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A jazz cat can't wait to get home from work and cut loose.

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Two travelers undertake the construction of a gigantic bridge in order to cross a gulf blocking their way, inspiring with their courage and determination a rural community living nearby.

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It’s in the grip of North American winter that I often dream of escape to warmer climates. Thanks to the WordPress.com Reader and the street photography tag, I can satisfy my travel yen whenever it strikes. Here are just some of the amazing photos and photographers I stumbled upon during a recent armchair trip.

My first stop was Alexis Pazoumian’s fantastic SERIES: India at The Sundial Review. I loved the bold colors in this portrait and the man’s thoughtful expression.

Speaking of expressions, the lead dog in Holly’s photo from Maslin Nude Beach, in Adelaide, Australia, almost looks as though it’s smiling. See more of Holly’s work at REDTERRAIN.

In a slightly different form of care-free, we have the muddy hands of Elina Eriksson‘s son in Zambia. I love how his small hands frame his face. The gentle focus on his face and the light in the background evoke warm summer afternoons at play.

Heading to Istanbul, check out Jeremy Witteveen‘s fun shot of this clarinetist. Whenever I see musicians, I can’t help but wonder about the song they’re playing.

Pitoyo Susanto‘s lovely portrait of the flower seller, in Pasar Beringharjo, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, captivated me. Aren’t her eyes and her gentle smile things of beauty?

Arresting in a slightly different fashion is Rob Moses‘ Ski Hill Selfie, taken in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The juxtaposition of the bold colors and patterns in the foreground against the white snow in the background caught my eye.

Further under the category of fun juxtaposition, is Liu Tao’s photo of the elderly man in Hafei, China, whose fan reminds me of a punk rock mohawk.

From Hafei, we go to Havana, Cuba, and Edith Levy‘s beautifully ethereal Edificio Elena. I found the soft pastels and gentle shadows particularly pleasing. They lend a distinctly feminine quality to the building.

And finally, under the category of beautiful, is Aneek Mustafa Anwar‘s portrait, taken in Shakhari Bazar, Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. The boy’s shy smile is a wonderful representation of the word on his shirt.

Where do you find photographic inspiration? Take a moment to share your favorite photography blogs in the comments.

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Kevin took this picture while we were waiting to board our cruise ship in Vancouver, Canada in October 2013. We were cruising to Alaska. And though I had to talk Kevin into this cruise it actually ended up being the best cruise we’ve been on so far. (And judging by my flushed cheeks, I was having a hot flash).

Filed under: Photos, Remember When ...

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In A Bear in War, a young girl named Aileen Rogers sends her beloved teddy bear to her father, a medic in Europe with the Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles during World War I, in the hope that it would keep him safe from harm.  Unfortunately, Aileen's father didn't return home, dying on the battlefield, but Teddy did.

Now, it is 1940, the world is at war again and England has decided to send as many children as possible to Canada to keep them safe.  Aileen Rogers is all grown up, working as a homefront nurse, whose present job is excorting the English children to their wartime foster homes.  And yes, she still has Teddy, carrying him in her pocket in hope that seeing him will help the children feel less afraid.

As a ship arrives, Teddy notices that two small children, Grace and younger brother William, 5, look particularly lost and afraid.  With a long ocean voyage behind them and now facing a long train ride across Canada, Aileen and Teddy take them under their wing.  William is allowed to keep Teddy when they arrive at their destination.  And so, for the rest of the war, Grace, Teddy and Wiliam live on a farm, helping their host family and keeping in touch with the parents by post.

The war lasted five years, and by the end, William was 10 years old.  Grace and William return to England and their parents, and Teddy is returned to Aileen.

This lovely, gentle story about separation is narrated by Teddy, an old hand at being away from Aileen, and so someone who really understands the feelings of loneliness and anxiety that William feels at being so far away from his mom and dad.  Sometimes, just having a warm and furry toy is enough to provide just the right amount of reassurance needed to get through something difficult.

Along with and complimenting Teddy's narration are beautiful, realistic oil paintings by Brian Deines.  These illustrations are the same softness to them that Teddy's words offer.

