Four Reviews: Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape (Edited by Bob Henderson and Sean Blenkinsop); Backwater Mystic Blues by Lloyd Ratzlaff; Small Reckonings by Karin Melberg Schwier; and"awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People” by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne, Illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay

“Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape”

Edited by Bob Henderson and Sean Blenkinsop

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

29.95  ISBN 978-1-988783-81-9

 

This beautifully-bound anthology of 21 essays written by paddlers and edited by educators—and intrepid canoeists and guides—Bob Henderson (ON) and Sean Blenkinsop (BC) deserves a much longer review than this 500-word assessment. In short: it’s extraordinary.

Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape contains a wealth of thought-provoking essays on the rivers, lakes, and oceans the diverse contributors have navigated via canoe or kayak—often in groups but sometimes solo—and it examines the paddlers’ interior worlds as these contemplate being present; history; culture; relationships with plants, animals and other creatures; Indigenous Canada (land and territorial acknowledgements and “Settler Responsibilities” are included); ecology; climate change; and, as Bruce Cockburn contributes in his Foreword, the “soul-expanding space” where one can get “a glimpse of the world as it was made.” Maps, black and white photos, and the editors’ numerous “Suggested Reading” lists are superb accompaniments to the layered essays.

Henderson has previously published books on heritage travel and outdoor life, and Blenkinsop, a professor at Simon Fraser University who writes about “wild pedagogies” and “ecologizing education,” agree that as travelers on land and water, they/we need to “shift pathways and create narratives that no longer focus on competing, completing, and conquering” re: our understanding of the natural world and, indeed, human culture. They invited contributors to select a “special paddling place/route” and a “personally significant theme,” and the result is this compendium of erudite, entertaining, often philosophical and political essays that are delightful to sink into.    

Several writers discuss the “gifts to be found in slowing down,” ie: the discoveries of cranberries (Anjeanette LeMay) and the “orangish glow of cloudberries” (Beth Foster). Foster writes that wind and rain altered her group’s 9-day paddle plans, but the rewards of “focus[ing] on the present” included “an unclouded blue-sky panoramic vista” and “the profound joy of stillness.”

Greg Scutt ponders Settler history and the connection between river canoeing and fly-fishing in his second-person piece set it Stikine country, “the largest wilderness area in British Columbia.”

Michael Paul Samson recounts his kayak trip around Newfoundland at age 22, a pre-wedding adventure down the Ohio River and into the Mississippi, and “the resilience of the human race.”

Ric Driediger, a guide for Churchill River Canoe Outfitters, was seeking relaxation on his solo trip. He considers that he’s perhaps “so addicted to being busy, [he] can’t just sit,” and he desires to “be lost in time and place and imagination.” Success! At one point he can’t even remember how long he’s been out. This essay’s brilliant surprise ending left me gasping.

Kayaker Fiona Hough speaks honestly of the joys and challenges of taking youth with mental health issues on a two-week trip in Clayoquet Sound, and how one completes the trip “freshly clothed in an ocean skin.”

Gratitude’s braided through these essays. Zabe MacEachren writes: “I also like to kiss the palm of my hand and then place it flat on the ground wherever I have slept.”

This book’s a major achievement. Please read it. 

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

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“Backwater Mystic Blues”

By Lloyd Ratzlaff

Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

18.99    ISBN 978-1-989398-60-9

  

I somehow missed Backwater Mystic Blues—the contemplative collection of essays by Saskatoon’s Lloyd Ratzlaff—when it was first published in 2006. Shame on me, for I greatly admired Ratzlaff’s earlier book, The Crow Who Tampered With Time, and bought several copies. And shame on me, as—disclaimer—I call this gracious writer a friend.

Fortunately, fate’s found a way to deliver Ratzlaff’s second essay collection into my hands these many years later, and like a song you’ve not heard in a long time but, upon listening again, remember how much you enjoyed, I’m so pleased to hear the distinguished yet down-home voice of my old Mennonite friend—a former minister, counsellor and educator—once again. Backwater Mystic Blues has been reborn with Shadowpaw Press Reprise, a press that publishes “New editions of notable, previously published books”. Hurray, that.

