excellent
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Reviews: ‘Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures’ & ‘The Thirteenth Tale’
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam The 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize Winner, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures contains interconnected stories revolving around a few main characters as they go from medical school to being practicing physicians. Lam, an emergency room physician himself, writes in what I would call a very natural manner- unfussy, approachable and Read more
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Great Picture Books! (2)
Big Bad Bubble by Adam Rubin, illus. Daniel Salmieri Just look at that cover! Are you smiling yet?! Rubin & Salmieri- the team behind Secret Pizza Party and Dragons Love Tacos– have given us another totally winning and funny story. You wouldn’t think it, but monsters in La La Land are actually petrified of bubbles. Read more
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Picture Book Picks: Friendship, Love & Kindness
Picture books about friendship, love and kindness are, I think, always welcome! We get a lot of questions at our library regarding the aforementioned themes, and I’ve slowly been cultivating my list of favourites over the a number of years. Here, in no particular order, are my favourite picture books about love and friendship. (…This Read more
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Reviews: A Complicated Kindness & Three Wishes
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews I don’t think I can adequately express just how devastating, unfamiliar, and outstanding I found this novel to be. I mentioned in a previous post that I had this sitting on my shelves for far too long- I kept putting this read off, for whatever reasons. But, my goodness, Read more
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Best of 2014, Part 4: Picture Books
This collage of covers includes my picks for top picture book titles I read in 2014. Please note that some titles may have been published in previous years, but they were all new to me this year! In no particular order, here are my favourites: Read more
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Best of 2014, Part 3: Humour
While much of my 2014 reading from the humour genre came from rereads of my favourite comic strip collections, there were a few new standouts for me: Tails Don’t Lie: A Decade of Dog Cartoons (70 in Dog Years) by Adrian Raeside I’ve long enjoyed Canadian cartoonist Raeside’s The Other Coast comic strip, along with Read more
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Best of 2014, Part 2: Children’s Fiction and Young Adult
My picks for top 5 children’s and top 5 YA fiction I read this year: Murder Most Unladylike (Wells and Wong #1) by Robin Stevens The Return of Zita the Spacegirl (Zita the Spacegirl #3) by Ben Hatke Now Look What You’ve Done (Timmy Failure #2) by Stephen Read more
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Picture Book Picks: Wintry Reads
There’s just something so welcoming about winter-themed picture books! Stories about polar bears, penguins and other winter creatures; stories about the changes of the season; stories about playing in the snow, going sledding, snuggling up by a roaring fire… Here, in no particular order, are some of my favourite wintry reads: Singing Away the Dark Read more
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Spotlight: The Timmy Failure series by Stephan Pastis
As a big fan of Stephan Pastis’ acerbic yet contemplative Pearls Before Swine comic strip, I couldn’t wait to read Pastis’ middle-grade Timmy Failure series. I was in for a treat. Our protagonist, Timmy Failure, comes from a long line of Fayleures (his ancestors changed the spelling of their name). He lives with his mother Read more
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Spotlight: Molly Idle’s ‘Flora’ Picture Books
Last year I read Molly Idle’s wordless picture book Flora and the Flamingo and it instantly became a favourite of mine. When I found out that another Flora book was planned, I was ecstatic…but wondered if a follow-up could be as magical, as lyrical, as the first. Well, I can tell you that Flora and Read more
FAB BOOK REVIEWS 