The Deakin Review of Children's Literature
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The Honeybee Man by L. Nargi
No full textNargi, Lela. The Honeybee Man. Illus. Kyrsten Brooker. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2011. Print. This charming picture book chronicles the unconventional cottage industry of Fred, a Brooklynite who spends his spare time tending three colonies of honeybees housed on the roof of his townhouse. As the day unfolds, we follow Fred’s bees as they fan out across the borough, bringing back nectar from the herb gardens, flower pots, and even wild blueberry bushes flowering therein. Fred then harvests the honey and distributes jars of it to his neighbours. With this growing popularity of urban agriculture (and urban apiculture), Nargi’s story is a timely one, clearly aimed at progressive young families interested in the connection between local ecology and human community. The book is transparently but not disagreeably didactic: bee behaviour is examined and explained (both within the context of the story and in a two-page appendix), and the processes of beekeeping and honeymaking are illuminated through Fred’s perambulations within his apartment-cum-apiary. Brooker’s illustrations, a combination of gestural painting and collage, have a patchwork, handmade quality well suited to the book’s overarching preoccupation with all things organic and homespun. Her renderings of Brooklyn’s brownstone vistas are simple in their bright, flat planes of colour, but also satisfyingly dense with decoupaged texture and detail. Like the honey made by Fred’s “tireless Brooklyn bees,” her artwork is both a concentration - and a sweetening - of the teeming heterogeneity of urban life.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sarah Mead-Willis Sarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta\u27s Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria.
That Boy Red by R. Gilmore
No full textGilmore, Rachna. That Boy Red. Toronto: HarperTrophy, 2011. Print. That Boy Red by Canadian author Rachna Gilmore is an engaging, lightly humorous, episodic novel suitable for young readers ages 8 to 12. Set on a Prince Edward Island farm during the Great Depression, it tells the story of the MacRae family through the focal character of middle child Red, who is about the same age as the book\u27s intended readers. Red is an excitable lad whose quick temper and jocularity often land him in trouble he later regrets. One immediately thinks of comparisons–Anne Shirley, Tom Sawyer, or Brian O\u27Connal in Who Has Seen the Wind–but the similarities only go so far. Red\u27s unique quality is a moral compass (coupled with sensible familial guidance) that always steers him back to thoughtfulness and the tone of the book is lighter than some of these classics, being driven more by dialogue than poetic descriptions. The novel\u27s six episodes are distributed throughout the seasons of a calendar year, and each one focuses on Red\u27s relationship with a different family member, which provides Gilmore the opportunity to develop the family as a cast of rounded characters. Ellen, the eldest, is the teacher at the local school and lives with the family. Alex and Mac are Red\u27s older brothers; Alex is away at college, while Mac is slightly older than Red and shares a good-natured rivalry with him. Lucy, or Bunch for short, is the youngest of the family. Other characters, such as Red\u27s stern grandmother Cat-Less Granny, also make appearances.Red\u27s parents are practical, hard working, and possessed of some remarkably effective parenting skills. Times are tough, but it is their steadfast ambition, indeed the family mission, to finance the advanced education of each child with the salary of an older sibling, as he or she gains well-paying employment: Ellen is paying Alex\u27s college fees, Alex will pay Mac\u27s fees, and so forth. The entire family has accepted this vision, but that doesn\u27t mean Red finds school particularly motivating. For him school means enduring the taunts of other boys and studying when he would rather be tinkering in the woodshop. Ultimately, though, he comes to understand the value of education, and this is nicely figured in the final episode when Red goes up in an aeroplane. From a high vantage point, he senses instinctively the freedom of the sky, the connections between places near and far, and the way this new perspective sets him apart from others in the astonished community not brave enough to take the plunge with him. Red\u27s ride in the sky tells us that he will eventually leave his home, but the story itself remains firmly grounded in the locales of the farm and surrounding community, which we see through the varying seasons: the swimming hole in summer, and the snow drifts on the railway tracks in winter. Much of the action involves dashing or trudging along the paths that cross the back lots of neighboring farms or riding to town to meet the train. Overlaid on these comings and goings are the routines of rural life: evening chores, family meals, and church on Sunday. These will not be the most riveting of plot events for readers looking for whizz-bang action, but they serve as a kind of rhythm for the larger story that pulls the reader along. Gilmore\u27s language matches the scale of events in the narrative: direct, with occasional colourful turns of phrase, but not bombastic. The humour does not jump out and surprise the reader, but it serves as a kind of protective blanket that envelopes everything–even serious matters like accidents–and recalls the sense one has as a child, while still absolved of adult responsibilities, that, somehow, things will turn out all right. Gilmore neatly represents the states of mind of a young person who senses the machinations of the adult world without understanding them. In this Bildungsroman, Red begins to encounter the responsibilities of adult life at the same time that he discovers the special place his family has given him. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: John HuckJohn Huck is a metadata and cataloguing librarian at the University of Alberta. He holds an undergraduate degree in English literature and maintains a special interest in the spoken word. He is also a classical musician and has sung semi-professionally for many years