 These cultivated essays are reminiscences of a life lived with intention, but also with abundant questioning (particularly spiritual) and grief (the dissolution of a marriage, career dissatisfaction, deaths). What you’ll also find here is gentleness, nature keenly observed, scholarship, and page-by-page evidence of a human who walks through this world with a generous heart. Disparate essays are tethered via consistently effective writing, ie: the ability to transport. Here Ratzlaff describes the cellar in his childhood home:

“The one naked light bulb scarcely lit the cellar’s dim edges, where other shelves stood, holding crocks and jars and bronze canning tubs, where potatoes mouldered in the bin in the northeast, darkest corner and the upright hulk of the metal bathtub brooded of Saturdays, when it was wrestled up through the passageway so we could take turns bathing for church on Sunday.”

As a child it was Ratzlaff’s responsibility to fetch water from the village well, two blocks from home, and he writes of the enamel cup he used to dip into the bucket upon its safe return to the cellar. Years later he “salvaged” this blue cup. “It holds the innocence of childhood, and the taste of clean cold tin straight to the gut slakes my soul and puts Time in its place.”  

Ratzlaff was raised in a fundamentalist sect. “In my early teens, it was a big excursion to attend a Youth for Christ rally in Saskatoon,” he writes. Decades of wrestling with “The Old Man up there and his buggers here below” saw Ratzlaff leave a 10-year career in ministry, but he confesses that he’s been “married—for better, for worse, forever—to the Christian religion,” and these essays frequently allude to his faith. The writer also went to Switzerland to honour Carl Jung, gives great consideration to his dream-world, and set aside his King James Bible for the New English Bible (Oxford Study Edition); what falls from the pages of that good Book when it’s reopened years later is nothing short of holy.

Imaginative, educated, a dreamer, and the kind of guy who finds God in “a gaggle of geese on a sandbar”. I’m so glad this book found me.   

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

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“Small Reckonings”

By Karin Melberg Schwier

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-74-6

Sometimes a book is so phenomenal it goes into multiple printings, either with the original publisher or with a fresh publisher. Such is the case with Saskatoon author Karin Melberg Schwier’s Small Reckonings, a Watrous, SK-based novel set between 1914 and 1936, and inspired by true events. I reviewed this book—for which the writer received a John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Fiction—when it was first published by Burton House Books in 2020. A revised edition came out in 2021 with Copestone, and that same year it earned a Saskatchewan Book Award. This year, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has released the third edition. This story’s got staying power.

I stand by what I claimed in my initial review: Small Reckonings deserves a huge audience. Kudos to the multi-genre writer, and to Regina publisher (and writer) Edward Willett for recognizing that many well-written books deserve another chance to shine. Excerpts of my earlier review of this beautifully-crafted and highly enjoyable novel also get a reprise:

Melberg Schwier expertly creates individuated characters readers will care deeply about, including the central figure, Violet, who, at birth, looks like “a large pink spider,” and of whom the attending doctor says “‘There are places for these children.’” Equally well-drawn are Violet’s doting brother, John; kind neighbour, Hank; and the Ukrainian Yuzik family. The characters struggle through the Depression, and with the disparate lots they’ve been dealt.

I know Watrous well, thus it was especially fun reading the descriptions of this “boomtown”. Homesteader William boasts that “‘Watrous has wooden sidewalks now, and shops and a bakery. A very decent butcher. A poolroom and barbershop.’” He says the mineral springs possess “‘healing powers, so say the Indians’”. I can smell the “sweet scent of [Scandanavian] rosettes just pulled from hot oil,” and hear the “‘Uff da’” exclamations. I easily see the “green apron with yellow rickrack,” and almost sneeze at the description of the schoolboy “banging erasers at arm’s length on the bottom step, a cloud of chalk dust drifting away lazily in the afternoon heat”. I transported as I read about caragana seed pods “snapping and cracking” in the sunshine, and as the lead siblings spoke of “anti-I-over” and “Simon Says”. The “forlorn autumn sound” of honking geese was like an echo.

This book succeeds because the writer’s learned the difficult art of literary balance … as skilled as she is at penning descriptive scenes, they never slow the pacing of this taut novel. The book’s structure is nuanced, and seemingly minor details—like a fishhook caught in an eye—have resonance. The characters are people we know or can easily imagine. Here’s Hanusia, the raw Ukrainian midwife, upon the birth of John: “‘So quick first baby! Much hair. Strong boy, good for farm work. Your husband, he will be happy.’”) And the plot? Movie potential.

