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EveryBody’s Different on EveryBody Street
Artist: Emma FitzGeraldPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95 -
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Buddy MacMaster The Judique Fiddler
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95The renowned Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster grew up in Judique, Inverness County, influenced by musical giants including Bill Lamey, “Little Jack” MacDonald, Angus Chisholm and Mary MacDonald. By 1949, Buddy performed for local square dances, and by the 1960s he played across Canada, the U.S. and Scotland, sustaining old-time music and the dance tradition. A master fiddler, his awards include the Order of Canada, the Order of Nova Scotia, and honorary degrees from ST.F.X.University and Cape Breton University. Buddy adhered to the Gaelic fiddle tradition that he cherished as much as life itself.
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Glace Bay Miner’s Museum
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95In a colliery town, sirens from the mine can mean cave-ins, explosions, or, as in the Westray disaster, sudden death.Sheldon Currie, author of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum was born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, and judging by the headlong intensity of this novel, he still hears those sirens.The story begins as shy, awkward Margaret MacNeil meets a strapping miner named Neil Currie. She’s already had her father and a brother die in the coalpits, but she hopes that Neil will be more lucky.
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The Story So Far
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95These stories take the reader from the sparse, tense writing of the prequel to Glace Bay Miner’s Museum, through the author’s other stories drawn from his Cape Breton home. A critically acclaimed success.
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Two More Solitudes
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95Sheldon Currie plumbs new depths in this novel inspired byHugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes. Ian MacDonald is searchingfor himself, for a career, for home, and for redemption. YetIan, a man with a talent for baseball, seems to find himselfin “the suicide squeeze” all too often as he runs from onewoman to another. Set in Nova Scotia and Quebec, Currie’snovel follows Ian’s quest through his encounters with a torchsingingnun, an old flame, and a woman who seeks more thanfriendship.As Ian struggles to find his place, for a time literally notknowing who he is, Currie guides readers through a journeyfull of eccentric but fully human characters, all trying tolive in worlds that do not always accommodate their dreamsand desires. Two More Solitudes resonates with the burdensof memory, disappointment, uncertainty, death – and mostparticularly with the pleasures and pains of life itself. At timesfunny and poignant, Two More Solitudes is also a rich andsubtle exploration of how Ian and those around him find theirway – in the world, with themselves, and with others.
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Down the Coaltown Road
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95In Down the Coaltown Road, Sheldon Currie uses two narrative voices to explore the effect of international affairs on a small, ethnically mixed Cape Breton coal mining community during the summer of 1940. Mussolini has just thrown his support behind Hitler, bringing Italy into the war, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King has rendered a list of Italian-Canadians who can be classified as possible dissidents. Tomassio, one of the town’s most hardworking miners, is among those rounded up for an internment camp in either New Brunswick or Ontario. Tomassio uses his customary ingenuity to escape the confines of the local jail where he and his friends are temporarily held – but his freedom does not last for long. Anna, Tomassio’s resourceful wife who has an unerring ability to get what she wants from the men in her life, tells her story, which begins in Italy when she identifies the athletic, if quite arrogant, Tomassio as her best chance for immigration to Canada.
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God & Me
Publisher: Breton Books$6.95In God & Me Sheila Green of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, offers a series of sort, unpretentious poems meant to share the experience of questions, answers an mysteries in discovering relationship with one another, and with God. The ease and caring of this little book make it a rare find for wide range of people. Alison R. Grapes has contributed drawings that, rather than illustrate, try to maintain the calm, urgent joy.
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Historic LaHave River Valley
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Sheila Chambers, Joan Dawson and Edith Wolter are historians and writers with a special interest in the LaHave area of Nova Scotia.
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Up Home
Artist: Susan TookePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Happy memories sparkle in this journey through poet Shauntay Grant’s childhood visits to North Preston, Nova Scotia. Her words bring to life the sights, sounds, rhythms, and people of a joyful place, while Susan Tooke’s vibrant illustrations capture the warmth of one of Canada’s most important black communities. Up Home celebrates the magic of growing up, and the power in remembering our roots now in a new softcover edition.
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Apples and Butterflies
Artist: Tamara Thiébaux-HeikaloPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95From patchwork-quilt farmland to the winding red roads, from sandy beaches to the endless stars at night, Apples and Butterflies shows Prince Edward Island shining in the bright blue and gold light of fall. Shauntay Grant’s award-winning poetry and Tamara Thiébaux Heikalo’s rich and wild illustrations pull the reader towards the wide-open space of the island. New softcover edition.
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The City Speaks in Drums (pb)
Artist: Susan TookePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Available for the first time in paperback, the award-winning The City Speaks in Drums follows two boys from North End Halifax as they explore their neighbourhood and the city beyond, finding music everywhere. At the skate park, by the Public Gardens, down Spring Garden Road, and on the boardwalk, drums and saxophones and dancers and basketballs create the jumbled, joyful, pulsing rhythm of Halifax. Shauntay Grant’s playful spoken word-style poem and Susan Tooke’s vivid illustrations create a wildly energetic and appealing journey through the big, bright city.
