Category: Tundra Telegram

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Tundra Telegram: Dream Books for your “Endless” TBR Pile

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we reflect on the topics that are currently running through our minds, and kindly recommend some books we think might mesmerize you.

After years of false starts and dashed hopes, fans of Neil Gaiman’s beloved and acclaimed The Sandman comic series finally got the chance to see the television adaptation when it premiered on Netflix this past weekend. Starring Tom Sturridge as Dream / Morpheus, Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, and partially adapted by Gaiman himself, the series follows the king of dreams, as he escapes from captivity and attempts to restore order to his realm, called The Dreaming.

Of course, the best thing to do is to check out the collected editions of The Sandman, particularly the first two collections – Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House – that the series roughly adapts. But if you want more suggestions for books of all ages about sleeping and dream worlds, we’ve got some nighttime reading material for you!

PICTURE BOOKS

Though the Sandman television series demonstrates there are a few reasons to be afraid of the dark, A Bedtime Yarn by Nicola Winstanley and Olivia Chin-Mueller has an answer to that. Little bear Frankie is given a ball of yarn to hold when he goes to bed, and his mother will hold onto the other end in the next room, working it into a surprise for him. The yarn’s colors affect the dreams he has, and eventually he learns he’s always connected to the people he loves – even while asleep!

Basically the Neil Gaiman of picture books, Nicola Winstanley also penned The Pirate’s Bed, illustrated by Matt James, which gives young readers a view into the world of pirate dreams. That is, it does before the bed (who is wide awake while the pirate on top sleeps) is cast out to sea on his own during a shipwreck. Will a bed without a sleeper find happiness? Or will it feel somehow not whole?

If vivid dreams are what you want, you need Dream Animals by Emily Winfield Martin. Discover what your dream animal might be – a bear who invites you to make baked goods or some tea-partying mermaids? Dreams haven’t seemed this fun since Van Halen recorded 5150.

In the same vein, Sean Taylor and Anuska Allepuz‘s The Dream Train features thirty lushly illustrated bedtime poems for and about sleepyheads of all kinds. The Sandman rarely delved into the dreams of ducks or bats like The Dream Train does, but maybe it should have?

If there’s one question the Sandman knows the answer to, it’s What Will You Dream of Tonight?, which is also a picture book by Frances Stickley and Anuska Allepuz (who must love dreams!). A parent wonders what their child will dream of: Deserts? Waterfalls? Dragon-filled caves? This is a creative tale of dreamtime adventures.

Keeping to the comic book roots of The Sandman, check out the Little Golden Book Trouble in the Dream Dimension by Dave Croatto and Shane Clester, featuring rival comic company character Doctor Strange as he protects the dream world from the villain Nightmare, devoted to spooking kids (and adults) as they snooze.

In You Byun‘s Dream Friends, a young girl Melody has the most wonderful friend in her dreams, and they do a bunch of fantastical things together. But when Melody wakes up, she’s back in the real world where she has no friends. This all changes when her dream friend inspires her to take some actions to change her friend status in the real world. (But her dream friend also happens to be a massive sort of flying cat, which will be tough for her first real friend to live up to, IMHO.)

Though the series has not yet adapted the Sandman collection Dream Country, readers of the comic know that the issue “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” introduces Morpheus’s collab with William Shakespeare, and became the only comic book in history to win a World Fantasy Award. Accordingly, we recommend the new picture book,  William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, adapted by Georghia Ellinas and illustrated by Jane Ray, for the youngest audiences.

And like some sort of Australian Morpheus, the titular character in Robert Ingpen‘s The Dream Keeper lives in the realm between being asleep and awake, and uses a number of tricks and traps to ensnare the wild creatures of our dreams before they can escape into reality.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Though he doesn’t quite have the powers of Morpheus, the protagonist of Julian, Dream Doctor by Ann Cameron and Ann Strugnell does his best to enter his father’s dreams to get him the perfect birthday gift. Julian wants to get his dad a birthday gift that he’s “always dreamed of.” So he creates a brainwave machine, communicates through the TV antenna’s signals, interrogates his father while asleep, and does whatever he can to secretly learn what his father’s dream is, even if it happens to be a nightmare!

