The Globe and Mail, Canada
March 6 2009
New in children’s books
by SUSAN PERREN
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A DUCK IN A RAINCOAT?
By Etta Kaner, illustrated by Jeff Szuc, Kids Can, 32 pages, $14.95,
ages 4 to 7
Have you ever seen a duck in a raincoat? Have you ever seen a
jackrabbit in shorts? Have you ever seen a cheetah in soccer cleats?
These are a few of the questions asked in this book, the first in the
proposed Have You Ever Seen? series.
The answer most of us would give is, "Of course not!" But take a
gander and all will be revealed.
The jackrabbit, for instance, doesn’t "wear shorts. People do." People
wear shorts to keep cool during hot weather. How do rabbits keep cool?
When they lie in the shade, the heat in their long, wide ears escapes
into the cooler air surrounding them; as the ears become cooler, so
does the rest of the jackrabbit’s body.
Cheetahs in soccer cleats sounds a bit farfetched, but in fact a
cheetah’s claws are so long and strong that they dig into the ground,
not unlike cleats, as the animal runs, giving it traction and helping
it take strides that can be as long as four bathtubs laid end to end.
Cheery acrylic illustrations play the preposterous game to the hilt.
THE ORPHAN BOY
By Tololwa M. Mollel, illustrated by Paul Morin, Fitzhenry &
Whiteside, 40 pages, $21.95, ages 5 to 8
In 1990, The Orphan Boy won the Governor-General’s Award for
Illustration, and the book won several other awards in the following
two years.
Almost 20 years on, The Orphan Boy has been reissued with, as the
publisher’s blurb announces, a brand-new cover, eight additional pages
and nine "breath-taking" new paintings. This is a case in which, for
once, there is truth to the apparent hyperbole: more is more in this
case, and it’s more, especially, of Paul Morel’s superb paintings.
Mollel’s story is set amid the Maasai people of the Masai Mara in
Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Ingeniously, Paul Morin has
incorporated Africa into his paintings, using gesso and a matrix of
sticks and grit, gathered while he did research in Africa, to create a
textured canvas and background for his art.
The paintings themselves occupy broad expanses of this book and
conjure up a stunningly beautiful world of thorn trees silhouetted
against inky-blue night skies, Masai cattle herds in a sere and yellow
land, and the old man at the centre of this tale, with his weathered
face and vermilion clothing.
Mollel, who now lives and works in Edmonton, is an Arusha Maasai who
grew up on his grandfather’s coffee farm in northern Tanzania. The
Orphan Boy is his retelling of a Maasai legend about a star that fell
to Earth and became a boy with magical powers. He appears before the
old man one day, announcing that his name is Kileken, and that he is
an orphan who has travelled countless miles in search of a home. The
old man, lonely and childless, welcomes him.
The boy’s presence in his life improves the old man’s immeasurably:
Morning chores are done by the boy before the elder wakes, and even
during the drought his cattle grow fat. The old man’s curiosity about
the boy leads him into temptation and, breaking the trust that exists
between the two of them, he spies on the boy, who, seeing him,
explodes into a blinding star. That star, Venus, is what he was and
what he becomes again.
The Maasai call Venus Kileken, the orphan boy, "who is up at dawn to
herd out the cattle after morning chores, and who returns to the
compound at nightfall for the evening milking."
A NEW LIFE
By Rukhsana Khan, illustrated by Nasrin Khosravi, Groundwood, 64
pages, $12.95, ages 8 to 11
This book’s first life was as Coming to Canada, a publication funded
by the government of Canada through Citizenship and Immigration Canada
for Settlement Workers in Schools. This revised edition of the
original, undoubtedly enhanced by Iranian-born artist Khosravi’s
lively and lovely watercolours, makes for fine reading for newcomers
to Canada, as well as children born in Canada who may be interested in
how that new child in their class is experiencing and dealing with a
new country, new customs, new everything.