Author Stephanie Innes created A Bear in War and Bear on the Homefront used family memorabilia, including letters, photographs, Aileen's journal and, of course, Teddy.  Teddy was donated to the Canadian War Museum.  You can hear about it in the short video below (after the annoying ad).
This book is recommended for readers age 6+
This book was purchased for my personal library

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The Canadian animation scene became more consolidated today with the news that Halifax-based DHX Media will buy Vancouver-based animation studio Nerd Corps Entertainment for a cash-and-stock deal worth CAD$57 million.

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Blok Design created this spirited campaign for Lucky 21, a film production company based in Dallas and LA. . Tapping into the company’s humor and passion, Blok crafted an identity system that is bold, yet still allows the brand’s playful voice to shine.

 

 

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When I start reading a book and the protagonist is a doctor recovering from a nervous breakdown, and he comes to a small town and settles down to practice small town medicine incognito and becomes interested in the daughter of the previous town doctor, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what I’m getting. In the case of Up the Hill and Over, by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, I was very wrong.

It’s hart to talk about how I was wrong without giving away a couple of twists–twists that I did see coming, but not far enough ahead that I didn’t have to change my mind about what kind of book I though I was reading a couple of times. There are three specific things that complicate the narrative I expected. One of them was insanity, and I want to talk about that. The other two are a little spoilery, and I’ll mention them without giving details.

So, one of the characters, Aunt Amy, is introduced as being a little odd, and having strange fancies about things. You learn about her mental issues slowly, so at first it just seems like she’s perfectly sensible, if a little eccentric. Then you get more specific information: she believes that the sprigged tea set doesn’t like being touched by anyone but her, and that someone she refers to as “Them” is out to get her. The cause of her problems–her fiancé dying on the eve of their wedding–is typical of insane women in novels, but the details of her beliefs and their effects are so much more specific. I mean, when you’ve got a secret insane wife or something in, say, a Mary Jane Holmes novel, madness is a permanent change in state, a fundamental attribute of the character. There was a time when the woman was not mad, but now she is, and the only change possible going forward is her death.

It’s not like that with Aunt Amy. Actually, another character ends up fitting into that trope much more closely. Amy’s madness is a permanent state, but not…I guess the word I want here is homogeneous. I mean, it’s not just that she’s better at some times and worse at others. Her madness is multifaceted, and doesn’t make her any less of an agent. The development of Amy’s illness, or the depiction of it, is such that you move through being sorry for her to being scared for her to being scared for the people around her, and it’s just…really interesting. For early 20th century popular fiction, it’s very psychologically complex. There’s a fairly modern depiction of drug addiction, too, and while the, uh, legal complication that you’re probably going to suspect pretty early on is exactly what it looks like, there’s surprisingly little moralizing wrapped up in it.

I was never, at any moment, in love with this book or with any of the characters, so there were a few places where I didn’t get the emotional punch I needed to make certain plot developments work for me. At least, that’s how I’m explaining to myself the fact that bits that I didn’t think should have felt melodramatic did. I kept a little bit of an emotional distance from the book throughout, and not by choice. But I also stayed absorbed in it the entire time, and could barely put it down, and while there were bits that felt like too much, for the most part it just kept getting more and more interesting until the end. I expected a much more cheerful book when I started, but I wasn’t disappointed by any means.

 

Tagged: 1910s, canada, isabelecclestonemackay

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It's 1943 and Robert Tourand, 15, misses and worries about his three older brothers who are off fighting in Europe with the Canadian armed forces.   So when he finds a small piece of a meteorite, it becomes a kind of magical charm for him.  Thanks to it, Robert soon, he begins to see and believe a cosmic connection between what his brother write about from the front line in their letters, and the heroes in the comic books he obsessed with.

And so, he pairs brother to comic according the their parallel experiences: favorite brother Patrick is assigned The Maple Leaf Kid, brother James and Sedna of the Sea go together because James could use her wisdom, brother George, a pilot, is paired with flying ace Captain Ice.  Their assignment: to keep his brother's safe.

