Governor General's Literary Awards 2021

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

William Holt

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

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You recommended this title on September 12 2019

Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

Review content may be used by Loan Stars, the publisher of the title, BookNet Canada or selected third-parties at the program's discretion loanstsrs

You recommended this title on September 12 2019

Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

This is a really great book that really opens your eyes to the use of hokey-pokey snakeoil based teething pain treatments that aren't Tylenol or Motrin based. Or then something else entirely that has nothing to do

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Governor General's Literary Awards 2021

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1.
Series: Tainna The Unseen Ones, Short Stories Paperback Dr. Norma Dunning 9781771622714 $19.95 FICTION Mar 27, 2021

Drawing on both lived experience and cultural memory, Norma Dunning brings together six powerful new short stories centred on modern-day Inuk characters in Tainna. Ranging from homeless to extravagantly wealthy, from spiritual to jaded, young to elderly, and even from alive to deceased, Dunning’s characters are united by shared feelings of alienation, displacement and loneliness resulting from their experiences in southern Canada. In Tainna—meaning “the unseen ones” and pronounced Da-e-nn-a—a fraught reunion between sisters Sila and Amak ends i... + Read More
2.
Series: Fictional Father Paperback Joe Ollmann 9781770464636 $29.95 COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS Age (years) from 16 May 18, 2021

The first graphic novel nominated for the Governor General Literary Award! A dysfunctional family lives in the shadow of a world famous comic strip and its tyrannical creatorCaleb is a middle-aged painter with a non-starter career. He also happens to be the only child of one of the world's most famous cartoonists, Jimmi Wyatt. Known for the internationally beloved father and son comic Sonny Side Up, Jimmi made millions drawing saccharine family stories while neglecting his own son.Now sober, Caleb is haunted by his wasted past and struggling t... + Read More
3.
Series: Home Waltz Paperback G.A. Grisenthwaite 9781989287644 $18.95 FICTION Sep 01, 2020

In 1973, fifteen-year old Q?óq?ésk?i?, or "Squito" Bob, is a mixed-blood N?e?kepmx boy trying to find his place in a small, mostly Native town. His closest friends are three n?e?kepmx boys and a white kid, an obnoxious runt who thinks himself superior to his friends. Accepted as neither Native nor white, Squito often feels like the stray dog of the group and envisions a short, disastrous life for himself. Home Waltz follows the boys over thirty-six hours on what should be one of the best weekends of their lives. With a senior girls volleyball t... + Read More
4.
Series: Second Place A Novel Hardcover Rachel Cusk 9781443458733 $29.99 FICTION May 04, 2021

Longlisted for the Booker PrizeOn O, The Oprah Magazine’s list of 55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 On a sun-soaked Parisian street, M, a mother on the brink of rebellion, wanders into a famous artist’s gallery show. The artist’s paintings speak—quite literally—to her, promising a liberation usually reserved for men. She returns to the coastal home she shares with her husband, but the unsettling impression of the art, and the evasive artist, remains. So she writes to him, inviting him to stay in their second place, a modest cottage salva... + Read More
5.
Series: You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. Paperback Sheung-King 9781771666411 $20.00 FICTION Oct 27, 2020

Finalist for the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for FictionFinalist for the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel AwardLonglisted for Canada Reads 2021 Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award A Globe and Mail Best Book Debut of 2020 A young translator living in Toronto frequently travels abroad—to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo—often with his unnamed lover. In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a comic and enigmatic relationship in... + Read More
6.
Series: The Junta of Happenstance Paperback Tolu Oloruntoba 9781989287729 $19.95 POETRY May 01, 2021

Personal, primordial, and pulsing with syncopated language, Tolu Oloruntoba?s poetic debut, The Junta of Happenstance, is a compendium of dis-ease. This includes disease in the traditional sense, as informed by the poet?s time as a physician, and dis-ease as a primer for family dysfunction, the (im)migrant experience, and urban / corporate anxiety. In the face of struggles against social injustice, Oloruntoba navigates the contemporary moment with empathy and intelligence, finding beauty in chaos, and strength in suffering. The Junta of Happens... + Read More
7.
Series: A History of the Theories of Rain Paperback Stephen Collis 9781772012880 $16.95 POETRY Feb 08, 2021

