Welcome
Welcome to Braille Books Acquired. This quarterly newsletter contains a list of Braille books recently acquired by the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA).
In this issue:
- Announcements
- Fiction for Adults
- Non-Fiction for Adults
- Fiction for Children and Young Adults
- Non-Fiction for Children and Young Adults
- Printbraille Non-Fiction
- Printbraille Fiction
Announcements
Letter from our Executive Director
September is always an exciting time at CELA as we prepare for and promote titles from some of the major Canadian literary awards. We often hear from users how much they appreciate having timely access to award nominees and we are grateful to the major awards for working with us to make this possible. You’ll find titles nominated for the Scotiabank Gillers awards, the Writers Trust Awards and they upcoming Governor General Awards on our Awards page in our collection as well as Rick Mercer’s memoir Talking to Canadians which won the Leacock Medal for Humour. We’re also delighted to work with the Canadian Children’s Book Centre to offer nominees in their major categories as we know these are often classroom favourites.
This month at CELA we are also celebrating the addition of two new Board Directors. We are pleased to welcome Ardis Proulx-Chedore, Collection Services Technician from Cochrane Public Library in Ontario and Amanda Lepage, Director, Collections & Service Infrastructure from Saskatoon Public Library in Saskatchewan. They joined the CELA Board beginning in September and we look forward to their contributions. With their addition to the Board we also want to thank our two outgoing and long standing Board Directors Teresa Johnson and Gwen Schmidt who have served CELA since its inception in 2014. Their dedication to accessible library services has been crucial in shaping CELA’s services and helping our organization grow. We will miss them and their insights, and we wish them well in all their future endeavours.
Whether you love reading award winners, children’s books, humour, or nonfiction I hope you discover a new book to love in our collection.
Laurie Davidson, Executive Director
A note about dates
Although the majority of these books have been published within the last 5 years, there may be some books listed here which are older, but which were only recently added to our collection. To make this clearer for you, we include the date of the print version of each book at the end of its annotation.
Fiction for Adults
Canadian fiction
4439798 The One-Eyed Chevrolet: Stories From Cougar Lake by Kathryn Hartley
4 volumes. 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. 2021.
General fiction
4439814 Tenderness by Alison MacLeod
16 volumes. On the glittering shores of the Mediterranean in 1928, a dying author in exile races to complete his final novel. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a sexually bold love story, a searing indictment of class distinctions, and a study in sensuality. But the author, D.H. Lawrence, knows it will be censored. He publishes it privately, loses his copies to customs, and dies bereft. Booker Prize-longlisted author Alison MacLeod brilliantly recreates the novel's origins and boldly imagines its journey to freedom through the story of Jackie Kennedy, who was known to be an admirer. 2021.
4493325 All the Quiet Places: A Novel by Brian Thomas Isaac
6 volumes. It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. The boys learn from Ray's funny and dark stories. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely. Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. Grace is determined to have him learn the ways of the white world by sending him to school in the small community of Falkland. On Eddie"s first day of school, as he crosses the reserve boundary at the Salmon River bridge, he leaves behind his world. Grace challenges the Indian Agent and writes futile letters to Ottawa to protest the sparse resources in their community. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship. In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure—he finds a job, and his long-time crush on his white neighbour Eva is finally reciprocated. But every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him. The cumulative effects of guilt, grief, and despair threaten everything Eddie has ever known or loved. 2021.
4523261 The Beautiful Place by Lee Gowan
6 volumes. The man we know only as Bentley is facing a triple threat—in other words, his life is a hot mess every way he looks. Like anyone who feels that he’s on the brink of annihilation, Bentley thinks back to his misspent youth, which was also the year he met his famous grandfather, the painter Philip Bentley, for the first time. To make matters worse, he has inherited his grandfather’s tendency to self-doubt, as well as that cranky artist’s old service pistol. Our hero is confused about so much. How did he end up as a cryonics salesman—a huckster for a dubious afterlife—when he wanted to be a writer? And who is the mysterious Mary Abraham, and why is she the thread unravelling his unhappy present? What will be left when all the strands come undone? Lee Gowan’s The Beautiful Place is the best kind of journey: both psychological and real, with a lot of quick-on-the-draw conversations and stunning scenery along the way —and only one gun, which may or may not be loaded. 2021.
