In the far, far north, Pikiq finds paint, paintbrushes and a book with pictures of tropical animals and faraway places, abandoned in the deep snow. Inspired, he draws fantastic creatures everywhere, and color bursts onto the white landscape.
Primary (ages 6-9)
Material appropriate for primary age groups
The Antlered Ship
An inquisitive fox named Marco and a bored flock of pigeons join the crew of deer Captain Sylvia, setting sail in her antlered ship in search of a wonderful island and finding friendship on the way.
Dumpling Dreams
“The story of how Joyce Chen, a girl born in Communist China, immigrated to the United States and popularized Chinese cooking.”
The Mermaid
“Set in the ocean off Japan, this retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears stars Kiniro, a mermaid, who finds a baby octopus’s breakfast, chair, and bed just right”
Koala
In a high tree fork, a gray ball unfurls. Koala seeks his mother’s milk, but for the first time, she won’t let him into her pouch. It’s time for Koala to make his own way in the world. Rival koalas, fierce storms, and frightening snakes force Koala to keep moving—until he finds a safe place to call his own. In this dramatic nonfiction account, two renowned Australian picture-book creators bring us a surprising and authentic look at the ever-popular koala.
Yo Soy Muslim
A lyrical celebration of multiculturalism as a parent shares with a child the value of their heritage and why it should be a source of pride, even when others disagree.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XII, Issue 1
Ancient Thunder
Leo Yerxa, an artist of Ojibway ancestry, brings us an art book in which he celebrates wild horses and the natural world in which they lived in harmony.
Huron Carol
In the early 1600s Father Jean de Brébeuf came to Canada from his native France as a Jesuit missionary. He settled among the Huron, or Ouendat, people in what is now Midland, Ontario. Despite his missionary zeal, Brébeuf was sensitive to the people with whom he lived. He learned their language and he wrote, in Huron, the original version of this famous Christmas carol. He and his fellow priests, called Black Robes, and many of their Huron parishioners were killed in an Iroquois raid in 1649. But Brébeuf’s carol continued to be sung by successive generations of Hurons. Then in 1926, Toronto writer Jesse Edgar Middleton, inspired by Brébeuf, wrote his own version of the carol in English. His are the familiar words we sing today, describing the Huron landscape, flora and fauna in telling the Christmas story.
The Red Sash
This story centers on a young Metis (mixed blood) boy growing up outside Fort Williams, a major Canadian fur trading post linking northern and central Canada to the North West Trading Company in Montreal. The boy longs to become one of the voyagers, or fur traders, who wear red sashes as they travel the rivers of northern and central Canada. The Red Sash provides readers an authentic picture of life at a fur trading post in the early 1800s.
Idaa Trail: In the Steps of Our Ancestors
Etseh and Etsi traveled the Idaa Trail when they were children and as they paddle north with their grandchildren, they pass along their knowledge of special sites along the way — the history behind an abandoned village, the legend of the wolverine and its babies at the Sliding Hill, the story of a mysterious gravesite. They also explain how their people survived in the old days – building birch bark canoes, fishing with willow lines and muskrat-tooth hooks, and ambushing herds of caribou.