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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 Morin'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 the murder of his parents 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.)