4493319 A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
5 volumes. Sixteen-year-old Rose is missing. Angry and rebellious, she had a row with her mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Left behind is seven-year-old Clara, Rose’s adoring little sister. Isolated by her parents’ efforts to protect her from the truth, Clara is bewildered and distraught. Her sole comfort is Moses, the cat next door, whom she is looking after for his elderly owner, Mrs. Orchard, who went into hospital weeks ago and has still not returned. Enter Liam Kane, mid-thirties, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, who moves into Mrs. Orchard’s house—where, in Clara’s view, he emphatically does not belong. Within a matter of hours he receives a visit from the police. It seems he is suspected of a crime. At the end of her life, Elizabeth Orchard is also thinking about a crime, one committed thirty years previously that had tragic consequences for two families, and in particular for one small child. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. 2021.
4439818 A Hero of Our Time: A Novel by Naben Ruthnum
5 volumes. Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson’s quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education. Osman, obsessed by Olivia’s ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated. 2022.
4439797 The Sound of Fire by Renée Belliveau
5 volumes. A breathtaking, fast-paced work of historical fiction based on the tragic true story of the 1941 Mount Allison University residence fire. I have a history here. I am part of this landscape. I have forged it, shaped it, and renewed it time and again. At times, I have been a mishap. Once or twice, I was brought forth at the hands of mischief. This time, I was sparked to life. I awoke from the elements, timid and trembling. In the basement of a residence at a small liberal arts university in rural New Brunswick, while war rages overseas, a fire breaks out in the middle of the night. The town is sleeping. A novel of devastating beauty, based on the true story of the December 1941 fire that destroyed a men's residence at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, killing four students, and bringing the horrors of war startlingly close to home. 2021.
Historical fiction
4499758 Looking for Jane: A Novel by Heather Marshall
8 volumes. When Angela Creighton discovers a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession in a stack of forgotten mail, she is determined to find the intended recipient. Her search takes her back to the 1970s when a group of daring women operated an illegal underground abortion network in Toronto known only by its whispered code name: Jane... 1971 As a teenager, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was sent to a home for “fallen” women where she was forced to give up her baby for adoption—a trauma she has never recovered from. Despite harrowing police raids and the constant threat of arrest, she joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women the choice she never had. 1980 After discovering a shocking secret about her family history, twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell begins to question everything she has ever known. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she feels like she has no one to turn to for help. Grappling with her decision, she locates “Jane” and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network’s ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her. 2022.
4499759 Swimming Back to Trout River: A Novel by Linda Rui Feng
5 volumes. In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future. What Junie doesn’t know is that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples anew with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. In order for Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three members of the family before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light. 2021.
4493327 Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch: A Novel by Rivka Galchen
5 volumes. It is 1618 in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading, the Thirty Years’ War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler, an illiterate widow, is accused of being a witch.Katharina is known for her herbal remedies and the success of her children. Her eldest, Johannes, is the Imperial Mathematician and the renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It’s enough to make anyone envious, and Katharina has done herself no favours by going out and about and being in everyone’s business.So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of making her ill by offering her a bitter, witchy drink, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and neighbour Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets. 2021.
