Mavis and Merna, by Ian Wallace, Groundwood, 40 pages, $16.95, ages 5 to 8
At the top of his game, Ian Wallace is peerless, and his newest book -- a lovely amalgam of radiant watercolours and a story that floats above its own earthy humour and poignancy -- offers ample evidence of his capacity to enchant.
Mavis and Merna are an inquisitive child and new widow, respectively, as this story begins. Mavis has always loved the shop that Mavis and her husband, Joe Gully, ran in Fortune Cove. Gully's "sold everything a family could ever need. Bicycles and birdbaths. Church hats and long johns. Cream of Wheat and canoes. Hammers and licorice whips. Mavis loved the smell of wicker and wool, rubber and oil, perfume and leather all mixed up together."
But one Halloween night, Joe Gully dies. According to Mr. Quirk, neighbour and Fortune Cove's postman, "His heart stopped and he dropped like a rock while making his nightly deposit at the bank." When Mavis says that Mrs. Gully must be sad, her mother replies, "Joe's money will help her feel better. Merna will be the merriest widow of them all."
Joe Gully is laid out in the central aisle of Gully's, "between the boots and brassieres for three days." Mavis's dad remarks that Joe's coffin looked like a solid gold Cadillac: "Joe Gully will look like Elvis Presley riding up to the Pearly Gates in that shiny honker."
Her mother replies that Joe would have preferred to have been buried in a cardboard box. "I'll bet store prices will really fall now with Merna in charge," she adds for good measure.
But Gully's doesn't reopen after the funeral. Mavis imagines that Mrs. Gully must be very sad, sitting all alone in her house counting the millions she is reputed to have. Late one night, Mavis climbs the tree outside the Gully house and sees Mavis playing solitaire -- not counting her gold -- in her turret room. The tree branch snaps under Mavis's weight, and she crash-lands on the roof of the house and into Merna Gully's life.
What follows is the story of a decades-long friendship of uncommon depth between two of a small village's temperamentally marginalized characters, recounted with not a whit of sentimentality, and with those incandescent double-page Wallace paintings saying all that words cannot.
My Pet Puppy, by Marilyn Baillie, illustrated by Jane Kurisu; My Pet Kitten, by Marilyn Baillie, illustrated by Jane Kurisu, Kids Can, 32 pages, $6.95, ages 5 to 8
Bringing up baby -- the canine or feline kind -- is the subject matter of these two books geared to the child whose family is in the process of becoming a cat- or dog-owner. The implicit premise, even promise, is that if you start training your child early enough, she or he may indeed take the dog for walks and clean out the kitty-litter tray.
That unspoken premise might be putting words in the author's mouth, though, because what these books overtly offer, in a gently instructive way, is a great deal of information about the animals in question and what to do with them once they leave their litters. Woven through info bits entitled Bow-wow! or Meow!, a diary or notebook in which the puppy's or kitten's owner can enter her or his observations, and a "Bow-wow! Ha ha!" or two ("What do puppies drink at picnics? Pupsi-cola!"), is almost anything a five-year-old could want or need to know about the care, feeding, entertaining and early training of a new pet.
Me and My Sister, written and illustrated by Ruth Ohi, Annick, 24 pages, $5.95, ages 2 to 4
Venture past the grammatical horrors of the title, and Me and My Sister speaks volumes in very few words about sibling relationships -- the ambivalent part. In 30 words, some of them rhyming, the elder sister, who might be about 4, lays it all out, ably assisted by Ruth Ohi's expressive watercolours.
There's small "sister in the kitchen" throwing chocolate chips into the bowl of cookie mixture that big sister is stirring up. There's "sister in my room," which is clearly a no-go zone (the expression on big sister's face seems to shriek). There's "sister with my doll" and "sister being fed": Face and hands covered in food, she's not a pretty sight as she lunges for big sister's doll.
But if those are the gut-wrenching aspects of having a younger sister, her willingness to play and to read with her older sister seem to balance the equation. Perhaps the best moment for big sister is seeing "little sister sleeping on my bed."
Stephen Biesty's Castles, written by Meredith Hooper, Hodder Headline, 48 pages, $32.95, 8 to 12
Castles, from Krak des Chevaliers in Syria to Caernarfon Castle in Wales, from Osaka Castle in Japan to Windsor Castle in England, are the subject of this engrossing book, which will appeal to anyone with an eye for detail and an appetite for the pivotal points of ancient battles or reigns.
One example of the book's modus operandi is the chapter on King Ludwig II of Bavaria's castle, Neuschwanstein, in Germany. Turn the book on end, and a double-page illustration of the mad king's crenellated castle is on display, sections cut away so that the throne room, winding staircases and king's bedchamber are visible within the castle's stone walls.
As is the case with each castle/chapter, a date is given, "the you are there moment." In the case of Neuschwanstein, it is the night of Feb. 7, 1886, when "King Ludwig II of Bavaria is dreaming about his fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein."
Tonight he will ride there through the mountains in his sleigh, and the reader travels with him, into the vast and airy recesses of Ludwig's madness and, with the aid of a map, into the various parts of the castle.
Sun Signs, by Shelley Hrdlitschka, Orca, 176 pages, $9.95, ages 12 and up
The protection that on-line life offers, as well as the opportunities that abound for revelation of real and false selves, are just a two aspects of this clever, multifaceted novel.
Sun Signs takes the form of a series of e-mail conversations among five people. Interspersed between the e-mail is the diary/journal of the main protagonist, Kaleigh, aka cosmicgirl.
Kaleigh is embarking on a distance-education high school science course, the purpose of which is to study the seven steps of the scientific method, from stating the problem to forming the hypothesis to recording and analyzing data and sharing discoveries.
For reasons that become clear as the novel unfolds, Kaleigh decides to investigate scientific method via astrology which, as her on-line teacher, Mr. Selenski, points out, is not really a science. Nevertheless, he is prepared to go along with her as long as she is able to fulfill all the steps of the enquiry.
Kaleigh/cosmicgirl enlists three Leos on-line -- 2good4u, blondshavemorefun and starlight -- as her subjects; each will tell her whether their daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes tell the truth about or predict events in their daily lives.
The project becomes unstuck for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the reports from Kaleigh's subjects appear to be based on fabrications, aka lies, rather than the truth. In addition, it becomes apparent that each of the correspondents has an interesting reason for learning on line rather than in a regular high school.
In Kaleigh's case, it slowly and rather shockingly comes to light that she is being treated with chemotherapy and radiation for Ewing's sarcoma, the fatality rate for which is 60 per cent, which explains her interest in the fortunes told by the stars. Other revelations from the other characters make this a compulsively readable novel.