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

 

 

 

Two Reviews: Table for Four by Eccentric Crops (Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, Ted Landrum) and kireji: partial portraits & biofictions by christian favreau

“Table for Four”

Written by Eccentric Crops (Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, Ted Landrum)

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-40-5

 

 

JackPine Press has been challenging traditional ideas re: what constitutes a book since the press’s inception, and with Table for Four, written by the four-poet collaborative Eccentric Crops—Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, and Ted Landrum—JackPine once again reimagines “book” and gives us an imaginative, multi-media chapbook, about the size of a bread and butter plate. Fittingly, this tasteful chapbook features a red coaster on the front cover and comes with a large red and white checked napkin folded inside a back flap that’s held in place with sturdy toothpicks. Also included: concrete poems, drawings, and a mostly black image with white pinpoints, titled “napkin braille”. Different? Indeed! Welcome to JackPine Press.  

This collaborative project’s interesting on numerous levels. Firstly, contributor Jennifer Still, from Winnipeg, co-founded JackPine Press in 2002, and in her own work she “[explores] the intersections of language and material forms”. Both Still and Saskatoon’s Steven Ross Smith have worked with sound poetry, and both also publish with traditional publishers. Poet Colin Smith, in Winnipeg, was previously “strongly allied to the Kootenay school of Writing in Vancouver” and last published Multiple Bippies (2014). The fourth member of this poetic quartet, Ted Landrum, teaches at the University of Manitoba and participated in another collaborative chapbook project in 2018. A diverse group.   

I began reading these experimental poems in the order they appear and noted several words repeated in consecutive poems, ie: ass, code, harpoon, migraine, falling, flutter(hand), heart, fistful(l), shaped, meteoric, nature, offer(s), sips(s), orchids, shamble(s), stretch, thin, veil, stitch(ed) and breath, and I wondered if the poets selected these words in advance and gave themselves the task of creating their own individual poems around them, or if each poem was in fact a collaboration. I flipped to the back and read the poets’ explanation about “What Happened”: “Steven invited us to make text together. We decided to work with quoted material. We imagined ourselves sitting at the cardinal points of a table. Jennifer suggested we pass versions around, widdershins. Numerous constraints were occasionally obeyed.” I also learned that Still “cut out every line of the sixteen line Ur-text and wove them into a grid [resembling a tablecloth] because she was interested in weaving”. The quotations for the former were drawn from disparate places, from T.S. Eliot’s work to “Claudio at University of Manitoba, Gym Locker Room, July 10, 2017”.

Clearly, these poets were having great fun, and each member of this “eccentric” quartet shares a poetic interest in “undermining convention”. The sounds of words prevail over meaning here, at least for this reader, ie: in the poem “DIVERSIA CHART” we read: “inner tango can coin top line snarl” and “legal space race rumble legs love testing radios”.  Sound words are prevalent, ie: “thin/whine,” “Birds honk bright code,” “hum low,” and “oinking”. Alliteration abounds, especially in the poem “AIR” with its alphabetical alliteration, ending with “Wilderness sings within without”.

The chapbook’s a hoot on the page, but these works deserve a microphone and a stage.

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

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“kireji: partial portraits & biofictions”

Written by christian favreau

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 9781927035436

 

I have a special interest in reviewing “first” books, in part because it’s been thirty-one years since my own first book was published, and though I’ve followed up with another dozen titles, I still meet folks who claim they liked my first book best.

Today I read Montreal writer christian favreau’s first book. Kireji: partial portraits & biofictions is an attractive, hand-sewn chapbook with a cover image of a bird. The book contains nine free verse poems, a business card-sized note to “Please be gentle while handling,” and four actual leaves. Leaves? Now that’s a new one for me, but JackPine Press is all about originality, and favreau’s work definitely fits the press’s mandate to “publish chapbooks whose form and content are both artistically integrated and unique”.