A New Life begins in Pakistan, as Khadija and her brother, Hamza, say
goodbye to their father, who is leaving for Canada to set up a house
for his family. Khadija is excited about the prospect of the family’s
move to Canada, her brother less so. "Why do we have to go?" he asks
his father, who replies, "For the schools, for the opportunities. I’m
doing this for you. Now give me a hug."
Canada is a shock, beginning with their new home. On TV, Khadija had
seen the "clean and stylish" houses that North Americans live in;
she’s not prepared for what his father has found for them: an
apartment with only a few rooms and second-hand furniture that has
seen better days.
Her father reassures her, forcing himself to be optimistic: "One day
we’ll have money to buy whatever we want." By the end of this book,
several years on, the family may not have money to buy everything they
want, but they are Canadian citizens, have enjoyed a cross-Canada
camping trip and have survived and thrived.
Getting to that point, getting past their university-trained father’s
demeaning but necessary job as a taxi driver, getting beyond the
frightening strangeness of a new language and homesickness, are
milestones recorded with sensitivity and élan by author Khan.
CALL ME ARAM
By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, illustrated by Muriel Woods, Fitzhenry &
Whiteside, 88 pages, $18.95, ages 8 to 11
A sequel to Aram’s Choice (2006), Skrypuch’s Call Me Aram takes up
Aram’s story, based on a true one, as he and a group of Armenian boys,
survivors of the genocide that occurred in Turkey in 1915, arrive in
Georgetown, Ont., to begin a new life.
After his parents’ killing in Turkey, Aram and his grandmother had
scrounged a living by begging on the streets of Ankara. He and
thousands of other children were then moved from Turkey to an
orphanage on Corfu.
Sponsored by the newly formed Armenian Relief Association of Canada,
100 boys, among them Aram, travelled to Canada in 1923, their
destination a farm where they would be cared for, educated and trained
to be farm helpers. These boys came to be known as the Georgetown
Boys.
Skrypuch’s tale is an affecting one, made even more so by artist
Woods’s limpid paintings of the bucolic Canadian farmland. The boys’
experiences in and their reactions to their new country and home are
revealed via Aram’s eyes and voice: the disgust with which they greet
the gooey mess of porridge, their breakfast; their disbelief when they
are given new, Canadian names – those of individuals who have
sponsored them; their bewilderment about new customs like bed-making;
and their relief when a kind Canadian of Armenian descent comes to
stay with them and explicates their new world for them.
As this book ends, Aram declares, "’My name is Aram Davidian. And I am
a Canadian.’ He would never get tired of saying that."
Appended are archival photographs of the Georgetown Boys, a historical
note and lists of suggested reading, Internet sites and films.
YOU ARE WEIRD: Your Body’s Peculiar Parts and Funny Functions
By Diane Swanson, illustrated by Kathy Boake, Kids Can Press, 40
pages, $16.95, ages 8 to 12
"Face it. You’re weird. You likely have body parts, such as your
appendix, that do little more than hang around. You also have parts
that simply do odd stuff – such as your skin, which sheds night and
day."
Thus begins this entertaining and informative book about body
weirdness for kids of an age to be wondering (or worrying) about what
their bodies might be up to.
Sweating, for instance. "Don’t look now, but your body is
leaking. Water is seeping out all over. Every day, you ooze about 0.5
L of sweat. That’s if you’re not feeling hot. Drop into a steamy
jungle and in a few weeks you could be sweating more than 2 L an
hour."
Stomach bacteria and flaking skin are subject matter here, but perhaps
what will interest this book’s designated readers most are the truly
weird, not to say freaky, facts (accompanied by suitably ghoulish
illustrations) about, say, the reticulated moray eel’s two sets of
jaws, or the male emperor moth’s ability to smell a mate 11 kilometres
away, or the 26-centimetre appendix that Croatian doctors removed from
someone in 2006, or that, hundreds of years ago, some humans had
vestigial tails as much as 15 centimetres long.
(You might also want to know that in 1889, Scientific American
described the tail of a 12-year-old boy that measured nearly 30
centimetres.)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