The Dollhouse by Charis Cotter is not only just a space, an apostrophe, and an “s” away from the title of one of the Sandman books adapted for the show, it’s also a spooky, atmospheric story that weaves the dream world with the waking one. Alice’s parents split up and she moves with her mom when she becomes a live-in nurse for an older woman. Alice finds a dollhouse in the attic that’s a replica of the house they live in, and before she knows it, she wakes up to find a girl asleep next to her in her bed – a girl who exactly like one of the dolls from the dollhouse (I may never sleep again!).

The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams by Mindy Thompson mirrors the Sandman books in its belief in the (literal magic) power of art and literature. Poppy’s family owns the magic bookshop Rhyme and Reason, which is situated in WWII New York, but caters to customers from around the world and from the past and future. When her older brother threatens to break the most important rule among magic Booksellers, Poppy is caught in an impossible situation.

And, of course, a perfect companion to the Sandman series is Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller‘s Nightmares! trilogy (illustrated by Karl Kwasny), and not just because the books have often been compared to another Gaiman creation, Coraline. Charlie Laird has a major problem: not only does he have trouble sleeping because of terrible nightmare, but his nightmares have started slipping out of his dreams and into the waking world of Cypress Creek. Charlie and his friends – in the original book, as well as The Sleepwalker Tonic and The Lost Lullaby – must face their fears and save their town.

YOUNG ADULT

You can’t even start to mention YA about dreams without talking about Cherie Dimaline‘s Hunting by Stars. The follow-up to The Marrow Thieves, in which Indigenous people are being hunted across North America and placed residential schools to harvest their bone marrow. The reason: Indigenous people are still able to dream, an ability lost by everyone else, and this dreaming ability is believed to be housed in the marrow (something overlooked in Sandman!). This book follows seventeen-year-old French, who survived the first book, as he heads north with a group of other dreamers who try to build a new community – until the school Recruiters hunt him down.

It’s an older title, but Dream Girl by Lauren Mechling, is all about Claire Voyante, a fifteen-year-old girl whose dream visions become a lot clearer when she’s given a cameo necklace by her grandmother Kiki. What can she do next but solve madcap mysteries with her psychic sleeping powers?

And the techno-futuristic take on Sleeping Beauty, A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan, follows Rosalinda Fitzroy, in a chemically induced slumber in a stasis tube for 62 years until she is kissed awake. But the world Rose wakes to is the aftermath of an apocalyptic era that killed millions in which she’s seen as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire (that old story!).

Sweet dreams and happy reading!

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Tundra Telegram: Books to Break Your Souls

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we listen in on topics that are currently running the (social media) world, and count down some books we think are irreplaceable.

You don’t need to be a member of the BeyHive to know that after nearly a decade of surprise drops and visual albums, Beyoncé’s seventh full-length album, Renaissance, was unveiled this past Friday. The immediate response has been overwhelmingly positive for this massive sixteen-track opus that manages to both honor Black musical artists throughout history and contain enough dance-floor bangers destined to instill a wild rumpus in the club. We thought we’d use it – or rather its title – to create this week’s reading list.

So, take that plastic off the sofa and get cozy. Don’t get heated, because we’re about to get all up in your mind and recommend some books for young readers – both about the European Renaissance (of the 15th and 16th centuries) and the later Harlem Renaissance (of the early 20th century) – that might impel you to move your self to the closest bookstore.

PICTURE BOOKS

Langston Hughes was an author who was also one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. That Is My Dream! is a picture book in which illustrator Daniel Miyares adapts his poem, “Dream Variation,” in which a young Black boy in confronted by the harsh reality of segregation and racism over this day, but he dreams of a different life – one full of freedom, hope, and so many possibilities!

Harlem’s Little Blackbird is a picture book biography by Renee Watson and Christian Robinson about Florence Mills, one of the most popular Black performers of the Jazz Age. The book tells her rise to fame on the stages of 1920s Broadway, and how she dedicated herself to supporting and promoting works by fellow Black performers – not unlike Beyoncé herself!