I read with pleasure that Melberg Schwier has a sequel in the works. I have high expectations for Inheriting Violet. Watch for news of its release at karinschwier.ca.

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

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awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains 

Cree People”

Written by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne

Illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-013-6

 

It’s been said that when a language dies, a culture goes with it. In Canada several Indigenous languages are in fact endangered, but the one I grew up hearing in northern Saskatchewan—Cree—remains one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in the country. Still, it’s important to continue teaching it so Cree youth can connect with their ancestors, their history, and cultural traditions. I’ll add that it’s also a fine idea for anyone who lives in northern communities to learn at least a few words of Cree; my parents took classes because they lived alongside and worked with Plains Cree people. I picked up a small vocabulary, as well, mostly from friends who lived on Flying Dust First Nation.

I’m glad that there are educators, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers who continue to find creative ways to make learning Plains Cree fun for children. Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne, the three Saskatchewan writers of awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People, have done just that. The 55-page colouring book is a complement to their reference guide for teaching the Plains Cree language, nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis—A Little Plains Cree Book for Children, published by YNWP in 2022, and Deiter, from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation, introduces the book by explaining that they “hope to provide children with the basics of the Plains Cree language with the goal that we, as Plains Cree people, will still have our language for future generations”. The Plains Cree translation is credited to Felix and Ballantyne, plus Inez Deiter, “a Residential School survivor who had to relearn her Cree language”.

The book is simply (no facial features and mostly no finger definition) but effectively illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay, also from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation. A figure or figures appear on each page, and they are identified by who they are, ie: a child (awāsis), an old man (kisēyiniw), and/or by their profession, ie: a teacher (okiskinwahamākēw), a fisherman (onochikinasewew). The large black line drawings feature floral bead work, braids, regalia, long earrings and horses, and many would be best coloured in pencil crayons, as crayons would be too thick for some of the finer details, ie: the doctor and nurse’s stethoscopes, and the bells on the dancer’s jingle dress.

The creators have included good information about their people and language, ie: the fact that the Cree nation is “Canada’s largest tribal group,” “Plains Cree is spoken in 43 First Nations communities in Saskatchewan alone,” and “Everyone older than the speaker will have a specific term, but anyone younger than the speaker will be addressed as nisīmis (my younger brother or sister)”. There’s a page included on the Plains Crees’ extended kinship system—interesting—and pages dedicated to the “Sound system” (14 consonants, 7 vowels) and colours.

Hats off to these collaborators for doing their part in keeping the Plains Cree language alive and well, and doing it in a way that little learners will love. kinanāskomitināwāw—thank you!  

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

 

 

Three Reviews: On the Busy Old Ranch (written by Katelyn Toney, illustrated by Rebecca Allen); The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions (by Counce Brampton); and The History Forest (by Michael Trussler)

“On the Busy Old Ranch”

Written by Katelyn Toney, Illustrated by Rebecca Allen

Published by Bluestem Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.00  ISBN 978-1-7388027-0-8

 

Katelyn Toney lives the hectic farmer/rancher lifestyle near Tompkins in southwest Saskatchewan with her husband and four children, and when she noted a lack of children’s books that depict the family’s unique way of life, she wrote one. The illustrated board book, On the Busy Old Ranch, is a 1-10 counting book with full-bleed illustrations by Rebecca Allen, rhyming stanzas, and child-friendly but apt portrayals of diverse ranch families’ chore-filled daily life.

In a CTV Regina television interview, Toney said she’d been reading to her kids “every day for the past 15 years,” and noted that there were “not a lot of books showcasing the life we live out here raising cattle on the prairies”. She said that there are many farm and rodeo-themed kids’ books, but what she found “really didn’t depict the lifestyle” she and her family experience.

The first page spread sets the book’s tone and two-stanza, rhyming style:

On the busy old ranch

by the barn in the sun

worked a big mama cowgirl

and her little cowgirl one.

 

“Feed,” said the mama.

“I feed,” said the one.

So they both fed the horses

by the barn in the sun.

