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The Fly; The Rat; The Slug; The Worm: Disgusting Critters Series by E. Gravel
No full textGravel, Elise. The Fly; The Rat; The Slug; The Worm: Disgusting Critters Series. Tundra Books, 2016.These paperback reissues of Governor General’s award-winning children’s author Elise Gravel’s Disgusting Critters series – one that includes further volumes devoted to the spider, the toad, and head lice[!] – serve to bring to an even wider audience Gravel’s whimsical illustrations and sense of humour. Translated from the original French, the captions offer a soupçon of homely scientific information about each critter’s contribution to global ecology. Gravel is also known for her cartoons and graphic novels, and her critter illustrations are mainly sight-gags. Thus, while these books are ideally suited for reading to children from 3 to 6, older children learning to read can/will understand and appreciate the jokes. Recommended for all public, school, and academic curriculum library collections.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill Distad Historian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.</jats:p
The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by M. Chabon
No full textChabon, Michael. The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man. Illus. Jake Parker. New York: Balzer & Bray, 2011. Print. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon recounts an archetypal small boy’s fantasy life as superhero Awesome Man. Equipped with all the requisite SuperPowers, including positronic-ray-blasting vision and a “thermovulcanized protein-delivery orb,” young Awesome Man, accompanied by Moskowitz, the Awesome Dog, does battle against the forces of darkness, including talking mutant Jell-O from beyond the stars. After vanquishing Professor Von Evil and his antimatter Slimebot, the young hero battles his arch-nemesis, the Flaming Eyeball, and henchmen Red Shark and Sister Sinister. Returning to his “Fortress of Awesome, deep at the bottom of the deepest, darkest trench under the Arctic Ocean,” he finds his mother, the only one aware of his secret identity, awaits his return in the kitchen to offer him a restorative serving of cheese, crackers, and chocolate milk. Chabon’s thoroughly derivative story line, familiar at least since Super Man’s 1939 debut in Action Comics No. 1, is only redeemed by Jake Parker’s imaginative and charming illustrations. Adults reading this slight effort to children will at least be afforded a chuckle over Moskovitz, the Awesome Dog, named in honour of one of Sci-Fi’s most prominent students and proponents. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadMerrill Distad is Associate University Librarian (Research and Special Collections Services) and University Archivist, University of Alberta, and is the co-editor of Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953 (Toronto, 2003). He is the author, most recently, of The University of Alberta Library: The First Hundred Years, 1908–2008 (Edmonton, 2009)
Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush by C. Shields and P. Crowe
No full textShields, Carol and Patrick Crowe. Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush, adaptation by Willow Dawson, illustrated by Selena Goulding. Second Story Press, 2016.The long genesis of this graphic novel began more than two decades ago, when Governor General’s and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields began collaborating with Patrick Crowe to produce a screenplay based on Susanna Moodie’s classic account of pioneer life in early Victorian Upper Canada. Shields’ death in 2003 led Crowe to abandon the project, only to revive it a decade later in this illustrated format. Story editor Willow Dawson has extracted the most significant episodes from the screenplay, and Selena Goulding has provided running illustrations that fairly reflect the landscapes, buildings, home interiors, costumes, and technology of the period 1830–1867. Her style—not inappropriately—is reminiscent of the Classics Illustrated school of comic book art. This reviewer’s only criticism is the very occasional failure of the illustrations to accurately depict things referenced in the text.Appearing at a time when Canada celebrates 150 years of nationhood, this handsome production serves to provide older children and young adults with an appreciation of the hardships overcome by Canada’s pioneering women, such as Moodie, and her sister and fellow immigrant Catherine Parr Traill, whose very survival sometimes depended upon aid from their First Nations neighbours. As a succinct précis of Moodie’s classic memoir, it may even stimulate interest in reading the longer, original text. The Introduction provided by CanLit doyenne Margaret Atwood, alongside the content attributable to Carol Shields, render the book suitable not only for public and school libraries, but also for academic libraries and all serious collectors of those authors.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadHistorian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.</jats:p