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The Pup From Away
Artist: Christina PattersonPublisher: Acorn Press$9.95Dukes the pup is brought to rural Prince Edward Island from the city. He is used to the glamour of city life and isn’t sure what to make of life in the country. Over time, though, he begins to explore the fields and streams and finds that he loves it more than he could have imagined. When it is time to go home to the city, it is clear that Dukes is better off in his new home.
With a BFA and MBA, Shaun Patterson’s professional experience working in the creative field has taken him from designing multimedia collateral for Fortune 500 companies to creating art and producing video games for some internationally recognizable brands such as Six Flags, A&E and National Geographic. As a freelancer Shaun has produced high quality pieces of art and illustration ranging from children’s books, album covers, board game art and numerous private commissions. Shaun works both traditionally and digitally, and has a real love for doing genre work. Originally hailing from Barrie Ontario, Shaun and his wife Christina (also an artist) have made P.E.I. their home over the last five years and find the island to be a constant source of inspiration for them. Visit his website at www.shaunpatterson.com.
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Fairies on My Island
Artist: Christina PattersonPublisher: Acorn Press$12.95If you look closely, maybe you too can discover the world of fairies. Get ready for Shaun and Christina Patterson to take you into a magical worlds of Fairies. A place where silliness and fun are just as important as being true to yourself and taking care of nature. The Pattersons have traveled far and wide on Prince Edward Island to uncover the secret world of fairies. Join them now as they discover the world of fairies. Complete with instructions to make your own fairies, this book is a true guide to many of the fairies you will see on your search.
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Our Sable Island Home
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Our Sable Island Home is a personal story that does not shy away from the perils of life in an isolated locale, interwoven with maritime history that centres around the iconic island. The story will take you on a journey more than sixty years back into the past, to a time when Sable Island was referred to as “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
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SpecialLink Book
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95The Mainstream is nothing more than life in the real world. SpeciaLink is devoted to seeing every child wit special needs a full participant in the mainstream. Evidence supports the value of full mainstream childcare for all children, regardless of the challenges. This means that from now on, the work of childcare includes Advocacy –promoting what we already know to be right.
The SpecaiLink Book is the story of the road to the principles of full mainstream childcare, and of the SpeciaLink Symposium which made those principles the national agenda for mainstream advocates. “The Mainstream is the right stream” is the battle cry. Achieving full mainstream childcare for every child is the goal.
The Book Also Includes a Canadian Directory of Mainstream Childcare Advocates, Further Readings, information about joining SpeciaLink, and other forms for the SpecaiLink Newsletter and videos.
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Inclusion Voices
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95This rare book lets child care directors across Canada speak to us directly about the vision of full inclusion of children with special needs, the challenges that their vision has faced, and some of the strategies and techniques each has used to survive. The portrait is not all victory, and the future is not assured. Irwin is able to compare recent conversations with visits she made to those same child care centres ten years earlier. The result is evidence-based storytelling and an accessible book that will be of particular value to practitioners, directors, government decision makers, parents and people in related fields.
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Special Link – Early Childhood Inclusion Quality Scale
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95This workbook is a tool for assessing inclusion quality in early childhood centres and for helping centre move toward higher quality inclusion. The Scale provides a picture of sustainable and evolving inclusion quality—an emerging issue as more children with special needs attend communitybased centres and as inclusion pioneers leave their centres and a new generation of directors and early childhood educators take on the inclusion challenges.
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Through the Eyes of Mary The Mary Morehouse Diaries (1920-1958)
Publisher: Chocolate River Publishing$18.95The Mary Morehouse diaries give the reader a vivid picture of life in rural New Brunswick in early twentieth century. Through Mary, the reader can follow the highs and lows of village life during the throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and the war years of the 1940s. Bird has researched this time period for her other books and her annotations and introductory sections give context to the individual diary entries.
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Blue Waiting
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Blue Waiting is a collection of poems in conversation with small beauties formed through the geography of living. This geography takes shape in the edges of islands, mountains, families, and most of all the terrain of the inner life. The inner life is imbued with the details of ordinary life, where the contours of presence is unraveled in attention to what is in before us as humans.
This collection is one of two poets, whose work intersects not only thematically, but particularly in how Wiebe and Snowber continue to find the holy in the ordinary, and wonder in the sensate world. One poem has fed the other, and as each was written separately we invite you to see them as a place for dialogue. Dialoguing with self, other, and the soil beneath the words, which gives breath and life to language itself.
As both poets and educators Snowber and Wiebe find the immersion in present life as the catalyst for the deepest lessons, and the writing of poetry becomes a place of unfolding to what it means to be human and sustain nourishment on the planet. We invite you as a reader to travel along your own wondrous journey and be in dialogue with us.
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How Boys Grow Up
Publisher: Acorn Press$16.95Sean Wiebe is an assistant professor of education at the University of Prince Edward Island. His recent research explores how poets have influenced teaching practice and are insightful theorists in understanding life’s complexities. He has edited two collections of poetry, The Last Red Smartie (1996) and A Nocturnal Reverie (1994), and has had his poetry published in several literary journals, including Standards: International Cultural Studies Journal, Cha: As Asian Literary Journal, Blue Skies Poetry, and Ascent Aspirations Magazine. He and his family live in Charlottetown.
