Award-winning storyteller and poet Joseph Dandurand captures the delightful relationship between bears and the Kwantlen people in his fourth book for children ages 6-8.
For a long time, the Kwantlen and the bears have lived side by side. When the master carver falls into the river, the bears rescue him. In thanks, the master carver gives the bears animal masks. But the bears don't know that these masks are magical.
The Bears and the Magic Masks is the fourth in the Kwantlen Stories Then and Now series by award-winning author Joseph Dandurand, following The Girl Who Loved the Birds, A Magical Sturgeon and The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets.
Sovereignty, vulnerability, honesty. --Ms. Magazine
it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence in simpson's debut collection of poetry:
i am five
my sisters are saying boy
i do not know what the word means but--
i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b,
the hollowness of the o, the blade of y
Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet's motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing--held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.
Housty's poems are textural--blossoms, feathers, stubborn blots of snow--and reading them is a sensory offering that invites the reader's whole body to be transported in the experience. Their writing converses with mountains, animals and all our kin beyond the human realm as they sit beside their ancestors' bones and move throughout the geography of their homeland. Housty's exploration of history and futurity, ceremony and sexuality, grieving and thriving invites us to look both inward and outward to redefine our sense of community.
Through these poems we can explore living and loving as a practice, and placemaking as an essential part of exploring our humanity and relationality.
A story for children by Kwantlen storyteller and award-winning poet Joseph Dandurand.
The Girl Who Loved the Birds is the third in a series of Kwantlen legends by award-winning author Joseph Dandurand, following The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets and A Magical Sturgeon.
Accompanied by beautiful watercolour illustrations by Kwantlen artist Elinor Atkins, this tender children's story follows a young Kwantlen girl who shares her life with the birds of the island she calls home. Collecting piles of sticks and moss for the builders of nests, sharing meals with the eagles and owls, the girl forms a lifelong bond with her feathered friends, and soon they begin to return her kindness.
Written with Dandurand's familiar simplicity and grace, The Girl Who Loved the Birds is a striking story of kinship and connection.
A Bigfoot myth for young readers, told in the great Indigenous storytelling tradition/p>
Deep in the thickest part of a cedar forest there lived a young Sasquatch. He was over nine feet tall and his feet were about size twenty. He had long brown hair that covered all of his body. His hands were so big and his arms so long he could wrap them around the biggest of the cedar trees. He had been born here many years ago and he did not know his parents, as they had been scared away by a great fire. He was left on his own and he had survived by eating berries and he had grown into the Sasquatch he now was...
So begins this charming story for children by Kwantlen storyteller Joseph Dandurand. The Sasquatch, spirit of the great cedar forest, eludes human hunters, falls in love, fathers a lovely daughter and saves his little family from a forest fire by dousing the flames with water stored in baskets carefully woven by his mate.
The story is told with grace and simplicity by a master storyteller in the great tradition of the Kwantlen people. Accompanied by whimsical illustrations from Kwakwaka'wakw artist Simon Daniel James, The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets follows a similar style to popular Nightwood titles such as Salmon Boy, Mayuk the Grizzly Bear and How the Robin Got Its Red Breast.
Late September is an intimate queer coming-of-age tale exploring the nuances of love, trauma and mental health. A compelling literary fiction debut for readers of Heather O'Neill and Zoe Whittall.
In the summer of 2000, Ines, a grief-stricken skateboarder beginning to explore her sexuality, leaves behind her sheltered hometown on a Greyhound bus bound for Montreal. In awe of the city's vibrancy, and armed with a journal and a Discman, Ines sets out to find a new way, befriending April, a latex-loving goth who gets her a job as a cam-girl. In the midst of a bar fight Ines meets Max, a magnetic skateboarder, whom she quickly falls for.
As summer fades to fall Ines tries to uphold the bliss of their intoxicating summer, realizing that while she has escaped the confines of her small-town life, she cannot escape her past. The city changes and their romance darkens as Ines learns that Max is experiencing mental health challenges, all while a regular at the cam studio gets threateningly close. Ines learns that loving herself first requires trial and error--and that love is not always an innocent word.
Imbued with passion, creativity and insight, Brandon Reid's debut novel is a wonderfully creative coming-of-age story exploring indigeneity, masculinity and cultural tradition.
Twelve-year-old Derik Mormin travels with his father and a family friend to Bella Bella for his grandfather's funeral. Along the way, he uncovers the traumatic history of his ancestors, considers his relationship to masculinity and explores the contrast between rural and urban lifestyles in hopes of reconciling the seemingly unreconcilable, the beauty of each the Indigenous and Western way of life--hence beautiful beautiful.
