The holiday season is here, and there's no better time to cozy up with a good book (or ten!). Open Book's Holiday Book Guide will direct you to some of the most engaging books on store shelves this season. Our Guide will be regularly updated throughout December, featuring a fresh theme with each listing. Today's theme: CANADIANA.
Canadiana:
Love historical fiction? Ann Birch's Settlement (RendezVous Press) tells the story of scandal and political intrigue in early Toronto.
This new edition of Wow Canada! Exploring this Land from Coast to Coast to Coast (Maple Tree Press) by Vivien Bowers invites a new generation of readers to join 12-year-old Guy, his younger sister Rachel and their parents on a fun-filled adventure filled with facts and trivia from end to end of our vast country. Illustrations are by Dan Hobbs and Dianne Eastman.
Winter Shadows by Margaret Buffie intertwines the stories of two girls — separated only by a century — struggling to get used to life with their new step-mothers.
In their interdisciplinary history Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children's Illustrated Books and Publishing, Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman examine the changing geographical, historical and cultural aspects of Canadian identity through the lens of two centuries of children's publishing.
Gordon Lightfoot's much loved song comes to life in this book of the same title, Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Groundwood Books), richly illustrated by Ian Wallace.
Charlotte Whitton is famous for declaring, "Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult." Learn about the life of this fascinating and inspiring woman in Dave Mullington's biography Charlotte: The Last Suffragette (General Store Publishing House).
Read about the different perspectives on one of Canada's defining events in the fascinating collection of essays Expo 67: Not Just a Souvenir (University of Toronto Press), edited by Rhona Richman Kenneally and Johanne Sloan.
The 1960s loom large in the collective imagination even today. Harold Troper discusses the effect the decade had on Canada's Jewish community in The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s (University of Toronto Press).
If you haven't read it yet, the holidays may be just the time to dip into Sanctuary Line (McClelland & Stewart), the highly anticipated new novel by Ontario's Jane Urquhart.
In a Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946, Viola Desmond courageously refused to leave her seat on account of the colour of her skin. Jody Nyasha Warner tells this inspirational story in Viola Desmond Won’t Be Budged (Groundwood Books), with illustrations by Richard Rudnicki.
Buy these books at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
Don't miss previous editions of the Holiday Book Guide! Check out the great line up for:
WORK & PLAY
A TASTE FOR CULTURE
CITY LIVING
THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
STAGE, SCREEN & SONG
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