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Pink Shirt Day Reading Recommendations
Every year in February there’s Pink Shirt Day – a day focused on raising awareness about bullying in the workplace, at school, online and even at home. It also serves as a reminder to be kind to one another, and ourselves, by celebrating our differences! To mark the day, we’ve put together a list of reading recommendations, for YA and Adults that touch on issues of bullying and empowerment, all available on All Lit Up.
All Books in this Collection
Showing all 15 results
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Almost Feral
$24.95***CANADA BOOK AWARD WINNER******IPPY AWARDS SILVER MEDAL, CANADA-EAST BEST REGIONAL NONFICTION CATEGORY*****BEST ATLANTIC-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD WINNER******MARGARET AND JOHN SAVAGE FIRST BOOK AWARD – NON-FICTION WINNER******CBC BOOKS WRITER TO WATCH LIST***
On July 2, 2015, influential social activist Gemma Hickey began a 908-kilometer walk across the island of Newfoundland to raise awareness and funds for survivors of religious institutional abuse. Almost Feral celebrates the community of support that gathered around this journey and recounts Hickey’s remarkable story of self-discovery which led to the realization that they are transgender. In this thought-provoking and wide-ranging autobiography, Hickey counters memories of sexual assault, bullying, and depression with inspiring reflections on faith, love, family, individual and communal identity, sex, gender, and acceptance. Through complex feelings of empathy and solitude, weakness and strength, suffering and recovery, Gemma Hickey’s Almost Feral chronicles a journey from one side of an island to the other side of personal identity—charting an unknown territory where one’s body becomes the map that leads to home. -
Amphibian
$19.95Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region)
A Globe and Mail Top Five First Fiction Title of 2009
Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog’s food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he’s top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn’t know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can’t live together – after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it’s not like one of them just packshis bags and leaves the country.
To make it to-infinity worse, he’s worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn’t everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth’s mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White’s tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it’s the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.
“Carla Gunn’s prose crackleswith energy in this illuminating, heart-gripping novel. A hilarious, brilliant, loveable, exasperating child, Phin and his mesmerizing voice need listening to. The powerful, authentic narrator brings to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but Gunn’s an original, and draws us deeply into Phin’s many and varied worlds. A compassionate tale balancing light and dark, this is a must-read book.’ —Sheree Fitch, author of Kiss the Joy As It Flies
“I’m thrilled to promote Amphibian as our number one summer reading suggestion to customers of all ages, many of whom have returned to say how much they enjoyed it. It really has all the elements of a classic in the making. In nine-year-old Phineas Walsh, Carla Gunn has created a narrator that is perceptive, hilarious and frustrating, as he grapples with humanity’s seeming indifference to the rapid destruction of our animals and our planet. The issues are urgent, yet the author maintains a light tone throughout that isbreathtakingly delightful, heartfelt and ultimately hopeful. It’s fresh, timely and very hard to find fault with. I was thrilledto read it and shed light on this gem of a book that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle. It’s what independent bookselling is all about.” —Andrew Peck, Singing Pebble Books, Ottawa
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Battledoors
$16.99Life constantly seems to be wavering between really good and really bad for Owen, a lonely sixteen-year-old still reeling from the unexpected death of his mother and a fresh move to Toronto. After ducking into an old bookstore to escape high school bullies, Owen discovers that he can travel to a parallel, twisted version of the city using a magical tablet called a Battledoor. He encounters new allies, bizarre creatures, and the ultimate antagonist who will stop at nothing to procure the magical Golden Slate for himself.
Forced to work closely with friends and enemies in order to return home, Owen is faced with a series of choices that will prompt him to discover courage he never knew he had, explore the possibility of romance, and try to find a way to let go of his painful past and move on. But is Owen ready to finally take control and become the protagonist of his own story?
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Blue Knight, The
$19.95“The Blue Knight” reveals problems in our society related to racism and bullying, which is an important topic that is currently at the forefront of many lives and is being discussed at great lengths around the world. The main character, a teenage boy named Owen, lives in a small village with his mother. He is chastised by everyone he encounters until the day he meets an unusual friend who lives in the mountains nearby. Both outcasts must gain each other’s trust and learn self-worth, mutual respect and tolerance. During their adventures, both friends learn to overcome the harshness of racism and hate while challenging others to do the same. This book will teach young readers how to find strategies and answers in their life that will help them to deal with these important issues productively and positively.