It all works nicely until his mother finds a pair of torn pants and decides Robert need to be taught a lesson.  Now, she decides, his weekly allowance, his only means of buying the newest editions of the comic book that contain secret messages about his brothers, would be better spent on war stamps.  Now, Robert needs to figure out a new way to make sure he can buy his three favorite comics every month.

And it seems that ever since his found his magical piece of the universe, luck has been with him.  When his teacher announces that the student who collects the most fat for the war effort will win four completely filled books of war stamps, valued at $4.00, Robert thinks he's found the answer to funding his comic addiction.  But despite his best efforts, he didn't expect such stiff competition from Crazy Charlie (Charlene) Donnelly, a girl as much on a mission as Robert.

So, when fat collection doesn't yield the needed money, Robert decides to take a job as a telegram delivery boy.  Trouble is, Crazy Charlie has the same idea.  They are both hired, and as more and more telegrams need to be delivered, Charlie seems to be able to get around Calgary some much faster than Robert on her dilipated second hand bike compared to his sleek newish Raleigh.  Robert is so busy thinking about his comic books, he never bothers to ask Charlie about herself.  Nor does he think about what is in the telegrams he is delivering, until one arrives at his house in Charlie's hands.

At first, I didn't much care for The Comic Book War.  I found Robert to be a very unappealing character, too focused on himself and completely lacking in empathy for anyone else.  Ironically, Robert and Charlie are both loners, outsiders that could have been friends from the start, if Robert had been able to see beyond himself.  But as I continued to read, I began to see Robert in a different light, as a person who could actually have some compassion for the recipients of the telegrams he was delivering.

I also thought that Robert was a little too old to be so obsessed with comic books, even for the WWII time frame.  But this is, after all, a coming of age novel.  I began to think about how kids will use all kinds of ways to cope with fear, loss and trauma.  Robert keeps his fear about his brothers (and about growing up) from overwhelming him using magical thinking (always a good defense mechanism) that his comic book heroes will keep his brothers (and him) safe.

Charlie, who was much more in touch with reality, was a good contrast to Robert, despite her own problems in life.  I would have actually liked to have read more about Charlie, who is a story in her own right.

It is always interesting to find a Canadian story about kids in WWII because they have such a distinct perspective.  Canada was still part of the British Commonwealth in 1939, and even though it declared war on the Axis powers independently of Britain, it sent troops overseas to fight with the British Expeditionary Forces and the RAF.

Two nit-picky things did bother me.  Kids did not carry their school books to school in backpacks back them.  They used school bags or carried them in their arms.  And I did wonder about why lights were left on so freely at night.  I thought all of Canada had blackout precautions during the war.  But I could be wrong on these.

This book is recommended for readers age 11+
This book was received from the publisher

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Hi everyone!

I am so sorry to have missed not only two days of reviews, but also replying to your wonderful comments. My new–less than a year old–laptop died, or at least it looks that way. While doing a restart, it twirled its little blue circle for close to fifteen minutes (it is solid state and should start and restart faster than you can clap your hands and say, “Abracadabra), and then it went black. It was still on, is still on, but the screen remains black and the machine silent. So off to the manufacturer, or wherever Best Buy sends computers they cannot fix in-house, for a nice one to two month vacation. Hopefully it will return refreshed and ready to get back to work. If not, well, I’ll worry about that if it happens.

So, if you visit Kid Lit Reviews and find the review is the same as the day before, I took a day off. If a review hangs around the Homepage for two or more days, a computer crisis has occurred and I will be back as soon as possible. The laptop I am using now is the one that breaks down more now than then, and the current ill machine was to have replaced. I am beginning to think CPU’s do not like me. Enough of that. Let’s move on to today’s review. The little girl, named Gabe, does not like the number on her jersey. What will the determined nine-year-old do about her situation?