He travails a storm, meets long-lost relatives, discovers his ancestral homeland; he suffers through catching fish, gains and loses companions, learns to heal trauma. In Beautiful Beautiful we delve into the mind of a gifted boy who struggles to find his role and persona through elusive circumstance, and--
All right, that's quite enough third-person pandering; you're not fooling anyone. Redbird here, Derik's babysitter, and narrator of this here story. Make sure to smash that like button. We're here to bring light to an otherwise grave subject, friends. It's only natural to laugh while crying. I bring story to life. One minute I'm a songbird singing from a bough, the next, I'm rapture. I connect you to the realm of spirit... Well, as best I can, given your mundane allocation.
Follow us through primordial visions, dance with a cannibal (don't worry, they're friendly once tamed) and discover what it takes to be united. Together, we'll have fun. Together, we are one. So tuck in, and believe what you'll believe, for who knows what yesterday brings. Amen and all my relations, all my relations and amen.
This is a book about grief, death and longing. It's about the gristle that lodges itself deep into one's gums, between incisors and canines.
Teeth details not only the symptoms of colonization, but also the foundational and constitutive asymmetries that allow for it to proliferate and reproduce itself. Dallas Hunt grapples with the material realities and imaginaries Indigenous communities face, as well as the pockets of livability that they inhabit just to survive. Still this collection seeks joy in the everyday, in the flourishing of Indigenous Peoples in the elsewhere, in worlds to come.
Nestling into the place between love and ruin, Teeth traces the collisions of love undone and being undone by love, where the hope is to find an ocean nested in shoulders--to reside there when the tidal waves come. and then love names the ruin.
The Big Melt is a debut poetry collection rooted in nehiyaw thought and urban millennial life events. It examines what it means to repair kinship, contend with fraught history, go home and contemplate prairie ndn utopia in the era of late capitalism and climate change. Part memoir, part research project, this collection draws on Riddle's experience working in Indigenous governance and her affection for confessional poetry in crafting feminist works that are firmly rooted in place. This book refuses a linear understanding of time in its focus on women in the author's family, some who have passed and others who are yet to come. The Big Melt is about inheriting a Treaty relationship just as much as it is about breakups, demonstrating that governance is just as much about our interpersonal relationships as it is law and policy. How does one live one's life in a way that honours inherited responsibilities, a deep love for humour and a commitment to always learning about the tension between a culture that deeply values collectivity and the autonomy of the individual? Perhaps we find these answers in the examination of ourselves, the lands we are from and the relationships we hold.
Daniel is a young Métis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peopls to the land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement.
Set in Edmonton, this story considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive--from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Based on Papaschase and Métis oral histories and lived experience, Conor Kerr's debut novel will not soon be forgotten.
Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada's most recognized poets. The first part of the book, Dangerous Sound, contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. Muskrat Woman, the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section of the book, Ghost Dance, raids the autobiographical so often found in Scofield's poetry, weaving the personal and universal into a tapestry of sharp poetic luminosity. From Killer, Scofield eerily slices the dreadful in with the exquisite: I could, this day of proficient blooms, / take your fingers, / tie them down one by one. This one for the runaway, / this one for the joker, / this one for the sass-talker, / this one for the judge, / this one for the jury. / Oh, I could kill you.
A debut short story collection investigating the strange and unexpected intersections of loneliness and connection.
From his car, a lonely, heartbroken man secretly watches strangers going about their lives in the comfort of their own homes; when caught, he wrecks his car in an attempt to escape. A man hears a car wreck outside his home and has a wild night of romance with a strange woman he meets at the scene. A reclusive old writer starts to believe he is becoming his own characters as he writes. A college student looks to his girlfriend's diary for pointers on how he should act. A mother confronted with her estranged son's death by car wreck organizes a memorial service for a list of attendees she has never met.
This collection of sixteen connected short stories investigates the ways we humans so often feel lonely and alone, yet cannot avoid having our lives be contingent upon others--often in ways we can neither see nor understand. Blackett's characters long for meaningful connection and struggle to find it; they are too often unaware of the connections that are right in front of them.
Grandview Drive is a collection that builds on itself; the stories stand on their own, but they are strengthened by the (sometimes secret) connections they hold with each other. Blackett's debut asks the reader to think about love and loss, loneliness and heartbreak, redemption and starting life anew.
Fifty poems to dance (awkwardly) between queer and anxious spaces.
Social anxiety runs through I Hate Parties like a current. Recorded on deliberately shaky media, this collection offers the B-side of growing up queer, autistic and nonbinary. From Scruff dates to mix tapes, Jes Battis cruises (and crashes) through wild feelings and minor catastrophes. Dipping readers into a world of missed connections, social disasters and life as a queer party that constantly surprises, Battis uses a light touch and neurodiverse prosody as they chronicle middle-grade queerness and a kind of meandering surreality. From difficult desires, panic attacks and environmental sensitivities, Battis weaves nineties metaphors with current discussions of neurodiversity and trans rights in Canada as they ruminate between past and present like a cat refusing to settle. I Hate Parties guides us through all the best and worst parties of our lives--to the secret room beyond, where being awkward is the one and only dress code.