What did I find? Firstly, like fellow Canadian poet bpNichol—whom favreau quotes in the opening poem, which is comprised solely of three epigraphs—this new poet also sometimes eschews punctuation. In his second poem, “the finch,” he writes “Id dreamt/Id screamed/all the while unheard,” and he includes a measure of treble clef notes, perhaps to emulate the finch’s song. The poem concerns “relying only on one/self” and how “cutting out the others is an act of self/preservation”.  

Family and how one makes his/her original way in the world seem to be themes: “I learn to refuse to fly/in linear fashion/to flit while you blink” he writes in “to my parents”. In this poem two of the poet’s subjects of interest merge: birds and independence. “I must fight the urge:/ to fall—/needing you/not to chew my food”. I loved “the blue sky’s enticing fishhook” in this inquisitive poem that asks “what is?/how can?” and “why that?/ why not?”.

 I’m intrigued and delighted by the creative use of colour in these pieces. We read about “the snow-petaled whites between her lids” and “red azaleas bloomed in the cracks of my lips” in the long poem “me (first) / river of forgetfulness”. This is an environmental poem, with numerous references to nature, place (“stawamus and its rock-formed apron”), climate change (“unpredictable rainfall” and “oh, the heat/rises two degrees”), and the part humans play in the planet’s destruction (“blackbird, lift your frequency/drown the sound of spade/on rock”). The focus on the environment’s a natural fit for favreau, who is a climate justice organizer as well as a writer.

 While reading this thoughtful, introspective book, I turned to Wikipedia to learn what kireji means: “kireji (lit. "cutting word") are a special category of words used in certain types of Japanese traditional poetry [like Haiku]… … Used in the middle of a verse, [kireji] briefly cuts the stream of thought, indicating that the verse consists of two thoughts half independent of each other”.     

Finally, what’s a first book without a love poem or two? The poet writes “we were singing/the same aria/I like to think” but on the same page we find this tender and “just right” image concerning loss: “a hand on a wrist/holding gently/letting go”.

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

 

 

 

 

Five Reviews: The Beautiful Place by Lee Gowan; Only If We’re Caught by Theressa Slind; Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian by Dr. Gary Hoium; Grandpa’s Garage by Amber Antymniuk; and Stories from the Churchill by Ric Driediger, with Illustrations by Paul Mason

“The Beautiful Place”

Written by Lee Gowan

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-208-9

  

Saskatchewan born-and-raised writer Lee Gowan has penned a thick new novel—The Beautiful Place—and it’s a beautiful thing. Gowan’s three previous novels have garnered much attention (Make Believe Love was shortlisted for Ontario’s Trillium Award), and his screenplay, Paris or Somewhere, was nominated for a Gemini Award. Currently the Program Director of the Creative Writing and Business Communications department at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, this award-winning author’s giving readers something completely different with The Beautiful Place, which delves into the sci-fi world of cryonics; the realistic world of failed marriages, 21^st Century parenting, and dementia; and the ever-precarious world of art and art-making.  

What Gowan’s done here is ingenious: he’s imagined an ongoing life for Philip Bentley, Sinclair Ross’s protagonist in As for Me and My House. Gowan’s tri-provincial sequel to that prairie classic’s told from the perspective of the minister-turned-artist’s grandson, also known as Bentley. The younger Bentley—a fired, semi-suicidal cryonics salesman, writer, and father of two daughters from different wives—is approached by a beguiling woman named Mary Abraham who “met Jesus in a dream and walked with him to a desert well” and “met Buddha under a tree by a river.”

Abraham’s also dreamed about the younger Bentley, and she’s on a mission: as he’s one of few who know where the cryonics company, Argyle, keeps the frozen bodies of the deceased, he must reveal this location so that she can extract her late husband’s disembodied head, because he posthumously told her that he “wished to be buried and that it was [her] duty to get him underground.” The younger Bentley must also try to appease his wise-cracking ex-wife and finance their rebellious 23-year-old daughter’s New York art school, plus figure out his own place in the world as the grandson of a famous painter (whose body’s also in The Beautiful Place). Bentley himself doesn’t believe in cryonics—“a longshot gamble at eternal life”—even though he was Argyle’s sales manager.