“Can you walk away from a climate?” Maybe. But “in the future / everyone will have their fifteen minutes of blame.” A History of the Theories of Rain explores the strange effect our current sense of impending doom has on our relation to time, approaching the unfolding climate catastrophe conceptually through its dissolution of the categories of “man-made” and “natural” disasters. How do we go on with our daily lives while a disastrous future impinges upon every moment? Collis provides no easy answers and offers no simple hope. What his book do... + Read More
8.
Series: A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure Paperback Hoa Nguyen 9781950268177 $26.95 POETRY Apr 16, 2021

2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR POETRYA collection inspired by Hoa’s mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe, is verse meditation on Vietnam’s diaspora.Hoa Nguyen’s latest collection is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” and comprises a verse biography on her mother, Diep Anh Nguyen, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, the poems inA Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure are aliv... + Read More
9.
Series: sulphurtongue Paperback Rebecca Salazar 9780771094699 $19.95 POETRY Mar 23, 2021

An urgent, powerful examination of place and the ways in which all kinds of identities exist and collide.GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY, FINALIST PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD, SHORTLISTJ. M. ABRAHAM ATLANTIC POETRY AWARD, SHORTLIST GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD, LONGLISTThe poems in sulphurtongue ask how to redefine desire and kinship across languages, and across polluted environments. An immigrant family scatters over a stolen continent. Oracles appear in public transit, and online. Bodies are transformed by nearby nickel mines. Do... + Read More
10.
Series: The Untranslatable I Paperback Roxanna Bennett 9781774220177 $20.00 POETRY Feb 01, 2021

In unmeaningable, her previous Trillium Poetry Awards winning book with Gordon Hill Press, Roxanna Bennett renovated the North American disability poetics canon via her queer fusion of invisible and visible disability identities. The Untranslatable I builds on Roxanna's acute sense of form and cripping of myth by establishing a more reflective, heartbreaking voice that asks, "Was I chosen? Is this a gift or a curse?" and provides answers not as prescribed path or cure, but as beautiful song.
11.
Series: Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes Paperback Hannah Moscovitch 9780369102300 $18.95 DRAMA Jul 27, 2021

The archetypal student-teacher romance is cleverly turned on its head for the post-#MeToo era in this striking new play by the acclaimed author of What a Young Wife Ought to Know and Bunny. Jon, a star professor and author, is racked with self-loathing after his third marriage crumbles around him when he finds himself admiring a student—a girl in a red coat. The girl, nineteen-year-old Annie, is a big fan of his work, and also happens to live down the street. From their doorways to his office to hotel rooms, their mutual admiration and sexual ... + Read More
12.
Series: Crippled Paperback Paul Power 9781550818932 $17.95 DRAMA Jul 01, 2021

***2021 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FINALIST, DRAMA CATEGORY*** Crippled is a story about love, death, life and redemption. You will laugh, you will cry and you will walk away with a new perspective about life and what matters. Paul Power’s play, Crippled, has garnered awards and glowing reviews for his portrayal of his experiences as a person living with a disability. Now in a published form, his story of challenge, loss, and redemption presents universal themes and emotions told through a voice that is not often heard in the mai... + Read More
13.
Series: Selfie Paperback Christine Quintana 9780369101259 $17.95 DRAMA Age (years) from 14 - 18 Nov 23, 2020

A new year of high school is full of excitement and potential—but three teens didn’t expect it to bring such a dark change to their lives. After spending a summer reinventing herself in Paris, Emma is ready for her new life to start, while her best friend Lily is eager for them to reconnect. Lily throws a last-minute party fuelled by alcohol and Instagram, which leads to a long-awaited encounter between Emma and Lily’s older brother Chris. But the next day Emma feels that something went terribly wrong. When a doctor’s appointment and a visit fr... + Read More
14.
Series: Take d Milk, Nah? Paperback Jivesh Parasram 9780369100986 $17.95 DRAMA May 11, 2021

Jiv is “Canadian.” And “Indian.” And “Hindu.” And “West Indian.” “Trinidadian,” too. Or maybe he’s just colonized. He’s not the “white boy” he was teased as within his immigrant household. Especially since his Nova Scotian neighbours seemed to think he was Black. Except for the Black people—they were pretty sure he wasn’t. He’s not an Arab, and allegedly not a Muslim—at least that’s what he started claiming after 9/11. Whatever he is, the public education system was able to offer him the chance to learn about his culture from a coffee table boo... + Read More
15.
Series: Two Indians Paperback Falen Johnson 9781927922743 $15.95 DRAMA Apr 01, 2021

