THAT STRIPY CAT
By Norene Smiley, illustrated
by Tara Anderson, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 32 pages, $19.95,
ages 3 to 6
That stripy cat is the cat rescued and delivered to the Hummingbird Animal Centre, where Mrs. Cosy works. He's a no-name cat, small, with grey and white stripes and large green eyes. He's a timorous wee beastie, and one that doesn't lend himself to any adoption overtures or, actually, overtures of any kind; when he retreats to a hiding place under the couch in the face of any human contact, Mrs. Cosy declares that his name should be Steadfast.
When the stripy cat runs up one curtain and down another, Mrs. Cosy names him Spunky, and when she peels him off the screen door she calls him Full of Beans. When he resists a potential adopter's blandishments, he's left behind in favour of a poodle named Lucy, "with fur as soft as cotton balls and eyes like melted chocolate." He's left behind again when the McCurdy sisters come to the shelter looking for a mouser for their bookshop, and the stripy cat hides in a drawer.
By the time the animal shelter closes for the day, all the animals have found homes except that stripy cat. It will come as no surprise that the stripy cat and his great defender, Mrs. Cosy, belong to each other. She takes him home and shares her supper of salmon pot pie with him.
At night, they snuggle together under a quilt while Mrs. Cosy reads Puss in Boots aloud, and the stripy cat, now known as Velcro, purrs "in all the right places."
Small children, read this story, will purr in all the right places, too, and Tara Anderson's bright paintings raise the pleasure quotient.
THE SAKURA TREE
By Carolyn McTighe, illustrated
by Karen Brownlee, Red Deer,
32 pages, $19.95, ages 4 to 7
A colour palette in which shades of cherry-blossom pink predominate reflects the role that the cherry tree and its blossoms play in this poignant picture book about Japanese picture brides.
Impoverished families in early 20th-century Japan - in this book, the family is from Sendai - sent their daughters to British Columbia to marry young men who had chosen their brides from photographs sent by the girls' families.
In this story, three sisters are sent to Canada, each one carrying something that will provide solace for her in her new life in a new country. One brings a silk kimono, in which she will be married. Another brings a red violin, so that when she plays it she will "hear the sound of Sendai's spring winds rustling the leaves of the ... trees"
The third sister has brought three sakura (cherry) tree seeds. She plants these seeds when she arrives at her new home, and when the three cherry trees bloom she "will smell their sweet perfume and be reminded of my two gentle sisters and our home far away."
The sisters are separated when each goes off to live with the man to whom she has been promised. Their lives are happy, but they all pine for one another. Miraculously, petals from the cherry trees one sister planted drift into the lives of the other two. Following the trail of pink petals, the two sisters come upon the third, and in the shade of her cherry trees, "they talked and laughed and renewed their love for one another under the long flowering branches."
MEE-AN AND THE
MAGIC SERPENT
By Baba Waqué Diakité, Groundwood, 32 pages, $16.95, ages 4 to 7
"On the edge of the desert a beautiful but vain young girl named Mee-An lived with her parents and her magical younger sister, Assa."
These are the opening words of this delightful folk tale from Mali. The illustrations for the tale, of bustling markets and a wonderfully malign serpent - painted, we are told, on glazed ceramic tiles - bring their own voluptuous energy to the piece.
The tale concerns the marital aspirations of Mee-An, who will accept nothing less than perfection in a husband. Because not a blemish will be countenanced, suitor after suitor is rejected until Assa decides to take action. Using her magical powers, she transforms herself into a fly and buzzes around the village in search of the perfect man for her sister.
A serpent overhears two villagers talking about the quest and, using his magical powers, transforms himself into the perfect man. He passes muster with Mee-An and, despite her family's reservations (he doesn't smell human), the two are married.
The two go to live beside a river, accompanied by Assa. Soon enough, the perfect bridegroom's perfidy is discovered by Assa: She hears him exulting in his plans to fatten the sisters up and then eat them. Assa, with the help of a great black heron, saves their lives, and Mee-An comes to see that appearance may not be everything.
THE ECO-DIARY
OF KIRAN SINGER
By Sue Ann Alderson, illustrated by Millie Balance, Tradewind, 90 pages, $18.95, ages 10 to 14
The focus - and the locus - of this book of poems is Camosun Bog, a little "pocket of wilderness" that author Sue Ann Alderson first saw on a walk through the woods in Vancouver's Pacific Spirit Park. Alderson spent the summer of 2005 visiting the bog on the edge of the park, and helping with its restoration. This book, her introduction tells us, is the result of that summer's work.
In response to her granddaughter's anguish about "Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Disappearing rain forests, Melting glaciers ..." and her question, "But what can I do? I'm just a kid," the fictional grandma sends her granddaughter Kiran a diary for her 12th birthday, along with an invitation to join her and the other "boggers" in Camosun Bog: "Come with me to my work party this weekend. There's a bit of the planet right here practically in our backyard that needs looking after."
Kiran's diary entries are poems that span a week, each one, if not always an ode, certainly a pertinent observation of some aspect of the bog. Each poem is accompanied a watercolour illustration: a vignette of a cluster of bog blueberries or laurel, a little brown bat, a barred owl or a yellow pond lily, each one drawing the reader deeper into the world that Kiran's poems describe.
After a week of working alongside the other boggers, and weeding, reading, painting, writing, looking and seeing, Kiran's last poem is hopeful: "One plus one plus one and so on/ all working together./ That's how we can save something,/ heal something, change something -/ one plus one plus one and so on."
THE TALENTED CLEMENTINE
By Sarah Pennypacker, illustrations by Marla Frazee, Hyperion, 137 pages, $18.99,
ages 7 to 10
Some lucky Grade 3 and 4 readers may have discovered this precocious and nicely neurotic eight-year-old already - in the talented Ms. Pennypacker's first novel, Clementine.
She returns in this book accompanied by a deftly limned cast of characters that includes the imperious Margaret, a "friend" who takes one-upmanship to a breath-taking level, and a small brother she calls "Onions" or "Cabbage" in retaliation for her own - to her, at least - unfortunate name.
"I have noticed that teachers get exciting confused with boring a lot. But when my teacher said, 'Class, we have an exciting project to talk about,' I listened anyway."
Clementine tries everything to extricate herself from "the exciting project": the Grade 3 and 4 Talent-Palooza-Night of the Stars, an opportunity for students to sing, dance, play a musical instrument or turn cartwheels.
Clementine insists that she has no talents. Her ruses to get out of participating in the show are many, various and often very funny. Perhaps the most admirable of her confections, if not the most convincing, is that her father, the manager of the condominium in which the family lives, is moving to Egypt so that he can manage the Great Pyramid condo. After all, as Clementine says, "Everything is going condo these days. ... The Great Pyramid is four hundred and eight-one feet tall ... that could be a lot of condominiums."
Clementine's true talent emerges under the stresses to which junior-school talent shows are heir. She saves the day, and gets a curtain call all her own.
8