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The Highest Number in the World

written by Roy MacGregor

illustrated by Geneviève Després

Tundra Books of Northern New York      2/11/2014

978-1-77049-575-3

Age 4 to 8           32 pages

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“Nine-year-old Gabe (DON’T call her Gabriella), Murray eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. Her lucky number is 22, the same number as her hero, Hayley Wickenheiser. But when hew new coach hands out the team jerseys, Gabe is stuck with number 9. She’s crushed. How can she play without her lucky number? Gabe’s grandmother, Gabriella (DON’T call her Gabe), soon sets her straight. The number 9 has a long and interesting history and little Gabe has to lots to learn about the players who wore it—including Gabriella herself. Gabe begins to see that the number 9 isn’t so bad after all . . . “

Opening

“Today, Gabe had made The Spirit, the best hockey team in town.”

About

Nine-year-old Gabe is the only nine-year-old on The Spirit team. Some would say this is quite an accomplishment, but not if they knew Gabe. Gabe loves hockey. She even has a tricky puck move called “The Gabe.” Her lucky number, the number she always wears, is number 22, the same number as Hayley Wickenheiser, a Canadian women’s hockey legend and Olympic hero. This is also the source of Gabe’s problem. She is assigned jersey number 9, not 22. She can’t play as number 9. She won’t play as number 9. So Gabe hides the number 9 jersey, never to be seen again. The Spirit’s first game is tomorrow. Gabe announced she is not playing.

Review

Gabe knows hockey better than most. She loves hockey and is ecstatic about making The Spirit team. She should be ecstatic. Gabe is nine while everyone else is ten. This is really a big deal. Gabe assumed she would get jersey number 22 because she has always played in jersey number 22. Gabe even has a practice jersey with that number, which she wore during the team try-outs. The other players jokingly call her “Hayley.” So how could the coach not understand that Gabe wanted, no, needed number 22? Getting jersey number 9 is a deal-breaker. Gabe cannot play in “the worst number in the world.”

I understand Gabe. My number was always 14. I do not think I could have played, at least not well, in any other number. Deciding not to play is rather harsh, especially for someone who lives and breathes hockey. I feel for Gabe. What I really like about this story is Grandma’s role. She shows Gabe a picture from her own hockey days. Back then, she said, number 9 was the lucky number. The best player on every team from peewee to the NHL wore number 9, including Grandma Gabriella. Her own story is the best part of The Highest Number in the World.

Kids who love hockey, especially girls, will love The Highest Number in the World. Those that love sports in general, will like this story. I am sure there are many players out there, be it hockey, baseball, basketball, or any other sport, that can relate to Gabe’s dilemma. As a bonus, the jacket flips into a poster of young Gabe in full gear. The illustrations are terrific from vignettes to spreads. I love spread number 3. Gabe is signing her name and the number 22 on the foggy winter window, practicing her autograph. But the final page holds the best illustration. In gouache is Gabriella, young and old, hand-in-hand, in uniform and on skates, each wearing jersey number 9—the lucky jersey. There is nothing else there, yet one can picture a number 9 jersey raising up to the rafters, immortalizing one name for two great players—“Gabriella.”

THE HIGHEST NUMBER IN THE WORLD. Text copyright © 2014 by Roy MacGregor. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Geneviève Després. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Tundra Books of Northern New York, Plattsburgh, NY.

Purchase The Highest Number in the World at Amazon—B&N—Book Depository—Random House of Canada—Indigo—Tundra Books—your favorite bookstore.

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Learn more about The Highest Number in the World HERE.

Meet the author, Roy MacGregor, at his website:    http://www.roymacgregor.com/

Meet the illustrator, Geneviève Després, at her website:   http://www.genevievedespres.ca/

Find other great books at the Tundra Books website:   http://www.tundrabooks.com/

Distributed by Random House of Canada:   http://www.randomhouse.ca/

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Also by Roy MacGregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also by Geneviève Després

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Filed under: 5stars, Children's Books, Favorites, Library Donated Books, Picture Book Tagged: Bobby Hull, Canada, children's book reviews, Geneviève Després, Gordie Howe, hockey, picture books, Roy MacGregor, The Highest Number in the World, Tundra Books of Northern New York

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A man takes the subway. Inside his brain, a countdown clock hits zero and a little person prepares for lift-off. The man sneezes.

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I really admire this stationery system created by Anthony Hooper and the in-house design team at Inventory. Its sophistication and attention to detail wonderfully reflects the values instilled in the magazine.

