Exciting account of famous Manitoba explorer Kelsey

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2009 (6307 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CAN you imagine being the first white man to see the acres of rolling prairie fields and wild flowers of Saskatchewan?

That’s just one of the images in a new young-adult novel by Nova Scotia-based author Alfred Silver, The Boy Kelsey (Great Plains, 192 pages, $15 paperback).

Set in 1690, Silver’s novel begins in York Factory, as apprentice Henry Kelsey is approached by the chief factor and asked to travel west to make contact with new Indian tribes for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

With his skill with languages, an appreciation for the aboriginal people and a strong survival instinct, Kelsey soon lives up to the name his is given by a native tribe, “Little Giant.”

Silver, a former Winnipegger, has taken liberties with Kelsey’s story, inventing a strong romantic liaison between Kelsey and Meyokwaiwin, a young Cree woman whose knowledge of the terrain and the skills needed to survive a northern winter are invaluable.

Yet he has kept many of the most well known incidents in Kelsey’s early life true to the record. This is a well written and exciting account of one of Manitoba’s most famous explorers.

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What could be more thrilling than working in New York City at age 17 with a theatre company presenting A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Perhaps having the characters in the play come to life?

In Wondrous Strange, a teen novel by Toronto author Lesley Livingston (HarperCollins, 327 pages, $18 paperback), Kelley Winslow is working with a repertory company in New York as understudy to Queen Titania, when she rescues a horse from drowning in Central Park.

When the horse turns out to have connections to a real Queen Titania, Kelley is caught in the middle of reality and fantasy.

Livingston manages to make Kelley’s adventures seem plausible while introducing a cast of unlikely characters. It’s not surprising that the author is both a specialist in Shakespearean literature but also an actor and teacher.

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Little is known about the Beothucks, the ancient aboriginal tribe whose members inhabited parts of Newfoundland centuries ago and were shamefully hunted and wiped out in the 19th century.

Christopher Dinsdale, in Stolen Away (Napoleon, 229 pages, $11 paperback), gives us his interpretation of their culture as well as that of ancient Viking explorers in this fast-paced historical adventure.

Kiera is a young woman kidnapped from Ireland by the Vikings. She has been taken first to Iceland and then to Vinland (today’s Newfoundland) as a family slave, but she never loses her dream of returning home.

Kiera is ordered to join the work crew on a ship that will explore further south. She despairs, because it will take her even further away from Ireland.

But she has no anticipation of the dangers and excitement that lie ahead, or of the young man she will meet in the Beothuck village.

Dinsdale is a teacher from Newmarket, Ont., who has parlayed a love of history into a novel that will interest readers 12 and up.

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In an unusual young adult novel with an exotic locale, American writer Pat Lowery Collins has set Hidden Voices: The Orphan Musicians of Venice (Candlewick Press, 352 pages, $20 hardcover) in early 18th-century Italy.

The main characters in this novel all live in the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, a special orphanage whose music director is none other than the composer Antonio Vivaldi.

Collins, who lives in Massachusetts, peoples her novel with vivid characters. This is historical writing at its best and will be enjoyed by lovers of historical romance but particularly those interested in music.

Helen Norrie is a Winnipeg writer with a strong interest in children’s literature. Her column appears on the third Sunday of the month.