Indigenous peoples fiction
4493332 Daughters of the Deer by Danielle Daniel
5 volumes. Marie, a gifted healer of the Deer Clan, does not want to marry the green-eyed soldier from France who has asked for her hand. But her people are threatened by disease and starvation and need help against the Iroquois and their English allies if they are to survive. When her chief begs her to accept the white man’s proposal, she cannot refuse him, and sheds her deerskin tunic for a borrowed blue wedding dress to become Pierre’s bride. 1675. Jeanne, Marie’s oldest child, is seventeen, neither white nor Algonquin, caught between worlds. Caught by her own desires, too. Her heart belongs to a girl named Josephine, but soon her father will have to find her a husband or be forced to pay a hefty fine to the French crown. Among her mother’s people, Jeanne would have been considered blessed, her two-spirited nature a sign of special wisdom. To the settlers of New France, and even to her own father, Jeanne is unnatural, sinful—a woman to be shunned, beaten, and much worse. 2022.
Mysteries and crime stories
4396674 The Madness of Crowds: A Novel by Louise Penny
10 volumes. You’re a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Quebec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sureté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, a va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone. When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion. And the madness of crowds. 2021.
Short stories
4493329 Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
4 volumes. In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us. 2022.
Suspense and thrillers
4405025 Dark Roads: A Novel by Chevy Stevens
8 volumes. The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again. And no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice. Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer. One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back—and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance… 2021.
Non-Fiction for Adults
Actors biography
4389965 Talking to Canadians: A Memoir by Rick Mercer
7 volumes. What is Rick Mercer going to do now? That was the question on everyone's lips when the beloved comedian retired his hugely successful TV show after 15 seasons—and at the peak of its popularity. The answer came not long after, when he roared back in a new role as stand-up-comedian, playing to sold-out houses wherever he appeared. And then Covid-19 struck. And his legions of fans began asking again: What is Rick Mercer going to do now? Well, for one thing, he's been writing a comic masterpiece. For the first time, this most private of public figures has turned the spotlight on himself, in a memoir that's as revealing as it is hilarious. In riveting anecdotal style, Rick charts his rise from highly unpromising schoolboy (in his reports "the word 'disappointment' appeared a fair bit") to the heights of TV fame. Along the way came an amazing break when, not long out of his teens, his one-man show Show Me the Button, I'll Push It. Or, Charles Lynch Must Die, became an overnight sensation—thanks in part to a bizarre ambush by its target, Charles Lynch himself. That's one story you won’t soon forget, and this book is full of them. There's a tale of how little Rick helped himself to a tree from the neighbours' garden that's set to become a new Christmas classic. There's Rick the aspiring actor, braving "the scariest thing I have ever done in my life" by performing with the Newfoundland Shakespeare Company; unforgettable scenes with politicians of every variety, from Jean Chretien to George W. Bush to Stockwell Day; and a wealth of behind-the-scenes revelations about the origins and making of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Made in Canada, and Talking to Americans. All leading of course to the greenlighting of that mega-hit, Rick Mercer Report . . . It's a life so packed with incident (did we mention Bosnia and Kabul?) and laughter we can only hope that a future answer to "What is Rick Mercer going to do now?" is: "Write volume two."
4516032 Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley
6 volumes. These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven’t told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry. Sarah Polley’s work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all of those qualities along with her exquisite storytelling chops to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person you are now but were not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.” Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.
4439795 People Change by Vivek Shraya
1 volumes. The author of I’m Afraid of Men lets readers in on the secrets to a life of reinvention.Vivek Shraya knows this to be true: people change. We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions. In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who’s made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna. What emerges is a meditation on change itself: why we fear it, why we’re drawn to it, what motivates us to change, and what traps us in place. At a time when we’re especially contemplating who we want to be, this slim and stylish handbook is an essential companion—a guide to celebrating our many selves and the inspiration to discover who we’ll become next.
