Table of Contents
Book Reviews
The Day Sun Was Stolen.
- Jamie Oliviero. Illustrated by Sharon Hitchcock.
- Review by Jennifer Johnson.
- Grades Preschool - 4 / Ages 4 - 8.
- Cassandra's Driftwood.
- Budge Wilson. Illustrated by Terry Roscoe.
- Review by Jennifer Johnson.
- Grades 2 - 4 / Ages 7 - 10.
- Starting from Ameliasburgh:
-
The Collected Prose of Al Purdy.
- Al Purdy. Edited by Sam Solecki.
- Review by Joanne Peters.
- Grades 10 and Up / Ages 14 and Up.
- Reading, Writing and Language
(Second Edition).
- Robert and Marlene McCracken.
- Review by Gail Lennon.
- Professional: K - 3.
- Getting It All Together:
-
Curriculum Integration in the Transition Years.
- The Metropolitan Toronto School Board.
- Review by Gail Lennon.
- Professional: Grades 7 - 10.
- Ninety Fathoms Down:
-
Canadian Stories of the Great Lakes.
- Mark Bourrie.
- Review by Marsha Kaiserman.
- All ages.
Video Review
Round The Twist (Series 1):
Cabbage Patch Fib.
- Australian Childrens Television Foundation.
- Review by A. Edwardsson.
- Grades 7 - 9 / Ages 11 - 14.
Features
Notable Web Sites
- Collaborative Book Review Project
- The Great Canadian Trivia Contest
- The Little Math Puzzle
News
- The Digital Electronics Site: Call for Participation
- Newswave 96: Call for Participation
- Freedom to Read Week
From the Editor
Thanks!
Look, someone gives us an award, we're not too proud to mention it. Recently we
were selected by Toronto's Eye.Net magazine ("Canada's first print publication online") as first their site for the day, then their
site for the week. We have thus appropriated their catchy award graphics, below, and will
add the kind things they said:
Just when you, a parent, thought there was nothing on the
net but kooks, sex fiends, and that Toy Story web page,
comes CM magazine. This weekly, non-profit magazine
offers parents an archive of its published reviews of
books, videos, and CD-ROMS for kids.
Correction!
An editorial mistake (look, getting this out every week isn't easy!) inadvertently reversed
the meaning of part of Janie Wilkins's review of Behind the Story (Vol.II, No.14).
"The first paragraph was split into two, but the split
occured at the wrong place. It is the CANSCAIP Companion that is a
directory of the 260 members in the organization. Behind the Story
contains 22 biographies but does not act as a directory."
My apologies to Ms. Wilkins, and in one of the Orwellian benefits on-line publishing, the
archives will be altered to conform with her intent.
As always, if you have any comments, complaints, or questions, please get in touch at the address beneath my name.
-- Duncan Thornton, editor.
cmeditor@mts.net
Book Review
The Day Sun Was Stolen.
Jamie Oliviero. Illustrated by Sharon Hitchcock.
Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1995. 32Pp, cloth, $19.95.
ISBN: 1-895340-08-X.
Grades Preschool - 4 / Ages 4 - 8.
Review by Jennifer Johnson.
***/4
"When the world was new, Raven created all the animals."
So begins Oliviero's re-telling of a Haida folk-tale. In this tale
Raven is a creator rather than a trickster. He moulds clay to populate
the Earth, making a variety of creatures. The last is Bear, who sports a
coat "twice as thick and twice as furry as any other animal's."
Suffering from the heat of the Sun, Bear contrives to remove Sun from the
sky and imprison it in a cave. Through the intervention of a young boy
who tricks his way into Bear's cave and then shaves Bear, the Sun is
returned to the sky.
Using this Haida tale, Oliviero creates a story that explains life
processes such as hibernation and seasonal change. Into this is
interwoven a trickster tale that features a human who can change himself
into a fish. Raven is a creator here, but is powerless to remedy the loss
of the Sun. Instead he cries, his tears making the world "cold, gray and
rainy." It is left to Ts'ina dabju (Small Fish) to return the Sun
to the sky. This dual story makes the tale uneven. And in compressing of
the story to a picture-book format, some richness of repetition and
patterning is lost. The early, creation account feels rushed: although
there are two examples before Bear is moulded, the pattern is reduced to
"then he did the same things again."