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez tells the story of an Afro-Puerto Rican law clerk who collected letters, music, and art from Africa and Black American creators. When his collection began to overtake his house, he brought it to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the greatest primary source repositories of the output of the Harlem Renaissance! The book is also available en español.

Bonnie Christensen lets Galileo Galilei tell his side of the story in I, Galileo. Galileo’s contributions to science and the Renaissance were numerous and his ideas world-changing, but in his own time he was branded a heretic and put under house arrest. This is a great kids’ introduction to possibly the most important scientist of the Renaissance!

Few artists had a bigger impact on the Renaissance than Michelangelo, and Stone Giant: Michelangelo’s David and How He Came to Be by Jane Sutcliffe and John Shelley, describes how the artist turned a neglected hunk of marble into one of the world’s most famous hunk sculptures.

And while Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum, illustrated by Andrew Joyner, doesn’t focus only on the Renaissance (and, in fact, explores different methods and movements of visual art through depictions of horses), it does include Renaissance artist Raphael’s Saint George Fighting the Dragon, and the accompanying horse.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

To get started in this age range, it’s best to begin with What Was the Harlem Renaissance? by Sherrie L. Smith and Tim Foley to get some background. Young readers learn how the vibrant Black neighborhood in upper Manhattan became home to the leading Black writers, artists, and musicians of the 1920s and 1930s – including profiles of Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Augusta Savage, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Did someone say “Zora Neale Hurston”? The influential Black author of Their Eyes Were Watching God is the protagonist of the Zora and Me trilogy by Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon, which fictionalize the youth of Zora Neale Hurston, and look at systemic racism and the power of storytelling in a Black community in the American south at the turn of the century. They serve as coming-of-age tales and great introductions to Hurston as an author.

Though the Magic Treehouse siblings never travelled through time to the Harlem Renaissance (hmmm), Jack and Annie did go back to encounter the artist, inventor, and visionary, Leonardo Da Vinci in Magic Treehouse: Monday with a Mad Genius by Mary Pope Osborne and Sal Murdocca. And, as we know, Bey and Jay are fans of Leo’s work.

Need a little more Da Vinci? The graphic novel The History of Western Art in Comics, Part Two by Marion Augustin and Bruno Heitz begins in the Renaissance, and two kids and their grandpa continue their guided tour of art kicking off with such hits as The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa, and the Sistine Chapel. The book only covers up to Modern Art, so the Lemonade visual album doesn’t make an appearance.

And while historians disagree on if we should categorize ol’ William Shakespeare in the Renaissance, we’re going to include him here. Tales from Shakespeare is an excellent introduction for young readers to Shakespeare’s greatest plays, as siblings Charles and Mary Lamb vividly bring to life Hamlet, Othello, As You Like It, Pericles, and more, but modified and retold in a manner sensitive to the needs of young children, without resorting to any actual censoring. Makes sense, as many have argued Beyoncé is our Shakespeare.

YOUNG ADULT

Inspired by their class unit on the Harlem Renaissance, Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes (who was born in Harlem herself) follows the eighteen students of a Mr. Ward’s eleventh grade English class who begin having weekly poetry sharing sessions, revealing their most intimate thoughts about themselves and each another.

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough takes readers to Rome in 1610 and introduces them to seventeen-year-old nun Artemisia Gentileschi, the real-life painter who also participated in one of the world’s first high-profile trials of sexual assault. The book looks both at the highs of creative inspiration and the devastating lows of a system rigged against women. (Technically, she was a Baroque painter, not a Renaissance painter, but are you here for book recommendations or art history lessons?)

The European Renaissance is usually associated with cities in what is now known as Italy, but several historical websites claim the reign of Henry VIII marked the real beginning of the Renaissance in England. So, we can also recommend Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All, a collaborative work by seven authors (M.T. Anderson, Candace Fleming, Stephanie Hemphill, Lisa Ann Sandell, Jennifer Donnelly, Linda Sue Park, and Deborah Hopkinson), each telling the story of one of the king’s six wives – and Henry himself, who liked it, and put a ring on it a full six times.

Now let’s get back to business.