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Cycling with the Dragon
$18.95Cycling with the Dragon is a personal investigation of family,love, culture, self, and the helpless feeling of “smallness.” Elaine Woo’s poems take the form of the words that they speak: she forms an “o” for the buoy that is a child’s safety-raft (found in the solitude of a notebook and Harriet the Spy), and weaves a poem about fearing snakes and dreams into a descending slither.Woo’s poems weave meaning with form, writing in a pastiche of diverse poetic voices who are small by virtue of age or status (be they women, children, ethnic minorities or the creatures of nature). And like tenacious seeds they break through to reach the sun, to face an abusive parent, bullies, the pain of shyness, envy, or racism.
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Late Company
$17.95One year after the suicide of their teenage son Joel, Debora and Michael Shaun-Hastings sit down to dinner with their son’s bully and his parents. Closure is on the menu, but accusations are the main course as everyone takes a turn in the hot seat for their real or imagined part in the tragedy. Blame shifts over the course of the evening from one person to the next, raising questions no one is prepared to answer.
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Monoceros
$20.95Winner of the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize
Winner of the 2012 Relit Award for Best Novel
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award for Best Fiction
A Globe and Mail Best Novel of 2011A seventeen-year-old boy, bullied and heartbroken, hangs himself. And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.
His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend’s girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student’s name, that she could care more about her students than her ex’s new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counsellor, Walter, feels guilty – maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the very Catholic school. And Walter, who’s been secretly in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that’s a little callous. He’s also tired of Max’s obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster.
And then Max meets a drag queen named Crepe Suzette. And everything changes.
Monoceros is a masterpiece of the tragicomic; by exploring the effects of a suicide on characters outside the immediate circle, Mayr offers a dazzlingly original look at the ripple effects – both poignant and funny – of a tragedy. A tender, bold work.
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NemeSIS
$19.99Dad has moved out and Mom has checked out, leaving the door wide open for the beautiful, erratic Rachel to torment her “loser, loner” younger sister, Nadine. With her family in full meltdown mode, Nadine is alone, trying to cope with Rachel’s increasingly unpredictable moods. Friendless, but determined to turn her life around, Nadine meets Anne, who introduces her to field hockey and to her hot twin brothers, Matt and Cameron. As Nadine’s star begins to rise, however, Rachel plots to bring her back down, and the tension ratchets up when Rachel starts dating Matt just as Nadine is getting to know Cameron better. When Matt’s interest starts to fade, Rachel goes into overdrive. Is Nadine ready to risk it all in a final showdown with her sister?/
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Odd Ball
$12.95In a series of intimate monologues interspersed with dialogue and description, the lives of students at Central Middle School are exposed and explored. Four main characters emerge: Kevin, the likeable grade nine student who refuses to accept the “geek” label because, as he puts it: “Geeks don’t talk to girls” and he has many girlfriends. Stephanie, the girl with the social conscience, realizes that Central’s school life is deteriorating and she must do something “Big” to stop that from happening. Paula, whose home life has fallen into a state of disrepair, seeks acceptance from other students, especially boys, only to become a bullying target for girls. Finally Victor, a former Latvian immigrant and now first-year university student, will provide insight into Jobbi, the new Latvian immigrant who will be the catalyst for change at Central.
While other voices appear, such as those of teachers, the story’s plot emerges from these four characters. Central to it is the question: Can the students themselves change the culture of the deteriorating school? For Kevin, who becomes Jobbi’s first friend, the answer is “yes”. Against all odds he witnesses Jobbi transform from the school bully’s primary target to one of the school’s best hockey players. For Stephanie, the answer is “yes” as she, with the help of Kevin and Jobbi, plans the impossible – the school dance that everyone will want to attend. For Paula the answer is “yes” as she teaches others that the path to acceptance is through independence and self-esteem. And for Jobbi, who doesn’t speak the language and is plagued by his family’s political struggles but possessess the uncanny ability to know how love works, it was never a question at all.