 

Allen’s colourful, light-hearted illustrations reveal a large-eyed mother and daughter, both with red braids, forking hay and feeding the smiling horse, while another horse munches grass against a backdrop of prairie sky and a tall red barn. The subsequent pages all begin with “On the busy old ranch,” and include “an old papa cowboy,” “the ranchhand lady,” “the silly auntie cowgirl” and “some kindly neighbours/and some little cowkids ten”. I was pleased to see the illustrator’s inclusion of solar power for heating water and the multi-ethnic cast of characters. Details like an old boot slung on a fencepost, a grasshopper, and tumbleweeds caught in barbed wire are familiar sights to this prairie-born and raised reviewer.

Toney’s lively text reveals the many daily responsibilities on the ranch—like fixing water bowls, loading cattle into a trailer “through the liner’s rolling door,” and pounding nails into barbed wire fencing—but there are also pages dedicated to rest (all characters and the family dog are shown sleeping on the grass beneath a gold-leafed tree); fun (swinging on the “old rusty gate”), and prayer “And they all prayed for rain/under clouds that reached to heaven”. In the cute illustration for the latter, even the gopher has its hands clasped in prayer.

During the CTV interview, Toney said the book is “a love story” to the people involved in farmer/ranching, and to the lifestyle itself. Her website adds that the story is “perfect for rural kids who want to read a story familiar with their way of life, as well as kids who would like to learn about life on a ranch”.

The small and sturdy hardcover is ideal for little hands—and beginning counters—and includes a plug for bedtime reading. To learn more about Toney and her first book—I’m certain there are more tales to come—see www.KatelynToney.ca.

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

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“The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions”

By Counce Brampton

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-988783-99-4

 

They say it’s about the journey, not the reward. In the literary world, the reward might be considered the publication of a book. For Saskatoon poet Counce Brampton, a “quiet observer of life” who’s lived most of his adulthood in a group home (as a result of OCD and other mental health issues), my sense is that it’s always been about the journey, yet his first poetry collection, The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions, has been published, and it opens with a generous introduction by his friend and mentor, internationally-revered writer Yann Martel.

Martel began meeting with Brampton when the former was serving as writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library twenty years ago. The Life of Pi author quickly gleaned that Brampton wasn’t seeking “editorial guidance but affirmation and validation”. Martel continues to provide that today, and explains that “This book is the result of a wish to safeguard what is essentially Counce Brampton’s life work, the mark he will leave”.

Interestingly, the poems appear next to images of their first incarnations, handprinted in Brampton’s coiled notebook. Where words or lines were struck from the first draft, they appear with strikelines on the typed pages, as well. Martel’s editing is deliberately slight: “What we have here are the spontaneous workings of [Brampton’s] mind, the words and phrases that strike him, the ideas that spring fully formed and those that evolve from one draft to the next”.

I’m immediately drawn to the first poem’s strong images and sensory details. “In the Back of a Seaport Tavern,” includes “A seal’s corpse on a woodplank/gouged and steaming like fresh asphalt” and “An old bedspring against the yardfence/rusted and corrupted by old sea salt”. The idea of a bedspring being “corrupted” is inspired.

The poems feel like dreamspeak, like journal entries. Line are repeated throughout, but “The repetition is part of the spell,” Martel writes. “The point here is not destination but movement, a ramble through language.”

We see the poet experimenting on the page: some lines—and even words—are left incomplete. The piece “In a room filled with dim ghostlight” (great title) begins thus:

In a room filled with ghostlight

 

In a room filled with dim ghostlight

 

In a dim filled

 

The second line reappears—like a ghost—across the next two pages, or contains slight variation: “In a room filled with nothing and dim ghostlight”.

On one page, "when” is the sole word. Another of the briefest offerings is an untitled list of five words: doorway/streetlight/fender/seashell/drum. Other poems do indeed “ramble through language,” and what gorgeous language it sometimes is: “The sun shone down/with a light, italian orange sustenance/on all the townspeople”. And “the full moon made of fresh pale stone”. I admire “all our hands held the dust of dreams and crumbled icons” (from “Of failure”).

The book’s beautifully produced. The cover is a photo of a worn leather couch in tall grass beside a river. Logical? Perhaps not, but like Brampton’s work, it’s compelling all the same.  

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

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“The History Forest”

By Michael Trussler

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-780889-778948

   

 

Books by multi-genre writer and University of Regina professor of English Michael Trussler make a mark. Take The Sunday Book, a nonfiction title that garnered two awards in the 2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards. Take The History Forest, the poetry collection for which Trussler earned the Poetry Award in the same provincial competition. An admirable trifecta.  