Canadian history
4357993 Nothing Ordinary: The Story of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine by Larry Krotz
5 volumes. This is the story of how 800,000 citizens created their own school of medicine, and what it has meant for the region and its people. Northern Ontario is a vast territory — almost as big as France and Germany combined — with a widely scattered population the size of only 10% of the rest of the province. Rich in forests, minerals, scenery and brilliant, hardy people, Ontario’s north, like many other rural and remote areas, had difficulties attracting and keeping doctors. The solution, they decided, was to train their own. An astonishing percentage of graduates remain to serve the unique needs of their home communities, from rural, to Indigenous, to Francophone. Over the course of twenty years, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine has transformed healthcare and created a legacy of a school that is far from ordinary.
Christianity
4488913 When God Doesn’t Make Sense by James C. Dobson
4 volumes. Every person who lives long enough will eventually encounter circumstances that are difficult to explain theologically. From years of counselling experience, Dr. James Dobson offers assurance of God’s constant care, even when human suffering is beyond our comprehension.
Death and bereavement
4404577 On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times by Michael Ignatieff
6 volumes. Timely and profound philosophical meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music, and art searched for solace while facing tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize-finalist Michael Ignatieff. When someone we love dies, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes--war, famine, pandemic--we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic. How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works--from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Primo Levi--esteemed writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, movingly contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of our precarious twenty-first century.
General non-fiction
4396659 Me Tomorrow: Indigenous Views on the Future by Drew Hayden Taylor
4 volumes. First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, activists, educators and writers, youth and elders come together to envision Indigenous futures in Canada and around the world. Discussing everything from language renewal to sci-fi, this collection is a powerful and important expression of imagination rooted in social critique, cultural experience, traditional knowledge, activism and the multifaceted experiences of Indigenous people on Turtle Island. In Me Tomorrow… Darrel J. McLeod, Cree author from Treaty-8 territory in Northern Alberta, blends the four elements of the Indigenous cosmovision with the four directions of the medicine wheel to create a prayer for the power, strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples. Autumn Peltier, Anishinaabe water-rights activist, tells the origin story of her present and future career in advocacy—and how the nine months she spent in her mother’s womb formed her first water teaching. When the water breaks, like snow melting in the spring, new life comes. Lee Maracle, acclaimed Stó:lō Nation author and educator, reflects on cultural revival—imagining a future a century from now in which Indigenous people are more united than ever before. Other essayists include Cyndy and Makwa Baskin, Norma Dunning, Shalan Joudry, Shelley Knott-Fife, Tracie Léost, Stephanie Peltier, Romeo Saganash, Drew Hayden Taylor and Raymond Yakeleya .
4493331 Cold Case North: The Search for James Brady and Absolom Halkett by Michael Nest, Eric Bell and Deanna Reder
6 volumes. Cold Case North is the story of how a small team, with the help of the Indigenous community, uncovered new clues and gathered additional testimony in the disappearance of Jim Brady and Abbie Halkett, exposing police failure in the original investigation.
History
4396665 The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend by Adam Shoalts
4 volumes. A century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres. In the early 1900s, this isolated little settlement was the scene of an extraordinary haunting by large creatures none could identify. Strange tracks were found in the woods. Unearthly cries were heard in the night. Sled dogs went missing. Children reported being stalked by a terrifying grinning animal. Families slept with cabin doors barred and axes and guns at their bedsides. Tales of things that "go bump in the night" are part of the folklore of the wilderness, told and retold around countless campfires down through the ages. Most are easily dismissed by skeptics. But what happened at Traverspine a hundred years ago was different. The eye-witness accounts were detailed, and those who reported them included no less than three medical doctors and a wildlife biologist. Something really did emerge from the wilderness to haunt the little settlement of Traverspine. Adam Shoalts, decorated modern-day explorer and an expert on wilderness folklore, picks up the trail from a century ago and sets off into the Labrador wild to investigate the tale. It is a spine-tingling adventure, straight from a land steeped in legends and lore, where Vikings wandered a thousand years ago and wolves and bears still roam free.