 

 

 

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To commemorate the National Film Board of Canada's 75th anniversary, Canada Post released a set of five stamps this month that celebrate the government-run studio's films.

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Monday, 19 May is Victoria Day in Canada, which celebrates the 195th birthday of Queen Victoria on 24 May 1819. In June 1837, at the age of 18, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as the Empire was called then.

Queen Victoria would reign for more than 63 years, longer than any other British Monarch to date. The Victorian Era, as it came to be known, was a time of expansion of the British Empire, as well as modernization and innovation following the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century.

To celebrate Victoria Day, we’ve chosen a few of her most famous quotations to illustrate her life and legacy.

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”
–Queen Victoria, letter to Theodore Martin, 29 May 1870. From Oxford Essential Quotations.

“What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I can not enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”
–Queen Victoria, letter to the Princess Royal, 15 June 1858. From Oxford Essential Quotations.

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed), edited by Susan Ratcliffe, was published in October 2012. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (7th ed), edited by Elizabeth Knowles, was published in 2009 to celebrate its 70th year.

Oxford Reference is the home of reference publishing at Oxford. With over 16,000 photographs, maps, tables, diagrams and a quick and speedy search, Oxford Reference saves you time while enhancing and complementing your work.

Images: 1. Queen Victoria in her Coronation Robes by George Hayter. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2. Portrait of Queen Victoria, 1843 by Sir Francis Grant. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert engraved by S Reynolds after F Lock. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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 So, my eldest child, aka Dino-Boy, trotted off to Canada back in December to work with wildlife, and in exchange reports came back via Skype on Sundays – his day off. Daily life seemed to be along the lines of: prepared the feeds, cleaned out the cages, mended a fence, went to town to fetch the donated food, ate stir-fry.

Halo - turning blacker as she sheds her winter coat

Tracy Alexander
www.tmalexander.com

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Animated Fragments is our semi-regular feature of animation tests, experiments, micro-shorts, and other bits of cartoon flotsam that doesn't fit into other categories. To view the previous 25 installments, go to the Fragments archive.

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Animation is overtaking the streets of downtown Montreal’s entertainment district, the Quartier des Spectacles, and various cities in Scotland in honor of Norman McLaren's centennial.

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An ‘Anijam’ is a collaborative animation where various artists create individual short animated segments that are linked together to make one larger film. For the first time in Canadian history, 15 of Canada’s most acclaimed independent animators have come together to create a collaborative animated film. "Yellow Sticky Notes: Canadian Anijam" is an innovative and global approach to animation filmmaking and unites animators from coast to coast, from Vancouver to Halifax and all parts in between, to self reflect on one day of their lives using only 4x6 inch yellow sticky notes, a black pen and animation meditation.

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I have admired Marie Lafrance’s illustrations for French and English picture books for well over a decade. When another Canadian friend, Monica Kulling, author of THE TWEEDLES GO ELECTRIC, asked her publisher to send me a review copy of this … Continue reading →

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Maggie Steele, the storybook heroine who vaults over the moon, has been attracting thousands of visitors from around the world. So many visitors, in fact, that she’s using a time zone map to keep track of them all.* People are … Continue reading →

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General consensus seemed to be that, after The Blue Castle, Jane of Lantern Hill was the best L.M. Montgomery book. So, when I detached myself from the internet yesterday and had a mini reading spree, it was the first thing I read. I mean, after I finished the Nero Wolfe book I was in the middle of.

I’m sorry I’m late to the L.M. Montgomery party, but I’m not sorry I’m getting to read these books for the first time now. There are children’s books that I’ve read as an adult and wished I had read as a kid, but Jane of Lantern Hill isn’t one of them. Yes, reading it at the appropriate age would have been a very different experience, but I don’t think it would have necessarily been a better one; I have so much more context for things now. This is just me trying to rationalize, though. Mostly I can’t imagine enjoying Jane of Lantern Hill more when I was a kid than I did yesterday.

