Mother’s Day: Staff Picks

Lauren’s pick I definitely got my passion for reading – and reading obsessively – from my mom. In the intervening years of becoming old enough to buy her Mother’s Day gifts unaided, I’ve bought her all kinds of books, some she couldn’t wait to tell me she loved (and others, she’d politely say she hadn’t gotten to yet – thanks, mom). In honour of her spine-cracked editions of Anne of Green Gables and her longtime career as a teacher and educator of children with disabilities, I’d gift her a sure thing this year: Beatrice MacNeil’s The Geranium Window. This sweeping saga of the Briar family in Cape Breton in the after-years of the Second World War is for her, or any mom, who loves reading about family contending with generational demons and the period and patently unfair hiding away of a child with disabilities who “needed to be loved and nurtured,” just as this books titular geraniums on the windowsill do.

Christen’s pickMy mom will soon set off for her Nova Scotia island cottage, and a good companion for the season would be Sue Goyette’s poetry collection, Ocean. These poems explore our relationship with the North Atlantic, offer myth and urban legend, and develop characters such as fog merchants, lifeguards, mothers and daughters. This beautiful book was handcrafted on Gaspreau’s presses in Kentville, NS, and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2014.

Julia’s pickI would gift my mom a copy of Born to Walk. My mom loves to walk. In bad weather, she’ll hop on the treadmill in her basement. She even had metal ice grips for her sneakers one winter. (The basement was warmer.) She is four inches shorter than me, but I can’t keep up with her when she gets going! I know she would love to learn about the transformative power of walking, well beyond the fitness benefits (and making her daughter jog to keep up).

Mandy’s pick My mom has played a big part in nurturing my independence and she’s always encouraged me to speak up, to be kind but care a little less about what people think of me. That’s why I’m gifting her Waiting for the Cyclone; she’ll love stories of women being authentic, bold, and unapologetic. And because my mom is always on the go, short stories will be the perfect little break in her busy days.