It’s complicated, as they say, but, Gowan adeptly directs this cast of disparate characters with their strange plights, and the often witty dialogue reveals why he’s such a revered writer. Upon the birth of a daughter, Bentley’s wife says: “She looks like a live roast.” Another character says “urologists always have such lovely personalities.” Speaking of his wife’s TV-star ex, the protagonist says: “He wishes he were indigenous; he wishes he were gay.” And it’s a hoot to read that Philip Bentley lived beyond Ross’s novel and became an artist with “pictures hanging in the Vancouver Art Gallery next to Emily Carr.”

This book is a complex weaving of the real and the impossible, of hope and grief, and of dreams and hard realities. Though the protagonist believes that “The point of existence … was to vanish with as little trace as possible. Stay out of the frame,” this shimmering and beautifully-organized novel will ensure that its author, Lee Gowan, will not disappear within the lexicon of Canadian literary writers.

 

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

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“Only If We’re Caught”

Written by Theressa Slind

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$25.95  ISBN 9-781771-872119

 

In the opening paragraph of Only If We’re Caught, the debut short story collection by Saskatoon writer (and children’s librarian) Theressa Slind, readers are viscerally transported to Aspen Grove, a seniors’ residence—where the hallway “is painted the colour of cookie dough”—and into the mind of Parkinson’s-afflicted protagonist Margaret, who can no longer speak. We soon learn that Margaret’s not just any ninety-three-year-old nursing home resident with a “porous-boned spine curling in on itself” … she’s also telepathically communicating with a visiting child.

This bizarre circumstance is typical of the tales in Slind’s collection of fifteen stories, some of which previously appeared in literary journals. The borders of normalcy are blurred, and that’s what makes this collection stand out. Perhaps the finest example of this is “Amygdule,” about a funeral director, Ben, who “commune[s] with ghosts.” Ben has a crush on his employee, Alice, who delivers a fountain of black humour. She “arrives in an eddy of formaldehyde,” and says things like “I like my men ripe” and “Back to work. Mrs. Chan isn’t going to embalm herself.” This story is also about a treasure hunt, geology, a fatal accident, and loneliness.    

The common thread between Slind’s characters is that they all have crosses to bear. Pregnant teen Natalie had wanted to go to medical school: “But by the time she’d raised the kid and Andy, well, did they even let you into medical school past thirty?” And Toba, a children’s librarian whose only child “climbed a neighbour’s two-storey aluminum ladder, fell, and died.” After the tragedy, guilt-and grief-ridden Toba takes to hiding behind a hare mask (“This is no Easter Bunny”), both inside the library and out. When she’s asked to do a TV interview on a sexual health information fair­—titled “Sex in the Library”—the now semi-famous (thanks to her Twitter account, “@Hareofthefields,” and Youtube) librarian wears the mask. The interviewer metaphorically traps her with his question: “Tell me, Bunny, what’s with the mask? Let’s get to the bottom of this. What are you hiding?”

Readers cannot guess which direction Slind’s going to take them in this original short story collection, and that’s a good thing. Some of the situations made this reader squirm, like realtor and father Martin Woodrow’s uncomfortable reality in the story “Family Style”. Woodrow and his wife are about to have dinner with their daughter Amanda and her fiancé in a Calgary restaurant … and the fiancé is Martin’s former colleague, Bob, “who’d driven Amanda home from play dates with his own daughter, Brandi”. We really get the sense of Martin’s despair: a testament to Slind’s skill.

The author also slings several comical similes and metaphors, ie: Ruth “smelled like scented maxi-pads,” and grieving parents Alex and Trudy, Canadians travelling in Europe: “packed their grief, carry-on and oversized, and it bumps along behind them over the old cobblestones.”         

These edgy, slick and diverse short stories feature characters in life-changing moments. Slind’s is a welcome new voice on the map of Saskatchewan literature.  

