Category: middle grade

Historical Canada

Canada Year by YearCanada Year by Year by Elizabeth MacLeod
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quick, if you are not Canadian, how much Canadian history can you tell me? And you can’t go look up old Kate Beaton’s Hark, A Vigilant cartoons either.

As an American, other than what I have learned from reading Kate Beaton, and reading on my own, I found that I really didn’t have much Canadian history under my belt. And did all you non-Canadian’s know that next year will be the 150th anniversary of their founding?

This is a very assessable little volume. It is not overly preachy, nor does it talk down to you. The author has picked one event per year to highlight, including nobel prize winners, olympic champions, and inventions. Nor does it shy away from issues such as the treatment of the First Nation people. The founding of the Indian act is mentioned, as well as the Residential schools apology. We learn who the first provinces who made up Canada were, as well as that Nunavut is the most recent province formed.

Highly recommended for just about everyone. Written at a middle-school to high school level, with great illustrations.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kids Can Press for making this book available for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Historical novel of a beauty pagent

Like VanessaLike Vanessa by Tami Charles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a story about Nichelle Nichols, who played Urura, in the original series of Star Trek, that she wanted to quit, after the first season. She felt she wasn’t doing anything special on the show, and felt she could do better elsewhere. But Martin Luther King Jr. told her to stay. That her being on the show as showing girls that looked like her, that they could be more.

And, in the 1983, for the first time since the Miss American contest began, a woman of color won. Vanessa Williams. Black girls, who thought they could never be Miss America now saw that they too could aspire.

Representation is important. It is important because, while we can imagine that we can be something, it is hard if we don’t have role models that show that yes, it can happen.

And while I had a feeling that some things in this book would turn out the way they did, this doens’t mean that this was all slapped together. This book made me cry at the right points, and feel for Vanessa at the right points, and all the feels were there.

And this is probably, although as the author says, she did not come from quite such a hard place as the Vanessa in this book, she too tried the beauty content route, and knows from where she speaks.

Well researched (I like that in an historical novel), and well written, and just wonderful.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

View all my reviews