Win lives on the rez and Roe lives in the city, where she fled after a terrible family tragedy. After years apart, the two cousins reunite in a Toronto alley to recreate a ceremony from their childhood, but can they remember how? Has the world changed too much? Have they? When the words "missing and murdered," "truth and reconciliation," "occupation and resistance" are everywhere, how do two Mohawk women stand their ground? Falen Johnson"s powerful Two Indians is a darkly comedic look at the landscape of being Indigenous.
16.
Series: Alfabet/Alphabet Paperback Sadiqa de Meijer 9781989287606 $15.95 LITERARY COLLECTIONS Oct 01, 2020

alfabet / alphabet is the record of Sadiqa de Meijer?s transition from speaking Dutch to English. Exploring questions of identity, landscape, family, and translation, the essays navigate the shifting cultural currents of language by using an eclectic approach to storytelling. As such, fellow linguistic migrants to anglophone Canada will recognize elements of their experience in alfabet / alphabet, while lifelong English speakers will perceive their mother tongue in a new light.
17.
Series: Care Of Letters, Connections, and Cures Hardcover Ivan Coyote 9780771051722 $25.00 LITERARY COLLECTIONS Jun 08, 2021

Beloved storyteller Ivan Coyote returns with their most intimate and moving book yet.Writer and performer Ivan Coyote has spent decades on the road, telling stories around the world. For years, Ivan has kept a file of the most special communications received from readers and audience members—letters, Facebook messages, emails, soggy handwritten notes tucked under the windshield wiper of their truck after a gig. Then came Spring, 2020, and, like artists everywhere, Coyote was grounded by the pandemic, all their planned events cancelled. The ener... + Read More
18.
Series: Revery A Year of Bees Paperback Jenna Butler 9781989496138 $18.00 NATURE Oct 20, 2020

Starting in late November as the bees are settling in for winter Jenna Butler takes us through a year of beekeeping on her small piece of the boreal forest. She considers the impact of crop sprays, and debates the impact of introduced flowers versus native flowers, the effect of colony collapse disorder and the protection of natural environments for wild bees. But this is also the story of women and bees and how beekeeping became Butler's personal survival story.
19.
Series: The Day the World Stops Shopping Hardcover J.B. Mackinnon 9780735275539 $32.95 SOCIAL SCIENCE May 18, 2021

A FINALIST FOR THE 2021 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR NONFICTIONIn a brilliant work of imaginative non-fiction, prize-winning author J.B. MacKinnon asks what would happen—to our economy, our ecology, our products, our selves—if we stopped consuming so much? Is that alternative world one we might actually want to live in?“We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma.”The planet says we consume too much: in North America, we burn the earth’s resources at a rate five times faster than they can regenerate. And despite our ef... + Read More
20.
Series: What I Remember, What I Know The Life of a High Arctic Exile English Edition Paperback Larry Audlaluk 9781772272376 $25.95 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Oct 06, 2020

Larry Audlaluk was born in Uugaqsiuvik, a traditional settlement west of Inujjuak in northern Quebec, or Nunavik. He was almost three years old when his family was chosen by the government to be one of seven Inuit families relocated from Nunavik to the High Arctic in the early 1950s.They were promised a land of plenty. They were given an inhospitable polar desert. Larry tells of loss, illness, and his family’s struggle to survive, juxtaposed with excerpts from official reports that conveyed the relocatees’ plight as a successful experiment. Wi... + Read More
21.
Series: Firefly Paperback Philippa Dowding 9781770865983 $13.95 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 9 - 12 Feb 06, 2021

Winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature - Text Firefly lived in the park across from her mother’s home. It was safer there. But after the bad night happens, and her baseball-bat-wielding mother is taken away, social services sends Firefly to live with her Aunt Gayle. She hardly knows Gayle, but discovers that she owns a costume shop. Yes, Firefly might be suffering from PTSD, but she can get used to taking baths, sleeping on a bed again, and wearing as many costumes as she can to school. But where ... + Read More
22.
Series: Blood Like Magic Blood Like Magic Hardcover Liselle Sambury 9781534465282 $24.99 YOUNG ADULT FICTION Age (years) from 14 - 99 Jun 15, 2021