I read the latter slowly, and twice: it’s dense, philosophical, apocalyptic, and often surreal, and I didn’t always know how to navigate it—something like walking through a forest under the cape of night. To read Trussler is to have one’s mind stretched; I even remembered things I’d forgotten, ie: The Twinkie Defence. This dexterous poet quotes myriad poets and writers; references artworks and philosophers; and had me regularly Googling (ie: Panpyschism; Ordovician; ekistics; hand-wrestler Candy Pain; Zen monk, Kenkō). Even the line and stanza breaks kept me guessing in this experimental book.

In Trussler’s poetic universe, a strong sense of humanity’s vulnerability pervades—and the sturdy conviction that we’ve doomed ourselves. There’s a “gasoline haze/above the playground” and “peripatetic plastic straws/washed up on the sand,” will “last far longer than your great-/grandchildren”. Civilization is “blistered and botched”. God is here, and equally fearful: “And it may/well be that the only thing I’ll regret, says God to himself, is/having never run away from home. But where/to hide amidst all this life that’s heaving?” I don’t know, and Trussler doesn’t pretend to either.

Time appears to be one of the characters in this globally-aware collection. “In Japan they’ve made a skating rink/of crushed centuries and untold/species of fish,” he writes. In a later poem: “Arctic ice very soon making room for better cables for instant digital connection between Tokyo and London”. And in the piece “Salvador Dali and the Glacier,” Trussler asserts that “Ice is losing its various/names and it’s not only avian malaria that’s on the rise”.

Striking juxtapositions and stream-of-consciousness are at constant, startling play. In a single poem one finds pencil crayons and a Zip-loc bag; heroin and “sky-blue vodka bottles;” a “rain-rusted/wheelbarrow asleep on the heath” and “the Youtube cry of peacocks, flamingoes,/humpback whales, and antelopes as lithe as wind farms in/Germany”. Yes, “something wyrd is all around”.

The book’s final section is an essay titled “Bodhisattva on a Bicycle,” and it begins: “Appearing from nowhere, the world sometimes catches itself within various mirrors. It takes luck to open them, and then to listen to what’s gathered inside.” Mirrors play an ongoing role in this pensive collection. Trussler examines himself, history, the natural world, the environment, and contemporary society in the looking glass, and explores “what it means to be alive in this increasingly contradictory and frightening era in human history”.    

This original, award-winning poet observes, he questions, he reveres birds. Owls (one’s featured on the cover), mourning doves, oystercatchers, swallows, red-breasted nuthatches, a “grey cockatiel,” grebes, bluebirds …  “Birds aren’t here to give me any kind of grace,/but they do give grace, they make me feel part of the world again.”

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

 

 

Two Reviews: a beautiful rebellion, by Rita Bouvier (Thistledown Press) and Gordie's Skate, written by Bill Waiser, Illustrated by Leanne Franson (Thistledown Press)

“a beautiful rebellion”

Written by Rita Bouvier

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9781771872348

 

I took an extended pause before opening a beautiful rebellion, the fourth poetry collection by Saskatoon’s Rita Bouvier. The Métis writer and educator grew up beside the Churchill River, and the cover photo of a forceful river flowing between forested banks before a backdrop of white sky is immensely effective. To me, the scene says: Yes, this is the answer to all that ails us. This is holy.

Indeed, a sense of reverence permeates much of the work in this moving and intimate collection, with its odes to jack pine, bear, the moon, aunties and other relatives, and “feathery snowflakes/whirling down from the heavens above”. One of my favourite pieces, “holy, holy, holy,” ingeniously juxtaposes “waves crashing against the rocky shoreline” with “God/reaching in   and then out again”. Bouvier’s narrator in “daylight thief at Amigos Café” watches the other patrons-including a dancing child-and considers herself “a thief … in broad daylight/stealing the sacred … all around me.”        

This careful poet continually turns to the natural world for restoration and peace as she considers colonialism, patriarchy, “the murky waters of truth and reconciliation,” climate change and the pandemic. She rejoices in “the winged ones,” “the art of gathering/sweet    wild berries,” and considers jack pine to be “medicinal aerosol/a rich biochemical    molecular picnic”. Awe and gratitude are frequently present, as is the perception of humanity’s oneness. 