The sudden appearance of humans into the story is unexpected and
unexplained, causing a shift in focus that may annoy or confuse young
listeners. The Day Sun Was Stolen might have been
clearer had it been written for a slightly older age group; the story
could have been expanded, and the mix of creation tale and magical
transformation worked in, rather than appearing as an afterword.
Haida artist Sharon Hitchcock uses gouache and acrylics to
illustrate this tale. A palette of slate grey, taupe, blues, and greens
within black outlines creates a flat, surreal world with minimal detail.
Her stylized designs reflect the tradition of Haida art, with totem poles
on end-papers and an expanded Raven figure bordering each double-page
illustration. Her animal and human characters have strong features. But
these would probably appeal more to an older child who is exploring
traditional folk-tales in picture-book format than to the pre-schooler.
Oliviero and Hitchcock have successfully created a re-telling based
on Haida folk-traditions, but a fuller text would have better served the
intermediate readers who enjoy the complexities of myth and legend.
The Day Sun Was Stolen is an optional purchase for
most general collections of folklore, but will be important to
specialized collections covering a full range of re-tellings and
pictorial interpretations, and of course, in West Coast collections for
children.
Recommended with reservations.
Jennifer Johnson works in Ottawa as a children's librarian.
Book Review
Cassandra's Driftwood.
Budge Wilson.
Illustrated by Terry Roscoe.
Lawrencetown Beach, NS: Pottersfield Press, 1994. 46pp, paper, $7.95.
ISBN: 0-9l9002-85-8.
Grades 2 - 4 / Ages 7 - 10.
Review by Jennifer Johnson.
**/4
excerpt:
Cassandra Westhaver lived in a small fishing village beside the sea. . .
. It was a beautiful place to live. The sun rose in the morning over the
sea and set in the evening behind the wooded hill to the west. The
fish-houses were painted many bright and happy colours. But Cassandra
couldn't always enjoy the sun and the sea and the thirty-six boats.
Sometimes she had too much on her mind to notice them. Even when she was
looking right at them. it was as though they weren't there. She was too
busy looking at what was going on inside her own head.
Cassandra is plagued by shyness. She hates her own timidity and hovers on
the edge of playground activities, wishing she could join in. In
particular, she wants to make friends with Lindy, a new girl in class.
Cassandra practises speaking up, for she has problems both at home and in
the classroom. She wants to stop taking piano lessons and she feels that
she can't see the chalkboard properly.
But her efforts are in vain until the day she claims an
elaborate piece of driftwood for her own. After soliciting her father's
help to secure the wood, Cassandra begins a blissful period of
make-believe in which "Alonzo" plays many parts. And Cassandra finds new
courage to speak out when the driftwood is carried away and added to a
bonfire pile on the beach. Her assertiveness leads her to confront the
teenaged picnickers, recover her treasure, make overtures of friendship
to Lindy, and drift off to sleep full of resolutions for the morrow.
Budge Wilson, an award-winning author for children, has created a
solitary, isolated child in Cassandra, who, through love of her driftwood
character, faces down her shyness and emerges strong-willed and
confident. Wilson who writes so eloquently and effectively in her short
stories for older readers, has narrowed her range for this book.
Pottersfield Press calls this a beginning chapter book "which will encourage
even reluctant readers to become involved in the life of Cassandra."
Unfortunately, the tailoring-down of Wilson's art isn't successful.
Although the writing is simple and direct, Wilson tries to cover too
many elements. Wilson describes Cassandra's feeling of isolation as
"being in a box with a lid," but she never really gets across why Cassandra
is so completely set apart. As a result, the proliferation of connected
difficulties -- Cassandra's distance from her peers; her vision problems;
her mother's indifference to Cassandra's pronouncement, "I'm with
Alonzo. I talk to him, and he takes the lid off my box"; and her father's
reaction when she asks him to salvage the driftwood ("sometimes I think
I'll never understand women") -- are hard to credit. And the resolution
of so many problems in a one sweep at the end is equally unrealistic.