The setup is strikingly similar to that of The Blue Castle — the unhappy girl living in a strict, female-dominated household whose only escape is via her imagination, the awful aunts and uncles and the privileged cousin, etc. But Jane is a kid, and her family includes some non-awful people: her mother and father, who are estranged. Jane and her mother live with Jane’s grandmother, who basically hates everyone but Jane’s mother, and takes active pleasure in making Jane’s life miserable.

This is abuse. Her grandmother uses everything Jane does to reinforce a narrative where Jane is useless and terrible at everything and has “low tastes.” Anything that Jane does well or likes to do is either ignored or food for further criticism. Every nice thing that her grandmother gives is is secretly meant to make her unhappy. And Jane responds, as people being abused often do, by becoming bad at all of the things she’s told she’s bad at. It’s pretty uncomfortable reading.

But this is a mostly cheerful children’s book, and so there’s something irrepressibly humorous and interested in Jane that her grandmother can’t kill, and she gets to exercise those faculties when she goes away to spend the summer with her father on Prince Edward Island.

Jane’s first summer with her father is almost too perfect. They instinctively get each other, in a way that was enough like an idealized version of my relationship with my father that it almost made me uncomfortable. But only almost. What’s great about this section, though, is Jane’s confidence. Free of her grandmother’s influence, she knows she’s capable of doing all sorts of things. It’s interesting that so many of those things are in the areas of cooking and housekeeping — things her grandmother never repeatedly told Jane was awful at because she never allowed her to try them in the first place.

Even better is the fact that Jane takes some of that confidence back home with her at the end of the summer. And yes, she stands up for herself a little more, but my favorite thing is that her knowledge that she’s a capable person sticks with her and allows her to continue to be a capable person, doing better in school and becoming less clumsy. It’s great.

So, yeah, this book was so good for me in so many ways. I didn’t love the ending as much as I loved the rest, but I also don’t see how else Montgomery could have sorted things out, so I don’t really want to complain.

When I was finished with Jane of Lantern Hill I went on reading people’s recommendations/things I’ve waited for too long to read. Next up: The Adventure of Princess Sylvia, because I got mixed up and didn’t remember I was supposed to read Princess Virginia instead.

Tagged: 1930s, canada, lmmontgomery

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Face. is an international design agency with a global perspective and a focus on branding. Founded in 2006, Face. has already created some impressive designs that showcase their modernist flair. Although many of their pieces are done in a straightforward style, they keep it fresh with fun color palettes and intriguing typography.  Having already created multiple offices across North America in their short life span, keep an eye on Face. for their next move.

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Featured Book: Irving Harper: Works in Paper.

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You may have to right click and open in a new window in order to see it clearly. I would also recommend enlarging it in your browser a bit.

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Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 Sally M. Walker

As regular readers may remember, last year I was on the committee for the Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. In addition to our winners and finalists, the committee also publishes a list of vetted nominations (what I like to call the "long list.") I'm in the process of highlighting these titles during Nonfiction Monday.

In December 1917, war was raging in Europe. In Halifax Harbor, two ships were on their way to the action, one on it's way to pick up relief supplies, the other full of munitions. The two ships collided, causing a fire. As the munitions ship drifted, fire on its deck, it crashed into the pier and exploded, leveling most of of the harbor area and creating a shockwave that blew out almost every window in Halifax proper. 2000 people died, 9000 more were injured. Rescue and relief efforts were further dampened when a blizzard blew in the next day and dumped over a foot of snow on the area.

Until the advent of nuclear weapons, the Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion ever.

Walker tells this story (one that's very well known in Canada, but not so much in the US) through the eyes of children who lived around the harbor at the time. Children getting ready for school, running errands, and going about their day. She weaves these daily accounts in with the context of shipping lanes and traffic, and what was happening in the Harbor. Walker also covers the communities on the other side of the Harbor who were affected by the explosion, resulting shock wave, and tsunami. The book is also very good at detailing what happened after the explosion to everyone.

Fun fact: The Halifax coroner's office had a tested system in place to deal with a mass casualty event like this. It had been developed 2 years earlier, when they brought in the bodies from the Titanic.

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is over at a wrung sponge. Check it out.

Also check out today's YA Reading List post, in honor of Yom HaShoah.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for award consideration

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