The writing is highly visual, ie: the aunties wear “sweaters of sky and magenta,” and dew’s personified thus: “droplets of condensed water vapor/on blades of grass   on a spider’s web/jewel-like/clinging their way back to the earth.” Lovely, as is Bouvier’s hyper-awareness of sound, evident in “soundscape” (“the saddest sound you will ever hear/is the faint and mournful sound/of a beaver crying”) and several other poems.

The use of “Rebellion” in the title immediately turns my thoughts to Louis Riel, and the leader and “gentle man” appears in the “supermoon rising” section. Interestingly, his sister, Sarah Riel, lived and is buried in Bouvier’s home community of Île-á-la-Crosse, and the siblings’ paternal grandparents met there. Text in Cree and Michif-languages spoken in Île-á-la-Crosse-organically weaves through the free verse and the few prose poems.

Above all, this book feels like an homage to the north, where Bouvier was raised “by the waterfall place/by the holy springs/by the strait of the spirit/in the place of peace.” Her poem “a table in the sky” is one of several that paints the area as a kind of boreal Utopia, and I am there with the poet at a lookout in her “childhood island home” as she “waited for the pinpoint of [her] papa/to return from a day’s work   across the frozen lake.”

Ah, yes. Bouvier’s successfully transported me to her sacred place beside the river, in the “small village/without many amenities.” And she makes me believe that if we all had a hallowed place like this to visit, we could, despite our scars and transgressions, eventually-and in community with the water, the creatures, and each other-“climb our way … into the light.”

 

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

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“Gordie’s Skate”

Written by Bill Waiser, Illustrated by Leanne Franson

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.95 

 

Few athletes in Canadian history are as iconic as Gordie Howe. Nicknamed “Mr. Hockey,” the Floral, SK-born hockey legend played professionally for an astounding five decades (plus a single game in a sixth decade), and a school, campground, football stadium, and hockey arena are named in his honour. The Gordie Howe International Bridge across the Detroit River–Howe was the Detroit Red Wings’ star player for 25 seasons–is set to open in 2024.

It's fitting that this historically-revered Canadian be celebrated via the arts, as well, and that one of Canada’s foremost historians, Saskatoon’s double GG Award-winning Bill Waiser, has shifted genres (Waiser’s well-known for his non-fiction work) and written an illustrated children’s book, Gordie’s Skate, to share the story of Howe’s humble beginnings, his passion to play, and his ultimate success.

Waiser’s successfully transitioned into the magical world of children’s literature with a compelling story that introduces us to a young Howe who “would have played [hockey] all day and night if he could … even in his sleep.” Inspired by Howe’s autobiography Mr. Hockey: My Story, Waiser’s book is set in Saskatoon during the 1930s. The Great Depression was in full swing, and when a neighbour knocked on the five-year-old Howe’s door with a bag of items to sell, Howe’s mother bought the sack and “Out tumbled an old pair of men’s skates.” Howe and his sister each grabbed one, stuffed socks into the toes, and “tried skating by carefully balancing on one foot.”

This touching softcover is wonderfully illustrated in watercolours by Leanne Franson from Martensville, SK. Franson’s captured the era beautifully via the characters’ patched clothing, old cars, and household images like clothes drying on a line beside a woodstove. One can feel the old-school winter cold in the images: thick tights and socks, toques, and layers were de rigeur in the 1930s. Readers of a certain age will relate to scenes of red-cheeked children skating on sloughs, in flooded yards, or even down the streets’ icy ruts. I also delighted in the subtle evocations of prairie, including telephone poles on the wide horizon, and cattails bordering the Hudson Bay slough, which “stretched for miles, from the back of [Howe’s] house to the Saskatoon airport.”

Waiser explains in his Author’s Note that it was actually Howe’s mother’s kindness that “resonated” with him. He says it was reminiscent of his own parents, “who taught [him] the importance of helping others.”

I’m delighted that Waiser-a longtime University of Saskatchewan history professor and author of numerous diverse books, including A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 and Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion, has penned this story for contemporary children. Gordie’s Skate is a timeless tale …  about the early days of a hockey legend; his kind-hearted mother; about challenging economic times and hard work; and about a bygone, pre-technological era, when receiving an old pair of skates ignited joy and passion in an athletic child, and that child grew up to become a household name.

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

 

 

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