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Annapolis Valley Tastes Recipes from the Valley’s Best Restaurants
Photographer: Bob Federer, Colleen DagnallPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95The Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia is famed for its spectacular seacoast, lush farmland, and fertile soil, which nourish an abundance of produce, livestock, and seafood. It is no wonder, then, that the Valley is home to a profusion of skilled chefs who take their inspiration from the region’s bountiful harvest.
Annapolis Valley Tastes celebrates the landscapes and natural flavours that have made the Valley famous by combining breathtaking full-colour photos of the region with tantalizing recipes from local restaurants such as Tempest, Cocoa Pesto, and Blomidon Inn. Showcasing a diverse array of dishes that embrace local ingredients and tastes, such as pumpkin chili, farm chicken with Nova Scotia Riesling and chanterelles, and peach blueberry crumble pie, Annapolis Valley Tastes is an invitation to bring the brilliant sights, smells, and flavours of the Valley home to your kitchen.
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Historic Architecture of Prince Edward Island
Publisher: SSP Publications$34.95Architect Scott Smith has complied a thorough and fascinating description of Prince Edward Island’s unique pre-1914 built heritage. From lighthouses to churches, picturesque houses to stately civic buildings, this is the only comprehensive study of architectural history in The Garden of the Gulf.
Seen through the eyes of an architect, this limited edition volume s meticulously detailed in its description and beautifully illustrated with black and white and color photography, drawings and archival material.
The Historic Architecture of Prince Edward Island is a must have for historians, collectors, students and anyone interested in the material history of this special place.
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Untamed Atlantic Canada Exploring the Region’s Biodiversity Havens
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Spanning 1,200 kilometres from New Brunswick’s Passamaquoddy Bay to Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, Atlantic Canada stands as a nexus between North America and the North Atlantic Ocean. Its diverse geography, variable climate, and surrounding ocean currents coalesce to create a rich medley of habitats both on the land and in the sea. There are currently eight thousand known species in this little corner of the world, and awardwinning nature photographer Scott Leslie has captured a beautiful selection of them on these pages.
In Untamed Atlantic Canada, discover the stunning array of animals living in the region–from elusive black foxes, to clouds of semipalmated sandpipers, and endangered right whales–through 140 colour images with detailed, narrative captions. This photographic collection is perfect for seasoned naturalists and novice nature lovers alike.
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Sea Kayaking in Nova Scotia (3rd edition) A Guide to Paddling Routes Along the Coast
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Nova Scotia has some of the most spectacular coastline on the continent. The sea kayak is ideal for exploring those isolated nooks and crannies, where few other vessels dare to venture. Each route includes departure points, trip lengths, and necessary charts and maps; of special note are the safety considerations and the detailed points of interest. With 48 routes spanning Nova Scotia from Briar Island to the Cape Breton Highlands, from Halifax to Pictou, and everywhere in between, this guide includes useful information for what gear to pack, safety concerns, and techniques to make your kayaking expedition as enjoyable as possible.
The new 3rd edition of Sea Kayaking in Nova Scotia includes new routes, new preface, updated maps and text, 3 eight-page colour inserts with photos, and many of the existing photos have been updated or replaced.
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Historic Shelburne
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95Sarah Acker holds a bachelor of arts degree with concentrations in English and history from St. Francis Xavier University. A native of Shelburne, she has long had an interested in the communities history, and is currently working as a researcher with the Shelburne County Museum.
Lewis Jackson holds a bachelor of arts degree with honours in history from the University of Western Ontario, a bachelor of education degree from Queens University, and has undertaken graduate studies in history at Carleton University. A former Ottawa-based historical consultant and researcher, he teaches and writes in his hometown of Shelburne. -
Field Notes A City Girl’s Search for Heart and Home in Rural Nova Scotia
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Sara Jewell has collected lots of addresses—eighteen in total—including four in Vancouver, British Columbia, and three in her hometown of Cobourg, Ontario. But there was one address that always remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from the New Brunswick border, and the red soil stained her heart. Life, as it’s wont to do, eventually took Jewell away from the east coast. But when her marriage and big-city life started to crumble, she only wanted one thing: a fresh start in Pugwash.
Accented with five original drawings from Joanna Close.
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Waking Up in my Own Backyard
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Join Sandra Phinney as she embarks on 31-day summer odyssey that takes place within a 100 kilometre radius from her home in rural Nova Scotia. This memoir is a journey of self-discovery wherein the author experiences the adventure of a lifetime in her own backyard. Two powerful themes flow throughout the narrative: the importance of friendships and the richness of rural living.
You won’t find what’s included in Waking Up In My Own Backyard in a typical visitor’s guide, but it will undoubtedly become an indispensable guide for locals and travellers alike. Phinney is an extraordinary tour guide. You will want to follow in her footsteps.