Ten Ships that Rocked the World by G. Richardson
No full textRichardson, Gillian. Ten Ships that Rocked the World. The World of Tens Series. Illus. Kim Rosen. Annick Press, 2015.Although nominally aimed at an audience of 9- to 12-year-olds, this children’s book unconventionally features a formal introduction, concluding epilogue, selected bibliography, further readings list, and a comprehensive index! Author Richardson follows her award-winning first contribution to the World of Tens series, Ten Plants that Shook the World, with this entry recounting the stories of ships significant in world history. The ships range from those of 15th-century, Ming-Chinese Admiral Zheng He’s treasure fleet to the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior and the super-tanker Sirius Star that was hijacked by Somali pirates and held for ransom in 2008. Along the way, she chronicles Vasco da Gama’s flagship São Gabriel; the Lady Penrhyn which carried 104 women to Australia in 1787 as part of the “First Fleet” of transported convicts; the U.S.S. Susquehanna, that served as Commodore Perry’s flagship on his epic, diplomatic voyage to Japan; the Confederate Navy’s C.S.S. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a warship; the Komagata Maru and its cargo of would-be immigrants from India, turned away from Canada’s shores in 1914; the rechristened steamer Exodus (ex President Warfield), that brought Jewish refugees to the shores of Palestine in 1947; and the motor yacht Granma on which Fidel Castro secretly travelled from Mexico to Cuba in 1956 to incite and lead a revolution.Each vessel is provided with a history, physical description, account of its historical context and significant voyages, and its impact on subsequent world history. Imagined sketches of the experience of some passengers illuminate several of these accounts. All of this provides illustrator Kim Rosen with ample scope to employ photographs to augment her colourful designs and page layouts. The author acknowledges the assistance Capt A.C. Brooking, master mariner, who helped her ensure the accuracy of all things nautical. A book that can amuse, instruct, and be enjoyed by both children, and adults, it is recommended for all school and public libraries. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadHistorian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.</jats:p
ZAP! Nikola Tesla Takes Charge by M. Kulling
No full textKulling, Monica. ZAP! Nikola Tesla Takes Charge. Illustrated by Bill Slavin. Tundra Books, 2016.In this, her ninth contribution to Tundra Books’ Great Ideas Series, prolific children’s author Monica Kulling distills and simplifies the life and inventions of immigrant engineer and scientist Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) for primary school readers. Confining her story to the first half of Tesla’s long life, from his humble origins in Slovenia (then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), to his achievements as nineteenth-century America’s foremost electrical engineering genius, Kulling has maintained a manageable length compatible with the attention span of her audience.The rivalry between Tesla and his one-time patron and employer, Thomas Edison, over the suitability of alternating versus direct electrical current (AC vs. DC) is described without exposing all the sordid details of their rivalry. The story then quickly moves on to Tesla’s partnership with George Westinghouse to illuminate the 1892-93 Chicago world’s fair site, and to build the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls, employing alternating current, a system that allowed electricity to be transmitting over greater distances more cheaply and efficiently than Edison’s rival system. Kulling ends her story in 1898, when Tesla demonstrated a model boat controlled by radio waves, an invisible force that he suggested might also be used for wireless communication, a concept soon made real by radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.Apart from an anachronistic use of the word “robot,” Kulling’s text is historically and scientifically accurate, clearly written, and age-appropriate, without being condescending. Bill Slavin’s illustrations are nicely evocative of the late nineteenth-century buildings and workshops, and are scaled large enough for story-hour readings to groups of children.Reviewer: Merrill DistadHighly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsMerrill Distad is Associate University Librarian (Research and Special Collections Services) and University Archivist, University of Alberta, and is the co-editor of Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953 (Toronto, 2003). He is the author, most recently, of The University of Alberta Library: The First Hundred Years, 1908–2008 (Edmonton, 2009).</jats:p