Indigenous peoples biography
4516012 Permanent Astonishment: A Memoir by by Tomson Highway
8 volumes. Tomson Highway was born in a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the eleventh of twelve children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family. Growing up in a land of ten thousand lakes and islands, Tomson relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars, sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails, and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far-north childhood. But five of Tomson's siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was six, he was flown south by float plane to attend a residential school. A year later Rene joined him to begin the rest of their education. In 1990 Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up in the Land of Snow and Sky is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: "Don't mourn me, be joyful." .
Lifestyle
4404578 All We Want: Building the Life We Cannot Buy by Michael Harris
3 volumes. Our lives are defined by a story of endless growth and consumption. Now a climate crisis demands that we change. Can we write new stories? In All We Want, award-winning author Michael Harris dismantles our untenable consumer culture and delivers surprising, heartwarming alternatives. Drawing on the wisdom of philosophers, scientists, and artists, Harris uncovers three realms where humans have always found deeper meaning: the worlds of Craft, the Sublime, and Care. Past attempts to blunt our impact on the environment have simply redirected our consumption—we bought fuel-efficient cars and canvas tote bags. We cannot, however, buy our way out of this crisis. We need, instead, compelling new stories about life's purpose. Part meditation and part manifesto, All We Want is a blazing inquest into the destructive and unfulfilling promise of our consumer society, and a roadmap toward a more humane future.
Poetry
4365320 A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen
1 volumes. A collection inspired by Hoa’s mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe, is verse meditation on Vietnam’s diaspora. Hoa Nguyen’s latest collection is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” and comprises a verse biography on her mother, Diep Anh Nguyen, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, the poems in A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure are alive with archive and inhabit histories. In turns lyrical and unsettling, her poetry sings of language and loss; dialogues with time, myth and place; and communes with past and future ghosts.
4516037 Manikanetish by Naomi Fontaine
2 volumes. A young teacher’s return to her remote Innu community transforms the lives of her students through the redemptive power of art.
4357999 sulphurtongue by Rebecca Salazar
1 volumes. The poems in sulphurtongue ask how to redefine desire and kinship across languages, and across polluted environments. An immigrant family scatters over a stolen continent. Oracles appear in public transit, and online. Bodies are transformed by nearby nickel mines. Doppelgangers, Catholic saints, and polyamorists alike pass on unusual inheritances. Deeply entangled in relations both emotional and ecological, this collection confronts the stories we tell about gender, queerness, race, religion, illness, and trauma, seeking new forms of care for a changing world.
4357980 The Untranslatable I by Roxanna Bennett
1 volumes. In Unmeaningable, her previous Trillium Poetry Awards winning book with Gordon Hill Press, Roxanna Bennett renovated the North American disability poetics canon via her queer fusion of invisible and visible disability identities. The Untranslatable I builds on Roxanna's acute sense of form and cripping of myth by establishing a more reflective, heartbreaking voice that asks, "Was I chosen? Is this a gift or a curse?" and provides answers not as prescribed path or cure, but as beautiful song.
Women biography
4488862 Stories of Métis Women: Tales My Kookum Told Me by Bailey Oster
6 volumes. In this era of reconciliation, Stories of Métis Women explains the Métis Nation from the women’s perspective. Often misunderstood, the Métis are an Indigenous People with a unique and proud history and Nation. This book celebrates Nation building, culture, identity, and resilience, but also deals with the dark times of residential schools, discrimination, and racism. The women’s stories are in English and Northern Michif language.
4493314 Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions by Stephen Kimber and Jennifer Robertson
5 volumes. Jennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bitcoin wizard who quickly amassed substantial wealth through his company, Quadriga. The couple travelled the world, first class all the way, while Cotten worked on his multitude of encrypted laptops. Then, while the couple was on their honeymoon in India, opening an orphanage in their name, Gerry fell ill and died in a matter of hours. Jennifer was consumed by grief and guilt, but that was only the beginning. It turned out that Gerry owed $250 million to Quadriga customers, and all the passwords to his encrypted virtual vaults, hidden on his many laptops, had died with him. Jennifer was left with more than one hundred thousand investors looking for their money, and questions, suspicions and accusations spiralling dangerously out of control.
