Happy New Year!

Another new school year has begun.  The sun is still shining but it’s chilly in the mornings as I walk to school.  As I was considering what to do for my first book display, I thought about the books I love and how I like to share them with others.  So… Ms. Griffith and I pulled some of the Books We’ve Read; We’ve Loved & [have] Given Us Joy.  What Read More …

Booksellers and Libraries

This Saturday was Independent Booksellers Day and I went over to one of my favourite, Iron Dog Books.  This is a small, but busy, bookstore.  The owners started with a bus, but now have this great little shop on Hastings.  I have other favourites as well.  Over in North Van, Edgemont Village, a great little community, is bookended by 2 stores; on the north end, 32 Books, and at the Read More …

Challenged & Banned Books

April is Literacy Month here at Burnaby Mountain.  While we’ll be saving the school-wide celebrating for April 11 – 14, here in the Library Learning Commons, we’re going to make a full month of it.  So we’re starting with a week that encourages you to think about your Freedom to Read. Books can take us to different times, different places, just … different.  Sometimes we see our own lives in Read More …

Happy New Year

Welcome to a new year – 2022.  I still remember the excitement of the new millenium, the 1900s sliding into the 2000s.  When I was young, looking ahead to that, it felt like the future.  But here we are, 22 years on, and things don’t feel all that different.  Except maybe the masks… I hope you had a good holiday.  It was one of my best.  A lot of reading, Read More …

A Christmas Carol.

In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.  This classic Charles Dickens story, published in 1843, is as relevant to our world as it was to the Victorians.  Ebenezer Scrooge has, over his adult life, slowly grown to love money to the exclusion of all else.  It will take a review of his earlier life and a view of the future to help him recognize what he has become and Read More …

Nov. 25 – International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993.  It defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” Nearly 1 in 3 Read More …

Agatha Christie

The Queen of Crime.  Outsold worldwide by only The Bible and Shakespeare. Dame Agatha Christie’s first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and her last, Postern of Fate, in 1973.  Known best for her detective mysteries, Christie also wrote plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, ran in London from 1952, becoming the world’s longest running play, closing only in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic Read More …

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Pippa’s sister was murdered by her boyfriend, who then killed himself.  Case closed – 5 years ago.  But Pippa’s not convinced.  She knew the boyfriend, Sal, and she doesn’t believe he would have killed her sister.  Now in grade 12, Pip decides her final year project will be an investigation to prove that her sister’s murderer was someone else.  Unfortunately, there is someone in town who doesn’t want Pippa poking Read More …

Hunted By the Sky

World building, magic, magical creatures, a possible saviour character, good vs. evil; these are just some of the characteristics of a good fantasy story.  In Hunted By the Sky, in a world inspired by medieval India, Gul watches her parents be murdered by the king’s warriors because she has a sun-shaped birthmark on her arm.  Because it was prophesied that a girl with such a birthmark would vanquish the king, Read More …

The Loop

If you are a fan of The Maze Runner, The Fifth Wave, or The Darkest Minds, you will want to dive into Ben Oliver’s The Loop. It is a story of a futuristic dystopia where prisoners live in The Loop, a death row for teens under the age of 18.  Execution can be pushed back by opting into “Delays,” scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in Read More …