Bad Girls of Fashion: Style Rebels from Cleopatra to Lady Gaga by J. Croll
No full textJennifer Croll. Bad Girls of Fashion: Style Rebels from Cleopatra to Lady Gaga. Illustrated by Ada Buchholc. Annick Press, 2016.Vancouver journalist and fashion historian Jennifer Croll, author of Fashion that Changed the World (2014), has here shifted gears to acquaint younger readers with the role of fashion in the history of women’s empowerment and liberation. Through the lens of biography, Croll traces the gradual rise of Girl Power reflected in, and partly driven by, the fashion choices of forty women, all of them “Style Rebels.” She divides them into ten categories that include Leaders, Modernizers, Instigators, Gender-Benders, Radicals, Decadents, and Freaks.Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra VII and England’s Queen Elizabeth I crafted their regal images partly through their fashion choices; Cixi, the Dowager Empress of China, also outlawed the binding and deforming of girls’ feet; the excesses of Frances’s Queen Marie Antoinette helped to seal her doom; Amelia Bloomer and George Sand (aka Aurore Dupin) scandalized nineteenth-century society by shunning traditional women’s clothing; Coco Chanel replaced traditional corsetry and petticoats with comfortable fashions (and gave the world an eponymous perfume); fashion magazine editors Diana Vreeland and Anna Wintour reigned as arbiters (many said “dictators”) of late-twentieth-century fashion; artists as geographically and culturally diverse as Japan’s Yoko Ono and Rei Kawakubo and Mexico’s Frida Kahlo influenced fashion with their idiosyncratic styles; movie stars such as Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Diane Keaton, and Cher Bono became trend-setters in fashion by expanding acceptable boundaries of femininity and gender; while pop-star singers Madonna, Lady Gaga, Björk, Rihana, Nicki Minaj, Beth Ditto, and the ladies of Pussy Riot pushed still further the limits of attention-grabbing self-expression in their attire (or lack of it).Croll’s cast of characters is a large one—this is only a partial list—but one that she stage-manages adroitly. It’s also one that could have been considerably expanded; one notes, for example, the absence of such iconic, fashion trend-setters as Katherine Hepburn and pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart. Book designer Natalie Olsen has provided a stunning layout, one awash in bold colours, and illustrated with both photographs and original, caricature portraits by Polish illustrator Ada Buchholc. In this serious contribution to social history, the author neither shuns, nor sensationalizes, but treats lightly some of her subjects’ love affairs, marital infidelities, sexual preferences, and the role and influence of Lesbian fashions. These nonetheless mark this excellent book as one best suited to older, the publishers suggest ages 12+, and adult readers. Recommended for all public, high-school, and academic curriculum libraries, as well as specialized women’s studies collections.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill Distad Historian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.</jats:p
Food Atlas: Discover All the Delicious Foods of the World by G. Malerba
No full textMalerba, Giulia. Food Atlas: Discover All the Delicious Foods of the World, illustrated by Febe Sillani, translated by Sharon Morin. Firefly Books, 2017.This large and beautiful folio volume provides an agricultural and culinary tour of the world in the form of nearly fifty maps that cover six continents, Oceania, and fifty individual countries. The book ends with a two-page map of the world to illustrate the “food journeys” by which many familiar, staple foods were transplanted around the globe. Luca Mingolia’s maps, overlain with Febe Sillani’s hundreds of colourful illustrations, depict both the characteristic foods and ethnic dishes of each country and region. The coverage is extraordinarily comprehensive, ranging from Sweden’s repugnant-smelling Surströmming to the equally pungent Durians of southeast Asia, and from Egyptian Ful Medames to India’s Gulab Jamun.Although cast in the format of a book for older children, this fascinating volume is one from which older readers, including adults, may take pleasure and expand their culinary horizons.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadHistorian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.</jats:p
The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton\u27s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use, by Colin G.C. Tite
No full textBook Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador
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