“High stakes, big heart, and lots of Black Girl Magic…unputdownable.” —Aiden Thomas, New York Timesbestselling author of Cemetery Boys A rich, dark urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love—she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.After years of waiting for her Calling—a trial every witch must pass to come into their powers—the one thing Voya Thomas didn’t expect was to fail. When Voya’s ancestor gi... + Read More
23.
Series: Peter Lee's Notes from the Field Hardcover Angela Ahn 9780735268241 $21.99 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 9 - 12 Mar 02, 2021

Eleven-year-old Peter Lee has one goal in life: to become a paleontologist. But in one summer, that all falls apart. Told in short, accessible journal entries and combining the humor of Timmy Failure with the poignant family dynamics of Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Peter Lee will win readers’ hearts.Eleven year-old Peter Lee has one goal in life: to become a paleontologist. Okay, maybe two: to get his genius kid-sister, L.B., to leave him alone. But his summer falls apart when his real-life dinosaur expedition turns out to be a bust, and he watches his ... + Read More
24.
Series: The Fabulous Zed Watson! Hardcover Basil Sylvester 9781443460910 $21.99 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 8 - 12 Jan 26, 2021

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDFINALIST FOR THE OLA SILVER BIRCH AWARDThe literary scavenger hunt of a lifetime, starring an endlessly endearing non-binary tweenZed Watson loves a few things: their name (which they chose themself!), their big rambunctious family, and—oh yeah—monsters. When Zed discovered the mystery surrounding an unpublished novel called The Monster’s Castle, they were completely hooked. Now Zed is a member of a small but dedicated legion devoted to finding the long-buried text.When a breakthrough discovery ... + Read More
25.
Series: Unravel Paperback Sharon Jennings 9780889956193 $14.95 YOUNG ADULT FICTION Age (years) from 12 Feb 15, 2021

As Rebecca is about to turn twelve years old, she begins to realize that Joe, her father, is not the most supportive of parents. Rather he seems to want to turn her away from friendships, from involvement with others, from anyone who might intrude on their two lives. When it seems their affectionate neighbour is becoming too inquisitive, Joe abruptly arranges for himself and Rebecca to make a quick move to another place in the city. And as she reflects on things, Rebecca realizes that this is what has always happened. Also, she doesn't attend s... + Read More
26.
Series: On the Trapline Hardcover David A. Robertson 9780735266681 $21.99 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 4 - 8 May 04, 2021

A picture book celebrating Indigenous culture and traditions. The Governor General Award—winning team behind When We Were Alone shares a story that honors our connections to our past and our grandfathers and fathers.A boy and Moshom, his grandpa, take a trip together to visit a place of great meaning to Moshom. A trapline is where people hunt and live off the land, and it was where Moshom grew up. As they embark on their northern journey, the child repeatedly asks his grandfather, “Is this your trapline?” Along the way, the boy finds himself im... + Read More
27.
Series: Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know Niibing, dgwaagig, bboong, mnookmig dbaadjigaade maanpii mzin’igning / A Book about the Seasons Hardcover Brittany Luby 9781773063263 $18.95 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 3 - 7 Mar 01, 2021

An Anishinaabe child and her grandmother explore the natural wonders of each season in this lyrical, bilingual story-poem. In this lyrical story-poem, written in Anishinaabemowin and English, a child and grandmother explore their surroundings, taking pleasure in the familiar sights that each new season brings. We accompany them through warm summer days full of wildflowers, bees and blueberries, then fall, when bears feast before hibernation and forest mushrooms are ripe for harvest. Winter mornings begin in darkness as deer, mice and other anim... + Read More
28.
Series: Out into the Big Wide Lake Hardcover Paul Harbridge 9780735265592 $22.99 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 4 - 8 May 18, 2021

An empowering and necessary picture book about a young girl with Down syndrome who gains confidence and independence through a visit to her grandparents.It’s Kate’s first time visiting her grandparents on her own at their lakeside home. She’s nervous but excited at the adventure ahead.She helps her grandfather with his grocery deliveries by boat, where she meets all the neighbors, including a very grumpy old man named Walter. And she makes best friends with her grandparents’ dog, Parbuckle.Her grandmother even teaches her to pilot the boat all ... + Read More
29.
Series: The Library Bus Hardcover Bahram Rahman 9781772781014 $22.95 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 5 - 8 Nov 24, 2020

