attention; she knows the import of endings—and wit. “Grey” ends with: “It’s what comes out in the wash. It takes no responsibility for teenaged boredom, or ashen faces aging with regret”. “Beige” is “Less kinky than khaki”.  And, still on “Beige”: “Comfy as dumplings and oatmeal, while they say you can be beiged to death, deep down you know it would be completely painless”.  

 More highlights: “Maroon” is “old blood” and “your Valentine bouquet by March”.“Black” is “Any depressed typewriter key, the raised flag of punk and piracy”. “Orange” recalls “A Fanta on the cabin step, the pulled Fortrel curtains in a rocking van”.  Among several other things, “White” spawns “a president’s home” and “the satin clinging to your ankles at your first communion”.

In “Purple” there are literary references (“and when I am old, I shall purr” and, for kids, “Dora’s backpack”) and an allusion to an old song (“One-eyed, one-horned, hazy and a heart of courage”).

“Red” is especially good and nuanced. It includes “The rainbow’s highest arc to trace the words of Christ,” “A can of bull says charge it” (triple-entendre?), and it “Fan’s revolution’s fame”.  

This book gets all the stars for originality and wordplay. I wish I’d written it.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko”

By Jay Semko

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99   ISBN 9-781989-078631

 

“She ain’t pretty she just looks that way.” If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize that lyric from the song “She Ain’t Pretty” by The Northern Pikes, a Saskatchewan-based band that rose to popularity in the 1980s and still records. The Pikes’ bassist and a vocalist, Jay Semko, also penned many of the band’s songs, and now he’s released a book that’s “a mixture of song lyrics and ‘stand alone’ poems written over a 25-year period”.

The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko begins with the artist’s abbreviated autobiography. Jay Semko was bullied as a grade-accelerated child in rural Saskatchewan; became passionate about learning guitar and writing songs in his teens; and enjoyed career success both with The Northern Pikes and as a solo artist (ten albums plus music composition for film and television). We also meet the Jay Semko who is “a recovering addict … living with Bipolar Disorder”. Sharing his experience “helps [him] immensely, and is crucial to [his] own personal recovery”.

 “Write what you know” is a common literary adage and Semko—who’s done much touring—does indeed steer us across the map of his experience. Many of these offerings feature movement and a desire for change, and I suspect they may have been written on the road. In the opening piece we read “the odyssey continues/ghosts of the deer I have killed on the highway/will come back to haunt me,” and “make up new words/draw a new roadmap” appears in the next selection. In “Adventure on My Breath,” Semko writes Siberia/at least that’s how it seems/in a greyhound skating down a highway”.

The singer/songwriter frequently alludes to mental health issues, and alcohol addiction’s another demon he’s wrestled with. “Detox, rehab, and psychiatric centres” are a part of Semko’s map; writing about life’s valleys is good therapy. “Heartaches and Numbers” begins “you roam these halls every night/the paintings all seem to be haunted”. It includes: “in a couple of days/you’ll feel so much better/the shakes will wear off”.  In the notes that follow the poems/songs, Semko shares that this track from 2010 was written while he was “jonesing, trying to stay cool,” and “addiction [is] personified in this song”.  

The collection includes a few love poems and pieces about faith and aging, but the death of Semko’s mother is what informed the most touching of these diverse works. In “My Mother in the Hospital” he recounts how difficult it was to be on tour “with a busload of other ancient former vagabonds/preparing to rock across the nation” while his mother was dealing with terminal illness and was on the home/hospital/palliative care train. “St. Paul’s/mom now in a coma/the hospital death lady/explaining much too pleasantly/the science and the inevitable”.

Many of these poems document the artist’s darkness, but I expect readers will finish the book feeling pleased that they got to know the Jay Semko who’s survived stormy seas—like all of us—and lives to write and sing about them.   

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Race to Finish”

By Marion Mutala

Published by Millenium Marketing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99  ISBN 9-781777-371319

 

Marion Mutala is a literary machine, with sixteen published books and more on the way. I’ve previously reviewed two of her children’s books—Grateful and the 175-page, multi-story achievement, Baba’s Babushka. The Saskatchewan writer’s latest title, Race to Finish, is a poetry collection, dedicated to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG); the First Nations children buried in unmarked, residential school graves across Canada; and the Black Lives Matter movement. It begins with a foreword by artist Kevin L. Peeace, who relays the experience of presenting in an elementary school and being asked by a young student: “What was it like being at the residential school?” Peeace also provided the compelling black and white cover drawing of a bisected face: one half representing the bricks and tears of the residential school experience, the other representative of his peoples’ connection to the land and familial love—at least that’s my interpretation.   

Mutala’s poems champion racial equality, gratitude, positivity, and God, as well as personal experience, ie: “the old wooden cookstove on the/farm when I was a child” (from “Reminds Me”). Not every poem is rosy, however. In “God’s Tricks” she acknowledges that “life happens”: “A little of this and a lot of that and too soon/We are in high school dragging our butts around,/Tired, wanting to sleep the days away and party/the nights”. And as life continues, we eventually “look old and tired” and “Our spirit is fried like a parched desert”.

The writers chooses various styles and structures: some pieces rhyme, some are a single stanza, and some, like the prosaic “Envision,” read like miniature pep talks: “Why not envision the best city in Saskatchewan, in Canada, in the entire world?”  “Plain Lucky”—dedicated to the late writer Wes Funk­—contains the everyday dialogue of two friends enjoying coffee together.  The piece “Don’t You Think?” repeats the opening line and adds another with each new stanza. It begins: “I think if you stand in front of a church with a/Bible held high in your hand, you should open/it,” and in progressive stanzas the writer advises said Bible-holder/s to read and “use” the words of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.   

Mutala writes from the perspective of one who is “white privileged,” and she should be commended for addressing systemic racism in these poems, many of which blatantly articulate that “Black Lives and Indigenous Lives Matter”. She encourages “other white privileged” folks to speak up about racial injustice and persecution based on sexual orientation. “Do not be silent!” she heralds. “Smarten up!”

This small book includes an “Open Dialogue” featuring eight questions, ie: “What are things people can do to promote reconciliation?” and “What are things people can do to stop homophobia?” and invites readers to share their stories “so we can listen, understand, and change to make life better”. It concludes with a “Resources” section.

A portion of this book’s proceeds go to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Want to learn more about the prolific Mutala? Visit www.babasbabushka.ca .

 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM