Powerful lessons from mysterious Iroquois mask

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This article was published 15/10/2016 (3619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Susan Currie’s The Mask that Sang (Second Story Press, 112 pages, $10, paperback) is a story about friendship, family love and confronting bullying. It is also, however, about the effects of residential schools on their survivors, and about the importance of traditional myths and spirituality in indigenous culture.

Written for ages 9-12, this is a second book by this Brampton, Ont. author. Currie was a winner in Second Story’s aboriginal writing contest, and while some of the details of the residential school experience which are unloaded in the last chapters of the book seem as if they were simply added to comply with the contest, the story succeeds because of the strength of its characters, especially Cass, the young girl, and her indigenous friend Degan.

When Cass discovers an old Iroquois wooden mask in the drawer of her new home, she is at first shocked but then fascinated, especially after she hears music that seems to emanate from the mask. When the mask disappears, it takes the Degan’s tribal understanding to lead her to its recovery — and to knowledge that changes her feelings about herself and her future.

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When the Rain Comes by Ontario author Alma Fullerton and B.C. artist Kim La Fave (Pajama Press, 32 pages, $20, hardcover) is a beautiful picture book about a child in Sri Lanka who saves herself and her family’s crop during a torrential rain storm.

Malina is only four years old, but is entrusted to hold the reins of their family’s ox cart loaded with seedlings for this year’s crop. When a sudden storm threatens to tear the reins from her hands and stampede the ox, she finds the strength to hang on and lead the beast to shelter so the family’s seedlings will be saved.

Fullerton tells the story in expressive free verse, while La Fave’s pictures resemble underwater scenes as this award-winning artist uses paint and coloured pencil to depict the Sri Lankan storm. For youngest book lovers (ages 3-7).

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Chris Hadfield has been celebrated as an astronaut, space photographer, star of a viral music video, adult author and now as the creator of a charming children’s picture book, The Darkest Dark (Tundra, 48 pages, $23, hardcover).

Hadfield describes how, as a child, he was afraid of the dark. His parents tried everything — night lights, a dog companion, even a signalling bell — but only after he watched the first men land on the moon did he realize complete darkness is in outer space. From that moment on his bedroom’s darkness seemed trivial as he set out to prepare himself to one day experience the real darkness that waited outside Earth’s atmosphere.

This story is made more appealing by the attractive illustrations by Terry and Eric Fann of Toronto. Somehow they even made the pictures of Hadfield’s bedroom darkness visible. For ages 3-7.

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It’s hard to come up with a new way to catch beginning readers’ attention and teach them something at the same time. But Stacey Roderick of Toronto manages it in Ocean Animals from Head to Tail (Kids Can Press, 32 pages. $19, hardcover) by showing only part of the animal (an eye, a tail, a flipper) on the first page and revealing the whole creature on the next.

Readers are introduced to giant squid, blue whales, moray eels, seahorses, sea turtles and more, with clear language in large print. Illustrations by Kwanchai Moriya of California provide vibrant and colourful enhancements to every page as junior naturalists are challenged to guess who’s swimming in the ocean.

Helen Norrie would love to experience outer space or ocean depths, but only if she had guides like Chris Hadfield or Stacey Roderick.