Two other concerns with this book are the size and the
illustrations. The 15 X 23 cm. paperback format allows for an expanded
print area, but not for easy storage on paperback racks. Older children
who are still developing reading skills and who want "mature-looking"
paperbacks, will be put off.
The illustrations pose another problem. Terry Roscoe uses
black-and-white ink drawings that render background details with
beautiful accuracy, but her figures are not consistent. Cassandra is
difficult to place in age -- although she looms large in her fight with
the teenagers, she appears considerably smaller in another pivotal event,
her first talk with Lindy. And the snake shown in the school yard is
never part of the story; a quibble to be sure, but distracting.
Not recommended.
Jennifer Johnson is a children's librarian in Ottawa.
Book Review
Starting from Ameliasburgh:
The Collected Prose of Al Purdy.
Al Purdy. Edited by Sam Solecki.
Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 1995. 399pp, cloth, $39.95.
ISBN: 1-55017-127-5.
Grades 10 and Up / Ages 14 and Up.
Review by Joanne Peters.
***/4
excerpt:
My first reaction to this book is surprise. In my earliest days, I
never expected such a book to be published, and now that it is I still
feel surprised. And I don't want to go back in time and read the reviews
I wrote long ago; let them stand as they were written. . . . The reasons
I wrote reviews in the first place are more interesting to me. Obviously
a writer writes. Long ago I was eager to get into print to comment on
those authors who interested me, and some in whom I was not very
interested. I said some things I thought were necessary to say; I
indulged my enthusiasms and strictures; I tried to "call them as I saw
them". . . . The travel articles, the other pieces I wrote for money or
for love, that's something else. It was wonderful to go to those various
other countries and the strange unknown places in my own country, to feel
those things and then say them and feel them all over again.
Al Purdy is best known as a poet, but the strength and concreteness of
his poetry emerge strongly in this collection of nearly forty years of
reviews, essays, travel pieces, and anecdotes.
The book is divided into two parts: Part I, "No Other Country" is a
series of essays on Canada and other places, while Part II, "The Writing
Life" contains Purdy's interviews with, and reviews or memoirs of other
Canadian writers and their work. As the above excerpt suggests, it is in the
travel pieces that Purdy's spirit and passion for Canada resonates and
brings vitality to his prose. By comparison "The Writing Life," though
not bloodless, lacks the same verve. And "Poetry Chronicle, 1958-1990"
is most engaging when Purdy talks about fellow writers, their strengths,
weaknesses, and idiosyncracies.
Starting from Ameliasburgh provides an important
window on an aspect of Purdy's career which many of his readers will be
largely unaware of. And the essays are often exemplars of strong,
concrete writing. But in many ways, it is not a compelling or gripping
collection; somehow, the power of Purdy's travel pieces is missing in the
literary reviews.
Recommended for libraries with a strong focus on Canadian
literature and culture.
Joanne Peters is a Teacher-Librarian at Kelvin High School in
Winnipeg.
Book Review
Reading, Writing and Language
(Second Edition).
Robert and Marlene McCracken.
Winnipeg: Peguis Publishers, 1995. 295pp, paper, $17.00.
ISBN: 1-895411-70-X.
Professional: K - 3.
Review by Gail Lennon.
***/4
The McCrackens have used the ten years of experience they have gained since
the appearance of the first edition of this book to update its ideas and
materials and add examples of new work from students.
The authors have included an invaluable thematic chapter, a thorough
bibliography of children's books, and a brief but good bibliography of
professional readings.
Marlene and Robert McCracken are eminently qualified to write about
the reading and writing process. Since 1950, they have worked as a
consulting team throughout North America and Europe. They have been
instrumental in instituting holistic teaching programs that integrate
thinking, concept development, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Their names are synonymous with the Whole Language approach.
Like the first edition of Reading, Writing and
Language, this updated volume should be a text for every graduate
and undergraduate primary education and reading/language course. It is a
"must have" for every primary educator.
