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Sleeping Dragons All Around pb
Artist: Michele NidenoffPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95In this classic children’s book, a girl wakes up in the middle of the night and wants some cake. But to reach the refrigerator, she has to tiptoe past a host of sleeping dragons, like Priscilla in her pink pantaloons, the punk rock dragon Fagan with spiky green hair, and Beelzebub (who sleeps in the tub). When she stubs her toe, the dragons wake up, and she has to think fast to befriend the dragons.
An award-winning bestseller first published in 1989, Sleeping Dragons All Around is back to spark the imaginations of a whole new generation. Sheree Fitch’s celebrated lipslippery poetry and Michele Nidenoff’s colourful illustrations combine to make one of the most delightful children’s books ever published in Canada.Sheree Fitch has read this book to audiences from sea to sea to sea in Canada, in the Himalayas, and along the eastern coast of Africa. Her first two books, Toes in My Nose and Sleeping Dragons All Around, launched her career as a poet, rhymster, and a “kind of Canadian female Dr. Seuss.” Fitch has won almost every major award for Canadian children’s literature since then, including the 2000 Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work Inspirational to Canadian Children. She has over twenty-five books to her credit. Fitch’s home base is the east coast of Canada. She dances with dragons daily.
Michelle Nidenoff’s illustrations have been featured in magazines and children’s books, including The Canadian Children’s Treasury. Among her credits is a bronze award from the Broadcast Design Association in Ontario. She lives in Toronto. -
Mabel Murple (pb)
Artist: Sydney SmithPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95What if there was a purple planet with purple people on it? Sheree Fitch answers this question with a zany tongue-twister of a poem featuring Mabel Murple, a daredevil who rides a purple motorbike through purple puddles, skis on purple snow, and on her pancakes pours maple syrup.
With a rich and vivid purple palette, Sydney Smith’s brand-new illustrations reflect the wild joy in this classic poem. Originally published in 1995, Mabel Murple won the Ann Connor Brimer award for children’s literature.
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There Were Monkeys in My Kitchen (pb)
Artist: Sydney SmithPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Willa Wellowby’s house has been overrun by monkeys. They’re ballet dancing, playing the bagpipes, listening to the Beatles, and causing mayhem and destruction all over the house and yard. And the more Willa asks them to leave, the more havoc they wreak. She calls the police, the RCMP, the FBI, and Scotland Yard to get rid of these monkeys…but when the Mounties finally show up, it’s Willa who’s in trouble!
First published in 1992, There Were Monkeys in My Kitchen won the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Mr. Christie Award for Best Canadian Children’s book, ages 8 and under. This new softcover edition will introduce the bestselling book to a whole new generation.
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Hullabaloo Bugaboo Day
Artist: Kelly UlrichPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$11.95Upper Millidocket Elementary School is an exceptionally lovely place to be. The children are excited to learn, the teachers are excited to teach, and the school secretary holds everything together. But when Mr. Tiggle, the principal, forgets to recite his daily poem during the morning announcements, everything goes upside down. Miss Argyle, the school secretary, disappears (and decides to stay disappeared for a while), tarantulas escape their cages, and the school comes very close to falling completely apart. A second edition of a Sheree Fitch classic with new illustrations from Kelly Ulrich.
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If You Could Wear My Sneakers
Artist: Darcia LabrossePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95A Sheree Fitch classic, the Silver Birch and Hackmatack Award-winning children’s picture book about children’s rights, If You Could Wear My Sneakers, is now available for a new generation of young readers. A series of humorous poems, paired with timeless illustrations, interprets 15 of the 54 articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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If I Were the Moon Twentieth – anniversary edition
Artist: Leslie WattsPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95If I were the moon
I’d shine down my light
Right into your bedroom
To warm up the night.A timeless bedtime book that “beautifully captures that perfect moment when a child is tucked up in bed, spellbound by the voice of an older sibling or an adult sharing a special book” (Books in Canada).
With lyrical text, lit up by soft and gentle illustrations, If I Were the Moon makes its triumphant return to print in a beautiful hardcover just in time for its twentieth anniversary.
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Kiss the Joy as it Flies Tenth-anniversary edition
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$18.95With all the wisdom, humor and joy we’ve come to expect from Sheree Fitch, Kiss the Joy As It Flies, first published in 2008, marked the well-loved author’s move from children’s literature to adult fiction.
Set in the fictional Maritime town of Odell, with a cast of exasperating but lovable characters, Kiss the Joy As It Flies promises to be a remarkable debut and a reader’s favorite. Panic-stricken by the news that she needs exploratory surgery, forty-eight-year-old Mercy Beth Fanjoy drafts a monumental to-do list and sets about putting her messy life in order. Among other things (hide the vibrator!), she’s determined to finally uncover the identity of her secret admirer; reconnect with long-lost friend and rival Teeny Gaudet; and, most importantly, get her hands on the note her father left before committing suicide all those years ago. But tidying up the edges of her life means the past comes rushing back to haunt her and the present keeps throwing up more to-do’s. Between fits of weeping and laughter, ranting and bliss, Mercy must contemplate the meaning of life in the face of her own death. In a week filled with the riot of an entire life, nothing turns out the way she’d expected.
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You Won’t Always Be This Sad A Book of Moments
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95In the wake of her son’s unexpected death, author and storyteller Sheree Fitch wrote it all down, penning an honest, lyrical memoir with words to stir heart. You Won’t Always Be This Sad invites readers on a journey through grief towards hope, guided by the immeasurable depths of a mother’s love.
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EveryBody’s Different on EveryBody Street
Artist: Emma FitzGeraldPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95 -
Polly MacCauley’s Finest, Divinest, Woolliest Gift of All A yarn for all ages
Artist: Darka ErdeljiPublisher: Running the Goat$19.95Star, a very special lamb, needs a new home – who will welcome her: an eccentric old woman who loves to knit beautiful, useful things, or a greedy count and countess who hoard wool? Infused with Sheree Fitch’s poetic playfulness, this lushly illustrated storybook celebrates creativity and community.
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Because We Love, We Cry
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95During the global pandemic, Sheree Fitch shared what she calls “moments”—her first-burst warm-up writing exercises, on social media almost every day. Sometimes funny verse, other times lyrical prose or poetry, these daily missives were one way to negotiate the strange, unpredictable times. On April 20, immediately upon waking, as the full story of the tragedy in Portapique, Nova Scotia, was unfolding, Fitch thought of all affected, the painful day ahead, of what parents would say to their children. She thought about grieving when apart.
These words moved through her immediately that day. Fitch shared “Because We Love, We Cry” on social media and it was embraced by Nova Scotians and those who love them across the country. It was read aloud in Canadian Parliament and during a provincial news conference about COVID-19, and by Fitch herself during a nationally broadcast vigil held for the twenty-two victims of the Portapique tragedy.
After many requests, Nimbus and Sheree have come together to make the poem available in book form. Featuring colour line drawings and the full poem on heavy cardstock for safekeeping, as well as a pull-out postcard to send to loved ones near and far, Because We Love is a mantra, a prayer, a lament, a talisman, a paper rosary, a beating heart to keep close to your own.
A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated annually to the families of victims.
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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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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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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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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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Africville
Artist: Eva CampbellPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95When a young girl visits the site of Africville, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the stories she?s heard from her family come to mind.
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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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My Hair is Beautiful
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$9.95Celebrate natural hair with Governor General’s Award-nominated author Shauntay Grant in this joyful board book. With accessible text and vibrant photos of toddlers sporting afros, cornrows and everything in between, My Hair is Beautiful brings a powerful message of self-love.
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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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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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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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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.