General non-fiction
4474613 #BlackInSchool by Habiba Cooper Diallo
2 volumes. The prevalence of anti-Black racism and its many faces, from racial profiling to police brutality, in North America is indisputable. How do we stop racist ideas and violence if the very foundation of our society is built upon white supremacy? How do we end systemic racism if the majority do not experience it or question its existence? Do our schools instill children with the ideals of equality and tolerance, or do they reinforce differences and teach children of colour that they don’t belong? #BlackInSchool is Habiba Cooper Diallo’s high school journal, in which she documents, processes, and resists the systemic racism, microaggressions, stereotypes, and outright racism she experienced while being Black in school in Canada. Powerful and eye-opening, Cooper Diallo illustrates how our schools reinforce rather than erode racism: the handcuffing and frisking of students of colour by police at school; one-dimensional, tokenistic curricula portraying Black people; and the constant barrage of overt racism from students and staff alike. She shows how systemic racism works, how it alienates and seeks to destroys a child’s sense of self. She shows how our institutions work to erase the lived experiences of Black youth and try to erase Black youth themselves. Cooper Diallo’s words will resonate with some, but should shock, appall, and animate a great many more into action towards a society that is truly equitable for all.
Indigenous peoples
4365318 Beyond the Orange Shirt Story: A collection of stories from family and friends of Phyllis Webstad - Before, during, and after their Residential School experiences by Phyllis Webstad
2 volumes. Beyond the Orange Shirt Story is a unique collection of truths, as told by Phyllis Webstad's family and others, that will give readers an up-close look at what life was like before, during, and after their Residential School experiences. In this book, Survivors and Intergenerational Survivors share their stories authentically and in their own words. Phyllis Webstad is a Residential School Survivor and founder of the Orange Shirt Day movement. Phyllis has carefully selected stories to help Canadians educate themselves and gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of the Residential School System. Readers of this book will become more aware of a number of challenges faced by many Indigenous peoples in Canada. With this awareness comes learning and unlearning, understanding, acceptance, and change.
Fiction for Children and Young Adults
General fiction
4516016 For the Record by Monique Polak
4 volumes. A middle-grade novel thoughtfully explores the realities of parents’ divorce 2022.
Non-Fiction for Children and Young Adults
Social issues
4439815 Shelter: Homelessness in Our Community by Lois Peterson and Taryn Ge
2 volumes. Part of the Orca Think series for middle-grade readers, this book answers the questions young people have about homelessness and its causes, effects, possible solutions and what we can all do help.
Printbraille Non-Fiction
Indigenous peoples in Canada
4622607 Muinji'j Asks Why: The Story of the Mi'kmaq and the Shubenacadie Residential School by Shanika MacEachern and Breighlynn MacEachern
When seven-year-old Muinji'j comes home from school one day, her Nana and Papa can tell right away that she's upset. Her teacher has been speaking about the residential schools. Unlike most of her fellow students, Muinji'j has always known about the residential schools. But what she doesn't understand is why the schools existed and why children would have died there. Nana and Papa take Muinji'j aside and tell her the whole story, from the beginning. They help her understand all of the decisions that were made for the Mi'kmaq, not with the Mi'kmaq, and how those decisions hurt her people. They tell her the story of her people before their traditional ways were made illegal, before they were separated and sent to reservations, before their words, their beliefs, and eventually, their children, were taken from them. A poignant, honest, and necessary book featuring brilliant artwork from Mi'kmaw artist Zeta Paul and words inspired by Muinji'j MacEachern's true story, Muinji'j Asks Why will inspire conversation, understanding, and allyship for readers of all ages. 2022.