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

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"Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian"\

Written by Dr. Gary Hoium

Published by DriverWorks Ink

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-781927-570746

 

While conducting author visits in schools over the decades, I’d often ask students what they wanted to be when they grew up, and, invariably, veterinarian was a top response. I understand that. Who doesn’t love animals? Interestingly, Dr. Gary Hoium—veterinarian and author of Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian—never intended to become a vet.  It was “never a goal or an ambition of mine while I was growing up in rural Saskatchewan,” he explains in his just-published collection of experiences as a mixed-animal veterinarian and clinic owner in Weyburn. Instead, Dr. Hoium had his hopes set on an NHL career, but when that and medical school admission attempts failed, he applied to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and was soon on his way to becoming a vet for the next 36 years.   

His conversational stories about animal patients (and their humans) are shared over 41 short chapters, many of them humourous. The cover image of this conversationally-toned book shows a smiling Dr. Hoium at work: left hand holding up a cow’s tail while his right arm’s disappeared “up the south end” of the animal. This in-the-field photo—and that impish grin—set the book’s light tenor.  

A few weeks after graduating from the WCVM, Dr. Hoium was already working for a Weyburn veterinary practice, and one of the first calls was to treat a sick snake: Dr. Houim’s not a fan of snakes. Another early call concerned the delivery of twin calves. An emergency C-section was performed, and Dr. Hoium and a fellow vet discovered that the calves were conjoined at their sternums. He writes: “ … it sure made for an unceremonious welcome to the real world for this neophyte veterinarian.”  

The author’s often self-deprecating: he alludes to some of his miscues as well as his successes, like the time he thought he was spaying a cat and “spent the better part of two minutes fishing with [his] special surgical spay hook in the abdominal cavity” before he learned the cat was male.

This witty vet is highly entertaining, and I imagine he’s been sharing these tales with receptive audiences for years. The disparate anecdotes provide a close inspection of a rural veterinary practice and some smalltown characters, like nefarious Terry, the bouvier des Flandres’ dog-owner who had “sticky fingers,” was frequently drunk, and referred to Dr. Hoium as “bro”.

There are strange situations aplenty. A cat that’s gorged on grasshopper parts; a farmer who kept a calf whose feet had frozen and fell off (“because she seemed so healthy, we decided to keep her”); untangling a clump of tail-tied grey fox squirrels in a Weyburn parking lot; a $25,000 ostrich with a mangled leg; a cat with “a thistle in his pistol”; and the vet’s unforgettable electric fence jolts … and I’m not even going to get into the sheltie collie’s rectal issue.

But back to that cover image. Do they kick? Read the book, and you’ll find out.  

 

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

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“Grandpa’s Garage”

Written by Amber Antymniuk

Published by Blow Creative Arts

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.00   ISBN 9-781999-546212

I’ve noticed that an increasing number of children’s authors—and particularly new writers—are opting to self-publish. Alternately, they could wait for months to hear back from a trade publisher regarding whether a book will be accepted for publication, then wait for up to several years (I’m speaking from experience: I had a book accepted in 2010 and released in 2020) for that book to hit the shelves. When one possesses artistic talent as well as literary talent, it makes especially good sense to self-publish, and that’s precisely what Saskatchewan creator and Arts Education teacher Amber Antymniuk did with Grandpa’s Garage.  

Antymniuk’s second book for young readers (or listeners) explores the wonderfully diverse items that appear in “Grandpa’s Garage,” and each page features rhyming text in a large font, an appealing watercolour illustration, and enough white space to make the words and images pop. Antymniuk mostly makes it personal, describing things that I expect actually do reside in a relative’s garage, like “farm cats,” “An old radio tuned to the local station” and “a stack of manuals and a bent fishing fly,” but near the end she writes “Whether Grandpa’s Garage is a shop or a shed. Or a room beneath the stairs nearly bumping your head.” This transition away from the personal makes the story inclusive: anyone who has a grandfather (or grandfather-figure) in their life with a specific place where items are stored and repaired can imagine the interior of their own special person’s shop, shed or garage, and experience the warmth and love within that relationship.   