Author Bahram Rahman grew up in Afghanistan during years of civil war and the restrictive Taliban regime of 1996-2001. He wrote The Library Bus to tell new generations about the struggles of women who, like his own sister, were forbidden to learn. It is still dark in Kabul, Afghanistan when the library bus rumbles out of the city. There are no bus seats—instead there are chairs and tables and shelves of books. And there are no passengers—instead there is Pari, who is nervously starting her first day as Mama’s library helper. Pari stands tall to... + Read More
30.
Series: The Wind and the Trees Hardcover Todd Stewart 9781771474337 $19.95 JUVENILE FICTION Age (years) from 4 - 8 Mar 15, 2021

A gentle meditation on the cycle of life, told by two trees One day, a tiny pine seedling strikes up a conversation with a nearby tree. As the seedling grows larger, the older pine shares what it has learned about the strong wind that blows through the forest. Wind stretches trees and dries them out, but it also scatters seeds, spreads messages across the forest, and helps trees grow strong as it pushes against their trunks. As time passes, the wind takes its toll on the older tree. It loses needles and starts to droop as the young tree gro... + Read More
31.
Series: This Radiant Life Paperback Chantal Neveu 9781771666336 $20.00 POETRY Nov 19, 2020

Winner of the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for TranslationWinner of the 2021 Nelson Ball Poetry Prize In this stunning long poem, Chantal Neveu draws from the lexicons of science, art, revolution and corporeal movement to forge intense and extended rhythms that invoke the elements and spaces making up our world. This is poetry capable of holding life and death, solidarity and love. Renewal. Breathing. In its brevity and persistence, This Radiant Life is a material call for action: it asks us to let go, even just a little bit, of our i... + Read More
32.
Series: A Cemetery for Bees Paperback Alina Dumitrescu 9781773900834 $18.95 FICTION Feb 01, 2021

This autobiographical novel traces the journey of a woman from her youth in Socialist Eastern Europe to her transplanted life in Montreal, Canada. She is a precocious, thoughtful child, whose early life in Romania is marked by the scarcities of the time and the political games needed to survive, but she is not unhappy. Placed around her family?s house are hives?the bees discourage the secret police from visiting too often?and they provide both a childish diversion and an overarching metaphor for departure and home. An elegant, candid book, A Ce... + Read More
33.
Series: Paul at Home Paperback Michel Rabagliati 9781770464148 $29.95 COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS Age (years) from 14 Nov 17, 2020

An affecting exploration of the ways our roles as parents and children change over a lifetime Paul at Home is Quebecois superstar Michel Rabagliati's most personal book yet, a riveting, emotional, and frequently amusing take on the losses and loneliness of being closer to retirement than to university. Paul is in his mid-50s, a successful cartoonist with an achy shoulder living in a house he once shared with his wife and daughter. The backyard is unkempt, full of weeds. A swing set sits idle, slowly rusting beside a half-dead tree Paul plant... + Read More
34.
Series: McGill-Queen's French Atlantic Worlds Series People, State, and War under the French Regime in Canada Paperback Louise Dechêne 9780228006770 $44.95 HISTORY Jul 15, 2021

Covering a period that runs from the founding of the colony in the early seventeenth century to the conquest of 1760, People, State, and War under the French Regime in Canada is a study of colonial warriors and warfare that examines the exercise of state military power and its effects on ordinary people.Overturning the tendency to glorify the military feats of New France and exploding the rosy myth of a tax-free colonial population, Louise Dechêne challenges the stereotype of the fighting prowess and military enthusiasm of the colony’s inhabita... + Read More
35.
Series: The Lover, the Lake Paperback Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau 9781988298849 $21.95 FICTION May 01, 2021

A spellbinding novel celebrating Indigenous sensuality; the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in FrenchWhen it was first published in Quebec, The Lover, The Lake was heralded as the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French. Today, as it is translated into English for the first time, author Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau would rather call it a celebration of sensuality, another first. At a time when Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed of their land and history as well as their relationship to the body, the... + Read More