Through well-chosen examples and well-developed text, the authors
deal with questions concerning early language acquisition, teaching, and
learning within the primary classroom day.
My only reservations about this excellent book are that the type is
a little small and the binding would have been more practical if it had
been loose-leaf notebook style.
Highly recommended.
Gail Lennon is a secondary resource teacher with the Bruce County
Board of Education. In her thirty years of teaching in both rural and
urban settings, she has taught every grade from JK to Adult Education in
elementary, secondary, and university academic locations. She has
specialist qualifications in Library, ESL, Primary, Junior, Intermediate,
Senior, and Special Education. Ms. Lennon is a keynote speaker, author, and
workshop leader who has reviewed for CM for the past seven years.
Book Review
Getting It All Together:
Curriculum Integration in the Transition Years.
The Metropolitan Toronto School Board.
Markham, ON: Pembroke Publishers, 1995. 128pp, paper, $18.95.
ISBN: 1-551-138-059-5.
Professional: Grades 7 - 10.
Review by Gail Lennon.
***/4
This practical look at integration was very much in demand with the onset
of de-streaming two years ago. While its investigation of integration is
thorough and easy for the uninitiated teacher to read, it is somewhat
dated by the fact that integration projects have been going on in
secondary schools throughout the province during that time. It
remains, however, an excellent introduction to integration for the
intermediate grades.
Writers Bob Aitken, Debbie Fishman, Manon Gardner, Sue Ladoucer, and
Janet Phillips prepared this book for the Toronto Board of Education
during the de-streaming years (1993-1995). They are teachers/consultants
with the Metro Board in the Transitions Years area.
Getting It All Together provides teachers who have
reservations about how to integrate curriculum with excellent starting
ideas. This practical guide to curriculum integration in grade seven to
ten classrooms provides sample unit outlines for each of three models of
integration. The final chapter also provides useful suggestions and
example outlines for teacher observation, tracking, and evaluation;
conferencing; self, peer, and group evaluation; and finally, reporting to
parents.
I would highly recommend this book to teachers who are starting to
integrate curriculum. Those already experienced in integration will find
this book too simplistic for their purposes.
Recommended.
Gail Lennon is a secondary resource teacher with the Bruce County
Board of Education. In her thirty years of teaching in both rural and
urban settings, she has taught every grade from JK to Adult Education in
elementary, secondary, and university academic locations. She has
specialist qualifications in Library, ESL, Primary, Junior, Intermediate,
Senior, and Special Education. Ms. Lennon is a keynote speaker, author, and
workshop leader who has reviewed for CM for the past seven years.
Book Review
Ninety Fathoms Down:
Canadian Stories of the Great Lakes.
Mark Bourrie.
Toronto, Hounslow Press, 1995. 208pp, paper, $17.99.
ISBN: 0-88882-182-4.
All ages.
Review by Marsha Kaiserman.
**1/2 /4
excerpt:
The Great Storm of 1913 had just about every kind of powerful
atmospheric element known to the Great Lakes region: blinding rain, hail,
sleet, snow, hurricane winds. Some of the lowest barometric pressures in
the history of Canadian meteorology were recorded in the midst of the
storm but most barometers in the worst of it ended up on the bottom of
the Great Lakes. At the time it raged, nobody had any idea of its
severity. Communications between the cities of the Great Lakes were
knocked out on the first day of the storm. Bits of news made it through
by telegraph, when messages were rerouted on lines away from the main
blast of the storm, but not enough information got through for people to
understand the storm's power. No one, especially along Lake Superior and
in southwestern Ontario, needed news reports to realize they were in the
middle of a disaster.
The passage above describes the worst single disaster on the Great lakes
when at least forty ships were sunk and 248 sailors lost their lives.
Included in the losses were the James Carruthers, one of the
largest freighters on the Great Lakes, on her third voyage. Another ship,
the lake freighter Matao, beached three hundred meters from shore
and would require more than a year to refloat on Lake Huron.
To those of us who have not lived on the shores of the Great Lakes
it is hard to imagine the fury that can suddenly occur during the fall.