 In describing the precise items in “Grandpa’s Garage,” readers are able to glean not only a fine sense of the place, but also something of Grandpa’s character and hobbies. We learn that his “big red toolbox sits organized and neat,” so we can guess that he, too, is organized. The slightly tatty-looking stools beside the toolbox are there to welcome guests: Grandpa likes company. Bent nails and “some rusty old pails” demonstrate a frugal handyman. The colourful image of a fishing fly shows us that Grandpa’s an angler, and an old, handmade slingshot—one of the “small treasures that grandpa holds dear”—indicates that he’s nostalgic about his youth. The all-important cover image—a muddy pair of small, red rubber boots sitting next to a pair of equally muddy men’s work boots—suggests a warm, generational bond.

I appreciate how Antymniuk used the often gentle and tender medium of watercolour to portray items some might not consider paint-worthy, ie: the business end of a hammer, the rusty pail, a “hanging trouble light” and a power drill. Lovely contrast.

Antymniuk grew up near Tisdale, SK, and now lives and parents in Saskatoon. Her publishing moniker, Blow Creative Arts, is an homage to her grandparents and their children, all of whom “have had a lasting impact on the community.” As the author publishes under her married name, she’s chosen to honour her first family in this unique and lovely way. See www.blowcreativearts.ca .    

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

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"Stories from the Churchill”

Written by Ric Driediger, with Illustrations by Paul Mason

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 9-781988-783727

 

Ric Driediger’s positively reverent when he writes about the beauty and challenges inherent in canoeing Saskatchewan’s vast northern waterways. The owner/operator of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters in Missinipe, SK may already be known to readers—and fellow canoeists—through his first book, Paddling Northern Saskatchewan: A Guide to 80 Canoe Routes. Now this knowledgeable paddler has penned Stories from the Churchill, and he describes it as “the book [he] wanted to write” whereas the earlier book was the one he “needed” to write. There’s a difference. What comes through the page is that Driediger’s doing exactly what he was meant to, both professionally and personally, and he knows just how fortunate he is.  

Even if you never intend to canoe across a morning-calm lake, brave big-lake wind and river rapids, portage through “swampy muskeg,” lose yourself in the boreal wilderness, “go solo” (“a spiritual experience”), or winter camp, this book will inform and entertain you. It’s well-written in a conversational tone, and includes anecdotes from Driediger’s own adventures and stories from his clients’ and staff’s experiences, too.

Driediger’s a natural storyteller, and in this softcover with 20 stand-alone chapters—and occasional cartoon illustrations by another canoeing aficionado, the author’s longtime friend, Paul Mason—readers are privy to a canoe-seat view through what the author describes as the best canoe routes in the world, but this is more than a book about canoeing: Dreidiger also shares his “philosophy of life” and his “understanding of the importance of experiencing wilderness.”

His introduction to canoeing began in 1972, just after high school graduation. He and his cousin joined a group of young adults who got a “crash course in canoeing and canoe tripping” from farmer/canoe instructor LaVerne Jantz, and in one day they went “from never having paddled to running rapids.” During that initial trip on the Churchill, Driediger “absolutely fell in love with the rock shoreline, with the complexity of the lakes, with the moss in the forest, with the knowledge that just over the hill another lake waited.”

One intriguing chapter concerns the writer’s preparations for and experiences with winter camping on the Churchill River. He awoke one morning—it was -54 degrees Celsius—unable to put his pants on: they were “flat, frozen solid.” He and his companions used their axe “to chop pieces of peanut butter, jam, honey, and chocolate,” and they “ate as [they] walked” because it was too cold to stop.

In another chapter, Driediger’s created a fictional story to explain the discovery of a sewing machine in the depths of a lake. He demonstrates how canoeing teaches humility and canoe groups form lifelong bonds. There also harrowing anecdotes about being stuck in a rapidly-filling culvert; 140 km hour winds and 1.5 metre waves; fatal lightning strikes; and drownings. Still: “Driving on the highway is far more dangerous.”

Canoeing romances, cross-continent adventurers, respect for First Nations’ neighbours and the land, and the history of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters … Driediger’s book is a compendium of captivating stories.

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