Written and illustrated in the tradition of the Kwantlen people, Joseph Dandurand's second book is an endearing tale of two sisters and their connection with nature.
In the water sat a sturgeon, born there, so they say, thousands of years ago, though the sturgeon themselves have been here for two hundred million years. It was at first a little egg, a big egg, born into the river. Now the sturgeon is back but how did it get here? How did the first sturgeon come to be? Earth and the river, moons and suns and clouds. Time, thousands of years and the Skwó wech has seen it all. But what gift does the sturgeon have for us?
So begins this second charming story for children by Kwantlen storyteller Joseph Dandurand. The sturgeon, spirit of the great river, eludes human fishers until two young sisters neglect to follow their mother's instructions. What follows provides a moving exploration of the importance of sharing and kinship with all other living things.
The story is told with grace and simplicity by a master storyteller in the great tradition of the Kwantlen people. Accompanied by Elinor Atkins's illustrations, A Magical Sturgeon is a touching follow-up to Dandurand's bestselling children's book The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets.
This latest instalment of the bestselling O Canada Crosswords series serves up an appetizing palate of Canadiana, pop culture and whimsical wordplay. Canadian themes touch on hockey, music, industry and places, and author Gwen Sjogren brings to the table several of her trademark pun puzzles like Money Changes Everything and Fit for a Witch. Seven grids have built-in shapes that enhance the rich flavour of this collection, including circle-in-the-square anagrams and the unique Breaking All the Rules--of crossword design, that is
Sjogren takes a new approach to some non-themed Canada Cornucopia crosswords as Challengers and Superchallengers that give solvers a taste of something different. Challengers have seven or fewer three-letter answers; Superchallengers up the ante with fewer three-letter words and no fill-in-the-blank clues, either.
Packed with 100 puzzles, including 67 large-sized grids, O Canada Crosswords 16 offers a smorgasbord of 11,000+ clues for hours of crossword solving delight.
Climb aboard the O Canada Crosswords express and embrace the adventure of 100 new crosswords. The 18th instalment of this popular series features several wordplay puzzles--including Rank and Guile, Sounds Fishy to Me and Forecast: Fun --as well as a suitcase full of Canadiana like Quotable Notables, Witty Women, Au Naturel and Great Scotts Along the way, you'll stop off in Hamilton and Quebec, disembark at Rio to relive Canada's Olympic achievements and detour to Sweden to celebrate hockey stars who lit up the NHL.
Fifteen puzzles veer off the beaten track, including four circle-in-the-square offerings, and three with hidden shapes or phrases embedded in the grids. For an extra cerebral challenge, five puzzles have no fill-in-the-blank clues. Author Gwen Sjogren also debuts a new format called Four-Square, in which solvers complete four mini puzzles to unlock a CanCon phrase.
With 97 larger grids, O Canada Crosswords Book 18 takes you on brainteasing journey across 13,000+ clues. So punch your ticket for hours of trivia, puns and fun
Over 250,000 O Canada Crosswords books sold in twenty years!
O Canada Crosswords rides again with the twenty-second instalment of this popular series, which features large-sized puzzles split between Canadian and other themes. With over 20 per cent of the clues focusing on Canadiana, you'll be chomping at the bit as author Gwen Sjogren harnesses her usual fodder of fresh themes and witty wordplay, including the following:
This collection also ropes in cultural highlights and notables of the '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s in eight themed puzzles. And Sjogren gallops to the finish line with some specialty grids embedded with shaded squares, circles and ampersands, plus Four-Square, which features four mini-grids.
So get back in the saddle with O Canada Crosswords Book 22--you're sure to enjoy the ride!
The Clothesline Swing is a journey through the troublesome aftermath of the Arab Spring. A former Syrian refugee himself, Ramadan unveils an enthralling tale of courage that weaves through the mountains of Syria, the valleys of Lebanon, the encircling seas of Turkey, the heat of Egypt and finally, the hope of a new home in Canada.
Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, The Clothesline Swing tells the epic story of two lovers anchored to the memory of a dying Syria. One is a Hakawati, a storyteller, keeping life in forward motion by relaying remembered fables to his dying partner. Each night he weaves stories of his childhood in Damascus, of the cruelty he has endured for his sexuality, of leaving home, of war, of his fated meeting with his lover. Meanwhile Death himself, in his dark cloak, shares the house with the two men, eavesdropping on their secrets as he awaits their final undoing.