4523242 When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret-Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton and Gabrielle Grimard
Bestselling memoir Fatty Legs for younger readers. Olemaun is eight and knows a lot of things. But she does not know how to read. Ignoring her father’s warnings, she travels far from her Arctic home to the outsiders’ school to learn. The nuns at the school call her Margaret. They cut off her long hair and force her to do menial chores, but she remains undaunted. Her tenacity draws the attention of a black-cloaked nun who tries to break her spirit at every turn. But the young girl is more determined than ever to learn how to read. Based on the true story of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, and complemented by stunning illustrations, When I Was Eight makes the bestselling Fatty Legs accessible to younger readers. 2013.
Printbraille Fiction
General fiction
4523245 Barnaby by Andrea Curtis and Kass Reich
A vain blue budgie flies the coop only to find that there‘s no place like home 2021.
4622602 My City Speaks by Ashley Barron and Darren Lebeuf
A young girl's exploration of the city she loves. A young girl and her father spend a day in the city, her city, traveling to the places they go together. As they do, the girl, who is visually impaired, describes what she senses in delightfully precise, poetic detail. Her city, she says, “pitters and patters, and drips and drains.” It's both “smelly” and “sweet.” Her city also speaks, as it “dings and dongs and rattles and roars.” And sometimes, maybe even some of the best times, it just listens. A celebration of all there is to appreciate in our surroundings --- just by paying attention! 2021.
4570713 Chaiwala! by Ashley Barron and Priti Birla Maheshwari
A sensory celebration of family, food, and culture 2021
4523247 Hold That Thought! by Bree Galbraith and Lynn Scurfield
An inspiring look at how ideas form, grow, and connect us all 2021.
4572644 Paislee and the Talking Tree by Bruce Simpson
Written by a kindergarten teacher and singer/songwriter, this story tells of a wondrous relationship between Paislee and Sugar, the talking tree in her neighbourhood. Paislee learns that trees CAN talk to people who are willing to listen. 2022.
4523241 Secret, Secret Agent Guy by Celia Krampien and Kira Bigwood
Send little spies to sleep with this hilarious, tongue-in-cheek lullaby set to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Dear Fellow Agents: Your mission—should you choose to accept it—is to join Secret, Secret Agent Guy on his bedtime assignment, code name: Operation Lollipop. Equipped with night-vision goggles, a jetpack, and grappling hook, he is prepared for every eventuality...or is he? Will this 007-year-old complete his covert quest, or will he be outsmarted by an adversary he never saw coming? 2021.
4523249 My Words Flew Away Like Birds by Debora Pearson and Shrija Jain
A powerful and poetic immigration story. A girl learns words in a new language to prepare for her move to a new country. But when her family arrives, everyone speaks so fast and “all her words fly away like birds.” The girl waits, and watches, and listens, trying to figure things out. Only, it's hard. Then one day the girl meets someone who needs her help. And as she makes a new friend, the new words start to come easier --- becoming her words, at last. A perfect read-aloud, this poignant story offers a powerful lesson in empathy for children everywhere. 2021.
4622589 I Love You More by Emil Sher
1 How much do I love you? I love you more than cones love ice cream. This gorgeous, playful book opens up infinite possibilities for saying I love you that carry on long after closing the book. Follow along as young Des’s day winds him through his busy, diverse neighbourhood, highlighting different relationships across age, gender and race, and moments bound together by love. Through Emil Sher’s delightful word play and acclaimed illustrator Barbara Reid’s vibrant modelling clay art, I Love You More creates a rich experience for young readers and brings a wonderful affirming feeling to storytime. This story was inspired by a favourite game the author played with his now-grown daughters — one readers can carry on in their own way, with their own loved ones and in their own hearts. 2021.
4523240 Song for the Snow by Jon-Erik Lappano and Byron Eggenschwiler
Can a long-forgotten song bring the snow back to Freya’s town? 2021.
4523239 Sour Cakes by Karen Krossing, Anna Kwan
Heavy emotions meet a deep well of understanding in this uplifting sibling story 2021.
