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Showing 1 - 20 of 22256 items
By Nadia Sammurtok. 2019
When two rabbit sisters ignore their parents' warnings and decide to play outside on the open tundra, a hungry owl…
soon spots them and decides they will make a delicious meal. As a chase ensues, the sisters must act quickly, using the owl's own greed against him in order to get away. A traditional Inuit story. Grades K-3. 2019.By Zsuzsi Gartner. 2020
“One of the best reads of the year.”—Toronto Star An electrifying debut novel from the Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Better…
Living Through Plastic Explosives that takes readers for a wild ride with urban-gothic flair and delectably wicked humour. Lucy is a lapsed-Catholic whose adolescent pretensions to sainthood are unexpectedly revived. It all starts when her cousin Zoltan, in hospital following a bizarre incident at a party, offers her a disturbing deathbed confession. Lucy's grief takes an unusual turn: Zoltan's death appears to have turned her into a magnet for the unshriven. Lucy is transformed into a self-described "flesh-and-blood Wailing Wall" as strangers unburden themselves to her. She becomes addicted to the dark stories, finds herself jonesing for hit after hit.As the confessions pile up, Lucy begins to wonder if Zoltan's death was as random and unscripted as it appeared. She clutches at alarming synchronicities, seeks meaning in the stories of strangers. Why do the stories seem connected to each other or eerily echo elements of her life? Could it be because Lucy has her own transgressions to acknowledge? And then there is that stubbornly resurfacing past, like a tell-tale ribbon of hair snagged on a fish hook. With ruthless wit and dizzying energy, The Beguiling explores blessings and curses, sainthood and sin, mortality and guilt in all its guises. Weaving together tales of errant mothers, vengeful plants, canine wisdom, and murder, it lays bare the flesh and blood sacrifices people are willing to make to get what they think they desire.By Dana Vachon, Jim Carrey. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLERNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"None of this is real and all of it is true." --Jim CarreyFrom movie star Jim…
Carrey and novelist Dana Vachon, a fearless and semi-autobiographical novel about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, destruction of persona, our "one big soul," Canada, and apocalypses within and without.Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege--but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddlin' with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs, but nothing seems to lift the cloud of emptiness and ennui. Even the advice of his best friend, actor and dinosaur skull collector, Nicolas Cage, isn't enough to pull Carrey out of his slump.Then Jim meets Georgie: ruthless ingénue, love of his life. And thanks to auteur screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, he has a role to play in a boundary-pushing new picture that may help him uncover a whole new side to himself. Finally, his Oscar vehicle! Things are looking up. But the universe has other plans.Memoirs and Misinformation is a fearless semi-autobiographical novel, a deconstruction of persona. In it, Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon have fashioned a story about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, our "one big soul," Canada, and a cataclysmic ending of the world--apocalypses within and without.By Amanda Leduc. 2020
Amanda Leduc's brilliant new novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic,…
is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures. Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family are among only a few who survived. But the mountain that looms over the city is still green--somehow it has been spared the destruction that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Heather is one of the few who know the mountain, a place city-dwellers have always been forbidden to go. Her dad took her up the mountain when she was a child on a misguided quest to heal her legs, damaged at birth. The tragedy that resulted has shaped her life, bringing her both great sorrow and an undying connection to the deep magic of the mountain, made real by the beings she and her dad encountered that day: Estajfan, a centaur born of sorrow and of an ancient, impossible love, and his two siblings, marooned between the magical and the human world. Even as those in the city around her--led by Tasha, a charismatic doctor who fled to the city from the coast with her wife and other refugees--struggle to keep everyone alive, Heather constantly looks to the mountain, drawn by love, by fear, by the desire for rescue. She is torn in two by her awareness of what unleashed the meteor shower and what is coming for the few survivors, once the green and living earth makes a final reckoning of the usefulness of human life and finds it wanting. At times devastating, but ultimately redemptive, Amanda Leduc's fable for our uncertain times reminds us that the most important things in life aren't things at all, but rather the people we want by our side at the end of the world.By Marty Chan. 2020
Xander thinks the George Wickerman Hospital would be the perfect setting for Spirits and Specters, a role-playing game where players…
go on “missions” to find evidence of paranormal activities. According to local legend, tuberculosis patients were used as test subjects in medical experiments that ended tragically, and their disfigured ghosts walk the hallways of this now-abandoned building. What better location to go ghost hunting? Even though they didn’t really believe the rumors, Xander and his friends soon begin to suspect that they are not alone. Is this place actually haunted by ghosts? Or something even more terrifying?By J. K. Rowling. 2020