Indeed, even for those of us who have, it is hard to imagine what the
sailors on these lakes must face. Most of us are familiar with the wreck
of the Edmund Fitzgerald but how many of us have heard about the
Inkerman and the Cerisoles, two French minesweepers that
disappeared without a trace into Lake Superior on their maiden voyage in
November 1919? Or the Noronic, last of the Great Lake luxury
liners, which burnt on the night of September 17, 1949 in Toronto Harbour
at the cost of 118 lives?
The Great Lakes have been an important part of both Canadian and
American history from their first discovery by the Europeans in the early
1600s. From the fur trade battles to the War of 1812, from the immigrant
ships to the era of the great freighters, author Mark Bourrie has a rich
legacy to choose from and he has chosen well. He also tells the tale of a
real mutiny -- the story of the Marquette and Bessemer No. 2, a
coal-car freighter on Lake Erie. There is even a story of espionage and
hijacking from the U.S. Civil War.
Mark Bourrie is a newspaper correspondent with experience in a wide
range of subjects. He has a B.A. in history, but Ninety Fathoms
Down is rarely academic; it reads like a series of newspaper
feature articles about various incidents and disasters on the Great
Lakes. This is even more evident in the skimpy bibliography provided.
While this is not a scholarly book, it makes for some exciting and
interesting reading. Given the general lack of interest in Canadian
history, I don't think we can ask for much more.
Ninety Fathoms Down is for anyone, including children,
interested in learning more about their history, especially the history
of the Great Lakes.
Highly recommended.
Marsha Kaiserman is Head of Conferences Cataloguing at Canada Institute
for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) in Ottawa.
Video Review
Round The Twist (Series 1):
Cabbage Patch Fib.
Australian Childrens Television Foundation, 1989. 24 minutes, VHS, $79.95
each of 13 episodes.
Distributed by T.H.A. Media Distributors Ltd.
1 (800) 661-4919.
Grades 7 - 9 / Ages 11 - 14.
Review by A.Edwardsson.
*/4
The Round the Twist TV series was developed from short
stories by one of Australia's most popular children's authors, Paul
Jennings. (Penguin Books Canada has recently published the stories of
Paul Jennings in print form.) Each episode is self-contained and has a
surprising twist at the end.
The sample episode, "Cabbage Patch Fib," has several problems. The
series focuses on the lives of the members of a single-parent family
living on the coast. Bronson, aged seven or eight, is the star of this
episode.
"Cabbage Patch Fib" refers to the lie Bronson's brother tells him
about where babies come from. Bronson asks his distracted Dad if this is
true, and he agrees. The boy goes out at night followed by his bemused
brother to check their cabbage patch. Surprise -- he finds a green baby
lying under some leaves.
The baby is only happy when Bronson is holding him. When his brother
takes it in his arms, the baby holds its breath and turns blue. The same
thing happens when anyone else tries to hold it. The family keeps the
green infant, and enjoys the media circus.
Soon, however, the novelty wears off and everyone is yelling at
Bronson to tend the baby. He has to take it to school, and finds he can't
play with his friends at breaks because he has to feed it. In class,
everyone complains when the stinky "nappies" need changing.
One night, he decides enough is enough and creeps out to return the
baby to the cabbage patch. He leaves it under the leaves and stands by
the garden fence watching it turn blue. His brother and sister rush in
imploring Bronson to help them as they try to revive the infant with
mouth-to-mouth respiration. Finally, Bronson relents and they put the
baby into his arms, where it turns back to its normal green colour.
Then comes the twist: suddenly, one of the cabbages begins to shake
and then grow. When it is spaceship-sized, a leaf opens and a green mother
rushes out. She seizes her baby from Bronson, scolding him in a foreign
language (followed by green media people with microphones and video
recorders). They return to the cabbage, which shrinks back to normal size
as a tearful Bronson waves and says "Good-bye son."
The next day the family digs up all the cabbages in the garden. The
elder kids tell the Dad to explain the facts of life to Bronson. Later,
his sister sees the youngster dragging a ladder, and asks him what's up.