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Tundra Telegram: Books to Geek Out Over

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we draw on topics that we’re all fanboying and fangirling over, and recommend some books to keep the excitement onward and upward.

Unless you have curated a completely geek-free social media feed, you know that last weekend the San Diego Comic-Con took over southern California, wrapping up on July 24, and previewing the biggest and newest things in comic books, science fiction, video games, and much more. Whether you were more thrilled to see the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever or Sarah Michelle-Gellar making a surprise appearance at the Teen Wolf panel, the return of Comic-Con had a little something for everyone.

To mark the occasion, we’re recommending books that are not comic books themselves, nor do they feature comic characters (like the great DC Icons YA series). Instead, they are books about comic books, RPGs, and fandoms. Get your geek on, and find your next great read below!

PICTURE BOOKS

For some comic book fans, no matter their age, there are few words as thrilling as There’s a Superhero in Your Book, which is the title of a book by Tom Fletcher and Greg Abbott. Even better, this picture book is interactive, so young readers can enjoy tapping, stretching, and whizzing this book around as they help the superhero defeat the villain and save the day – while discovering the real superpower of kindness.

If that sounds a bit too stimulating for your young reader, we can recommend Even Superheroes Have to Sleep by Sara Crow and Adam Record. Little kids will enjoy this rhyming story that tricks lulls them into bedtime with the promise that all their heroes are getting tucked into bed, too. (You know Sleepwalker loves his shut-eye!) And there’s a companion book called Even Superheroes Use the Potty where you can (maybe?) learn how Iron Man goes to the washroom in that suit!

If the young readers in your life are wild about superhero movies and games, they may relate to the main character of Max and the Superheroes by Rocio Bonilla and Oriol Malet. Max and his friends love learning about superheroes and their superpowers. Everyone has a favorite, and Max’s is Megapower: she’s brave, tames animals, has x-ray vision, is super smart, can fly – and just happens to be Max’s mom. (So it’s perfect for Mother’s Day, as well.)

And for something a little different, you can learn about the origins of gaming with Blips on a Screen by Kate Hannigan and Zachariah OHora. It’s a picture book biography about Ralph Baer, a Jewish refugee who pioneered home video games and launched a worldwide obsession. Considered the “Father of Video Games,” there’d be no Xbox or Nintendo Switch without him!

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Where would the MCU be without Stan Lee, the writer who co-created many of Marvel’s signature characters? Find out more, true believers, in Who Was Stan Lee? by Geoff Edgers and John Hinderliter, a book that chronicles how a kid from the Bronx created a comic book empire (with more than a little help from Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and a roster of talented artists).

What if you’re at the stage that you want to start – like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – to make your own comics? You might like Doodleville by Chad Sell. Yes, it is a graphic novel, but it’s also about young artists in the school’s art club and the power of creativity: specifically, how one member’s (Drew’s) artistic creations come to life and wreak havoc on the other kids’ drawings of heroes.

Or maybe they would like Stephen Shaskan‘s Pizza and Taco: Super-Awesome Comic, in which the beloved anthropomorphic foodstuffs decide to collaborate on a comic book, but must overcome their deep-seated artistic differences to make a great story.

But if your young readers would like something a little more hands-on, you’ll want Jess Smart Smiley‘s Let’s Make Comics: An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons. This is this an honest-to-goodness, all-ages activity book that makes use of humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a bunch of short comics under your belt – and it even comes recommended by Narwhal and Jelly creator Ben Clanton!

What’s more appropriate than a novel that takes place at a comic convention? Marthe Jocelyn, Richard Scrimger, and Claudia Davila‘s book Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book opens at the Toronto comic-con, where two very different kids – geek Wylder Wallace and aloof Addy Crowe – find themselves drawn (literally) into the fantastic world of a hit comic book.

Vera Vance: Comics Star by Claudia Mills and Grace Zong, spotlights a third-grader who signs up for a comics camp after-school program, much to the chagrin of her mother. But Vera loves everything comics and starts making her own with the encouragement of friends and the teachers of her camp. And in an inversion of Viminy Crowe, it all leads up to a local comic convention, in which Vera hopes to enter an original comics contest – if only her mother will let her go!