From J.K. Rowling, a warm, fast-paced, funny fairy tale of a fearsome monster, thrilling adventure, and hope against all odds.Once…
upon a time there was a tiny kingdom called Cornucopia, as rich in happiness as it was in gold, and famous for its food. From the delicate cream cheeses of Kurdsburg to the Hopes-of-Heaven pastries of Chouxville, each was so delicious that people wept with joy as they ate them.But even in this happy kingdom, a monster lurks. Legend tells of a fearsome creature living far to the north in the Marshlands... the Ickabog. Some say it breathes fire, spits poison, and roars through the mist as it carries off wayward sheep and children alike. Some say it's just a myth...And when that myth takes on a life of its own, casting a shadow over the kingdom, two children - best friends Bert and Daisy - embark on a great adventure to untangle the truth and find out where the real monster lies, bringing hope and happiness to Cornucopia once more.Featuring full color illustrations by children from across the United States and Canada, this original fairy tale from one of the world's most celebrated storytellers will captivate readers of all ages.By Yara El-Ghadban. 2020
A bold and innovative novel, I Am Ariel Sharon dives into the tortured mind of the controversial Israeli prime minister…
as he lies comatose and faces an ultimate reckoning.Award-winning Palestinian Canadian novelist Yara El-Ghadban imagines the confrontation at death’s door between Ariel Sharon, the “King of Israel,” and the women closest to him — his mother, his wives, and the mysterious nurse Rita. Like latter-day Greek furies, they lament the brutality of his life and maltreatment of the Palestinian people and demand he face up to his part in the bloodshed of Israel’s wars.Here is an extraordinary, magical, and impassioned story of nearly impossible empathy, the singular work of a novelist in full flight.By Tawhida Tanya Evanson. 2021
In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storyteller Tawhida Tanya Evanson comes to terms with what…
it means to stand on one's own two feet in an uncertain world. The acclaimed Antiguan-Canadian artist traces a global journey from Vancouver to the United States, Caribbean, Paris, and Morocco as a relationship with her lover and travel partner disintegrates and she finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape.By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 2020
Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative…
and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics. Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves. Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.By Sara Cassidy. 2019
Resourceful fourteen-year-old Odette is on the move again, traveling as a stowaway on a cheese cart with her hapless mother,…
Anneline. They are in Burgundy, France, in 1799, fleeing yet another calamity caused by Anneline (who is prone to killing people accidentally). At dawn they find themselves in a town called Nevers, which is filled with eccentric characters, including a man who obsessively smells hands, another who dreams of becoming a chicken and a donkey that keeps the town awake at night, braying about his narrow life. As Odette establishes a home in an abandoned guardhouse, she makes a friend in the relaxed Nicois and finds work as a midwife's assistant. She and Nicois uncover a mystery that may lead to riches and, more important for Odette, a sense of belonging.Il y a longtemps, le grand Glooscap créa le peuple mi’kmaq dans le territoire actuel des provinces de l’Atlantique. Puis…
le Maître interrogea les animaux de la région, qui étaient alors gigantesques, afin de connaître leur intention envers les humains. Selon leur réponse, il réduisit la force des uns, diminua la taille des autres, en chassa d’autres au loin. Voulant échapper à ses questions, le castor construisit un énorme barrage pour se cacher, mais Glooscap détruisit le barrage et transforma ainsi le paysage du Nouveau-Brunswick. Une légende venue des temps anciens, qui explique comment Glooscap donna naissance au peuple mi’kmaq et assura l’harmonie sur la terre.By Emily MacDonald. 2020
Bodkin Beag and Bodkin Mòr went out to pick nuts... but Bodkin Beag wouldn't stop eating them! Big Biorachan set…
out to teach his greedy friend a lesson, unleashing a chain of unintended consequences. This traditional Scottish Gaelic tale was once the most widely-known children's story in the Gaelic world. Gaels brought the tale with them from the Highlands of Scotland to Nova Scotia 200 years ago and passed it down in oral traditon. Gaelic artist Emily MacDonald's charming illustrations accompany the traditional text, reimagining the tale in 1800s Cape Breton.By Réjean Roy, Allison Mitcham, Serena M. Sock. 2012
Tout comme le Loch Ness ou le lac Memphrémagog, le lac Baker du Haut Madawaska, serait-il infesté par un monstre?…
Les trois mousquetaires acadiens plongent dans leur première enquête! Trois jeunes écoliers acadiens (et leur chien) se cherchant une occupation peu banale décident de fonder une agence de détectives et se baptisent Les trois mousquetaires, puisqu’ils sont quatre ! Au même moment, les riverains du lac Baker, dans le nord-ouest du Nouveau-Brunswick, à la frontière avec le Québec et les États-Unis sont effrayés par la présence d’un monstre marin. Il n’en faut pas plus pour que Ania, Mamadou et Gabriel plongent au cœur du mystère. Qu’est-ce qui se cache dans ce lac ? Ce premier de sept romans jeunesse très populaires en Acadie a été complètement revisité par l’auteur, et les illustrations de Paul Roux ajoutent encore davantage à l’intrigue, l’action et l’humour incontestable de la série.By Corinne Gallant. 2012
Album raconté en trois langues : français mi’kmaq et anglais. Parce qu’ils ne savaient pas se défendre contre le Roi…