4622592 A Sky-Blue Bench by Peggy Collins and Bahram Rahman
A young Afghan amputee matter-of-factly removes her own barrier to education, building a bench from discarded wood so that she and her "helper-leg" can sit through school in comfort. 2021.
4622595 Our Table by Peter H. Reynolds
Violet longs for the time when her family was connected: before life, distractions, and technology pulled them all away from each other. They used to gather at the table, with food and love, to make memories, share their lives, and revel in time spent together. But now her family has been drifting apart, and with nobody to gather around it, the table grows smaller and smaller. Can Violet remind her family of the warmth of time spent together, and gather around the table once more? A mystical fable that feels at once timeless and utterly of the present moment, Our Table is renowned, bestselling creator Peter H. Reynolds at his best. Exquisite, expressive watercolor tells a tender story, growing from monochrome into luscious, joyful color as Violet's family is reunited around the beloved table. 2021.
4523244 One-osaurus, Two-osaurus by Pierre Collet-Derby and Kim Norman
Part counting game, part dinosaur celebration, this energetic romp is a numbers concept book for the ages. One-osaurus, two-osaurus, three-osaurus, four! Look there, in a child’s bedroom, where some prehistoric pals are gathered in a counting game. Nine dinosaurs are playing a sing-song rendition of hide-and-seek—but something isn’t adding up. Where is number ten? Stomp, stomp, stomp! CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP! Ready or not, here he comes, and he sounds . . . big! 2021.
4523238 ROAR-chestra!: A Wild Story of Musical Words by Robert Heidbreder, Duýan Petricic
1 Musical terms come to life, and kids get to join in! A rhythmic poem is paired with exuberant illustrations of a conductor and his animal orchestra to convey the meanings of seven musical terms. The text contains a succinct physical definition for each term. For example, to define glissando the text reads, “Gently gliding, slipping, sliding.” And in the illustrations, the animals use movement to interpret this description, flowing across the spread as if rolling on a wave. Readers will find it easy to learn the terms --- and will have great fun playing along! Staccato. Adagio. Allegro. Fortissimo. What child can resist pronouncing these words --- or performing them! 2021.
4523243 This Is Ruby by Sara O'Leary, Alea Marley
Ruby is curious about her world and has big ideas about how it works. A delightful picture book celebration of science and creativity, and a welcome companion to Sara O'Leary's beloved This Is Sadie.Ruby is a little girl with a sense of curiosity and enthusiasm that's too big to contain! Ruby is always busy -- she loves to make things, watch things grow and figure out how things work, with her dog Teddy by her side. And Ruby has lots of ideas about what she wants to be: maybe an animal conservationist? Or an archaeologist? She's great at excavating (i.e. digging holes). Or maybe an inventor? She's already invented a book with smells instead of words (so dogs can read it) and a time machine (the dinosaurs did have feathers after all, and the future is looking wild). This is Ruby, and this is her world. 2021.
4622594 Meena's Mindful Moment by Tina Athaide and Åsa Gilland
Meena is excited to visit Dada and explore all the exciting sights and sensations of his home with him. But Meena has so much energy, it becomes a whole imaginary character she calls her hurly-burly hullabaloo. Wherever Meena goes, her hurly-burly hullabaloo goes too. Together they're never calm, as they run and cartwheel and make a lot of noise! But when Meena makes a mess, her grandfather is there to teach her how to handle it with deep breaths and meditative poses - after all, he has a hurly-burly hullabaloo too. With playful art and engaging characters (real and imagined), this charming story all about mindfulness will be wonderfully relatable to anyone with a rambunctious hurly-burly hullabaloo of their own. 2021.
4570701 Hockey with Dad by Willie Sellars and Nelson White
The highly anticipated follow-up to the award-winning Dipnetting with Dad, in Hockey with Dad, Little Brother's adventures continue as he grows and learns about the importance of hockey to his Secwépemc community. 2021.