He responds that he's going to block the chimney so a stork can't nest
there. "It's called BIRD CONTROL" (ha, ha).
There are some disturbing aspects to this story. No one investigates
the child's sudden appearance, and the media uproar is unbelievably
short-lived. While fishing with his siblings, Bronson is annoyed when
he's interrupted by the screaming infant. He leans over the basinet and
warns the baby "I'll give you something to cry about." And after dumping
it back in the garden, he watches, stone-faced, while the baby appears to
die.
The story is weak, and so are the special effects. The same shot is
replayed each time the baby "turns blue." (It appears to hold its
breath, then freezes and a blue light shines on its face.) The green
mother appears to be wearing a wrap-around towel. Viewers would have to
know the facts of life to get the "jokes," and if so, it's doubtful
they'll be entertained by the trials of eight-year-old Bronson.
The sound quality and pacing are fine, but the colour is a bit
washed out. There are a variety of shots indoors and outside.
Although it's essentially harmless, this video isn't recommended for
school or library purchase,
Not recommended.
A. Edwardsson is in charge of the Children's Department at a branch of
the Winnipeg Public Library. She has a Bachelor of Education degree and a
Child Care Worker III certification, and is a member of the Manitoba
branch of the Canadian Authors' Association.
Feature
Notable Web
Sites
Every week, CM presents a brief collection of
noteworthy, useful, or just interesting sites we've turned up and actually
checked.Please send us URLs and evaluations of any web-sites you think
deserve the exposure.
- CyberKids
- http://www.cyberkids.c
om/CyberKidsIssues.html
- CyberKids is a magazine put out by Mountain Lake Software. So there
are a lot of little commercial hooks, but they don't try to hide it, and,
hey, we live in the late 20th century. Anyway, the magazine has reviews,
articles, and stories written by actual kids, and will take submissions.
For the older students there is the similar CyberTeens: http://www.mtlake.com/cyberteens/
- OWLKids Online
- http://www.owl.on.ca/
- All right, launch date for this site is the same day this issue gets
published, so we haven't actually seen the finished product, but this
site from Owl Communications, the publishers of Owl Books, OWL,
Chickadee, and Tree House family magazines, and the
producers of Owl Television ought to be good. The countdown page promises "To take you
into a cool world of science, nature, and totally radical stuff!"
Totally radical stuff. Hey, at CM we're hip to the kids'
crazy lingo too.
- LEGO Information
- http://legowww.homepages.com/
- Usually we forget about the things we were going to do when we grew
up, like eat an entire batch of cookie batter. Or ,
more to the point, building an actual working car out of
LEGO. That and lots more information and pictures about all
things LEGO.
- AskERIC
- http://ericir.syr.edu
- Recently recognised as "the best
professional education site on the Internet by Global Network Navigator
(GNN), publisher of The Whole Internet Catalog," the AskERIC site includes
lesson plans, plenty of good links, and the AskEric service:
"Teachers, library media specialists, administrators, and others
involved in education can send a message requesting
education information to AskERIC. AskERIC information specialists,
drawing on the vast resources and expertise of the
ERIC System, will respond within 48 hours with ERIC database searches,
ERIC Digests, and Internet resources."
- Chinese Historical & Cultural Project Curriculum
- http://www.kqed
.org/fromKQED/Cell/golden/glmenu.html
- A little late for New Year's, but:
The lessons cover the Chinese Lunar Calendar (ideal resource for New Year
activities), the Abacus (a fun addition to the math class) Folktales and
Games, Puppetry, Agriculture, Railroad Building and Writing, and there's
even a lesson entitled "Bound Feet" which encourages students to compare
our current fashions trends to those of the past.
(From the NET-HAPPENINGS list.)
-
CM
Editor
Duncan Thornton
e-mail: cmeditor@mts.net
-
CM
Executive Assistant
Peter Tittenberger
e-mail: cm@umanitoba.ca
Copyright © 1996 the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
WELCOME | BOOK REVIEWS BY AUTHOR | BOOK REVIEWS BY TITLE
AUDIO/VIDEO/CD-ROM REVIEWS | VOLUME II INDEX