de glace, les habitants d’un village mi’kmaq risquaient la mort chaque hiver. Jusqu’au jour où un brave Mi’kmaq osa lui faire face. Parviendra-t-il à maîtriser cet ennemi redoutable? Sa sagesse et sa prévoyance réussiront-elles à venir à bout de difficultés qui semblent insurmontables?Album trilingue : français, mi'kmaq, anglais. Cette légende mi’kmaq explique à sa façon quelques-uns des mystères de la rivière Petitcodiac.…
Autrefois, la rivière était claire, limpide et regorgeait de poissons. Une Anguille géante, attirée par cette nourriture abondante, s’élança dans la rivière, détruisant tout sur son passage. Appelé à l’aide, Glooskap promit de donner des pouvoirs magiques à celui qui irait combattre le monstre. Seul un petit Homard se porta volontaire…By Sheung-King. 2020
A young translator travels from his home in Toronto to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo. His unnamed lover comes with…
him: in restaurants and hotel rooms, they entertain each other with comic and enigmatic folk tales. Yet their verbal play and philosophical questions mask the fragility of their own relationship, which is made still more tenuous by he woman's unexplained disappearances. You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King's debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Canadian literature.By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia. 2021
Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s debut is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria and celebrates…
the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a man’s world.By Regina M. Hansen. 2021
Music, myth, and horror blend in this romantic, “eerie…atmospheric” (Publishers Weekly) fantasy debut about a teen girl who must fight…
a powerful evil that’s invaded her Prince Edward Island home—perfect for fans of An Enchantment of Ravens.There’s a certain wild magic in the salt air and the thrum of the sea. Beet MacNeill has known this all her life. It added spice to her childhood adventures with her older cousin, Gerry, the two of them thick as thieves as they explored their Prince Edward Island home. So when Gerry comes up the path one early spring morning, Beet thinks nothing of it at first. But he is soaking wet and silent, and he plays a haunting tune on his fiddle that chills Beet to the bone. Something is very, very wrong. Things only get worse when Marina Shaw saunters into town and takes an unsettling interest in Gerry’s new baby. Local lore is filled with tales of a vicious shape-shifting sea creature and the cold, beautiful woman who controls him—a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Marina. Beet is determined to find out what happened to her beloved cousin, and to prevent the same fate from befalling the handsome new boy in town who is winning her heart, whether she wants him to or not. Yet the sea always exacts a price…By Kathryn Hartley. 2021
Nestled in the rolling foothills, where the prairie climbs to meet the Rocky Mountains, lies the small town of Cougar…
Lake. You know these towns. You've driven through them. Maybe even stopped for a bite at the Copper Kettle café. In this book all the doors in town swing quietly open. Each inhabitant's life and story intersects with others like overlapping ripples in the water. Each story stands alone but each story reaches tendrils into others. The residents form a cast of beguiling, sometimes eccentric, characters. As the book progresses, we gradually discover their loves and longings, their histories and their dreams. We learn what brought them to Cougar Lake and, more importantly, what keeps them here. In the end the town stands together to survive. Here are the stories, the dramas, the heartbreak and the glories of the town and the people of Cougar Lake.By Claudia Rueda. 2021
Goldilocks meets Little Red Riding Hood in this charming and unexpected fairytale mashup from the New York Times bestselling Illustrator…
of Easter Cat ! KNOCK! KNOCK! When the Three Bears answer the door, it's not Goldilocks they meet, but a stranger from a different story. It's Little Red Riding Hood-and the Big Bad Wolf is close behind her! Still, much unfolds as expected: porridge is eaten, a chair is broken, and there is a girl asleep in Baby Bear's bed. Does Little Red fit in this book after all? Perhaps it's the Wolf who will surprise us. With a bit of courage and much compassion, the Bears and Little Red learn that characters, just like the stories we tell, can change over time. In this quirky combination of familiar fairy tales, Claudia Rueda tells a new story about what happens when we open our minds, hearts, and homes to the utterly unexpected. FAIRYTALES-WITH A TWIST: From the original mind of Claudia Rueda, this fresh take on classic fairy tales is an inspired nod to the storytelling tradition and reveals how some of our most beloved, time-honored children's stories interact with each other . . . literally, and with hilarity. This fairytale mashup will charm even the most jaded of readers with its humor, its wild and endearing characters, and its unexpected meta twists. FOR FANS OF...: Sure to be read side-by-side with mash-up classics like Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and David Wiesner's The Three Pigs ! MILLENNIAL LITTLE RED: Little Red Riding Hood has got a punk personality and aesthetic. She breaks down the barriers that stand in her way, including escaping traditional narratives and endings. EMPATHY FOR THE WOLF: Is The Big Bad Wolf really so big, and really so bad? Approach a "villain" with a little empathy, and you may just make a new friend! INSPIRED BY BOOKS: Inspired by antique books, Claudia Rueda has infused this book with classic bookmaking, from flourishes on book covers and type design, to playing with meta touches like walking between books, past title pages, and in to other stories. CURRICULUM TIE-IN: Perfect for teachers and librarians looking for tools for teaching about storytelling and narrative. Perfect for: For fans of fairytale mash-ups, parents, educators