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Over Our Heads
$22.95Over Our Heads is a novel that weaves together the histories of two very different half-sisters who return home to deal with the aftermath that occurs when the grandmother who raised them dies. Emma, a punk band singer and poet turned pet psychic, and Rachel, an actuary with an interest in astronomy, both carry the remnants of childhoods overshadowed by issues of bullying, abandonment, alienation and fear. In the raw terrain of profound loss, the two sisters struggle through the stages of grief – each in their own way. The past merges with the present, as through the process of emptying the family home, each woman is taken back to their childhoods in 1970s Toronto and Vancouver, where they navigated a social climate rife with racism, homophobia and marginalization of the mentally ill and cognitively disabled. Over Our Heads is a story about kindness, compassion – and the lack of it, on both a societal and individual level. It’s about growing up wounded, and the generational legacy of suffering such wounds can create. It unearths the painful family dynamics that can arise from our perception of memory, and how these dynamics colour both who we are, and who we believe others to be. It’s a story of acceptance, forgiveness, redemption, and the beauty that can be found in the imperfection inherent in being human.
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The Abandoned
$19.95Among the strip malls, industrial parks and overpasses of Southwestern Ontario, Tim is a young misfit with an overactive imagination and a heavy-drinking father, surrounded by bullies at school and wondering if he’ll ever be normal. He experiences first love with another high school student, Sherrie, and at the same time he meets his first friend, Russ. In pursuing Sherrie, Tim is drawn into a cult-like religious retreat, and his friendship with Russ takes a strange turn as the three teenagers confront their vanishing childhood.The Abandoned is the dense and dazzling follow up to Harness’s critically acclaimed novel, Wigford Rememberies.Praise for Wigford Rememberies:“Pen in hand, there seems to be nothing Harness cannot do.”—The Globe and Mail“Kyp Harness’ prose has a unique flow: word and action, thought and thing are all contiguous and combined in lovely braided sentences. There’s some Joyce splashed around Wigford Rememberies, a satisfying read. This is a fantastic book. Please just read it.”—Tony Burgess“Told with unshrinking honesty and real compassion …these characters and their stories will linger with readers.”—Publishers Weekly
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The Mystery of the Cyber Bully
$10.95How do you find a bully who lurks on the Internet and lashes out at helpless victims? Intrepid kid detectives Marty, Remi, and Trina must answer that question if they’re to stop a cyber bully targeting their classmates.
In their toughest case yet, the sleuths must follow the electronic trail to their enemy, but the cyber bully outsmarts them at every turn, leaving the trio to wonder if they’ve met their match. When a ploy to expose the culprit goes wrong, Marty does the unthinkable and loses his best friend Remi’s trust. Not only does Marty have to find the cyber bully, but he also has to find a way to win back Remi’s friendship.
Marty Chan is back with the exciting fourth installment in the Marty Chan Mystery series.
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The Mystery Of the Graffiti Ghoul
$10.95Marty Chan is back with a sequel to his award-winning juvenile romp The Mystery Of the Frozen Brains.
Nine-year-old Marty and his francophone buddy, Remi Boudreau, stumble upon graffiti on the school’s equipment shack and begin the adventure of tracking down the culprit. Marty spies on his classmates, wears his mom’s dress to go undercover, and risks losing his best friend as the mystery of the graffiti ghoul leads him to the graveyard. With continued insight into a Chinese boy’s life in a Francophone town in Alberta, Chan’s humour balances the serious themes of bullying and racism that are revealed in the attitudes and actions of elementary school kids.
Recognized as contemporary versions of the Hardy Boys detective novels, the books in Chan’s Mystery Series are first-rate entertainment and highly recommended for kids.
Ages 8-12
- Winner of the 2007 SYRCA Young Readers’ Choice Diamond Willow Award
- Nominated for the 2007 Golden Eagle Children’s Choice Book Award
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The things I heard about you
$18.95Shortlisted for the 2014 Robert Kroetsch award for innovative poetry, The things I heard about you is an exploration of precision and the unspoken, executing a process whereby vignettes and scenes break apart into fragments, rumours or suggestions of the original story. When stories decompose or self-destruct, the results vary, producing an effect of texture and syntactic transformation. This is a book of tidal memories and elegies, love songs to the coast and all its inhabitants. The things I heard about you is Alex Leslie’s debut poetry collection.