In Stink: Superhero Superfan by Megan McDonald and Peter H. Reynolds, the popular character discovers a box of old comics about a superhero he’s never heard of: Super Gecko! Before long, Stink becomes Super Gecko’s biggest fan. Then he starts receiving mysterious notes signed by Super Gecko himself. Can Stink do some detective work worthy of S.G. and find out who is sending the letters before the Gecko gets a dark and gritty reboot?

A contemporary graphic novel that combines OCD with AD&D, Just Roll with It by Veronica Agarwal and Lee Durfey-Lavoie follows Maggie, who is shy, doesn’t know anyone at her school, and deals with anxiety and OCD. She also loves Dungeons and Dragons (and other role-playing games), so her twenty-sided die (D20, for those in the know) helps her make decisions – just like Two-Face and his lucky quarter in the Batman comics!

And for the young nonfiction comic fan, check out Comics Confidential by Leonard S. Marcus, an anthology of interviews and original comics by today’s foremost graphic novelists (Kazu Kibuishi, Gene Luen Yang, Hope Larson), who talk all about the highs and lows of making comics! It has lots of great advice for young comic writers and illustrators!

YOUNG ADULT

Chaotic Good by Whitney Gardner is like a comic-con Twelfth Night (or She’s the Man, if you prefer). Cameron is a cosplay wizard and aspiring fashion designer. When her costumes win a competition, male fans troll her, accusing her of not being a “real” fan. After a move, she discovers the local comic shop, managed by the exact kind of male gatekeeper who forced her to flee the online world. So she borrows her twin brother’s clothes, poses as a boy, and easily enters the local nerd inner sanctum (and their ongoing D&D game). And things get even more complicated when she develops a crush on one of those D&D adventurers!

If comic-con-adjacent romances are your thing, you need to read Geekerella by Ashley Poston, a fan-fic twist on the Cinderella story about geek girl Ellie Wittimer, the worlds’ biggest fan of sci-fi TV series Starfield who wins a trip to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball and gets to meet a teen actor from the new film reboot, Darien Freeman. Will Ellie hit it off with her Federation Prince? Or will her stepsisters ruin things for her again?

And if you enjoy Geekerella, you might like the follow-up, The Princess and the Fangirl, a geeky take on The Prince and the Pauper! Imogen Lovelace is a fangirl who doesn’t want her favourite Starfield character, Princess Amara, to get killed off. Jessica Stone is the teen actress who plays Amara and wants out of the franchise. And – coincidentally – they look a lot like each other. Parent Trap-style, a deal is struck, but will fans catch on to their scheme?

For more geek love, you need Melissa Keil‘s Life in Outer Space, in which self-described, seventeen-year-old Sam Kinnison (no relation) loves horror movies and World of Warcraft and his loser friends. Then a cool girl named Camilla Carter enters his life – she also loves W.O.W., and wants to be Sam’s friend, which throws his life upside-down is this funny love-letter to geeks.

If you want to read some nonfiction from a famous geek girl, then you want The Fangirl’s Guide to the Universe by Sam Maggs, author of numerous comics and video games (and former on-air host for Nerdist). This handbook is packed with tips, playthroughs, and cheat codes for girls into geeks stuff, including how to make nerdy friends, how to rock cosplay, to defeat internet trolls (very important), and how to attend your first con. It includes advice from Sam as well as other fangirl faves like Danielle Paige, Rainbow Rowell, and Preeti Chibber!

See you all in the funny pages!

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Tundra Telegram: Books that’ll Make You Sweat

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we simmer on topics that we’re all stewing on, and recommend some scalding stories to generate further discussion.

Much of Europe and North America and several provinces in China are in the middle of a massive heat wave. And while that sounds like fun and a good excuse to get ice cream, this is not the fun kind of heat. This is catastrophic heat that’s breaking records, cancelling rail travel, killing people, and contributing to massive wildfires in what some are calling a “heat apocalypse.”

The best course of action, should you be in the middle of a heat wave (and many of you reading this are), is to stay hydrated, limit your exertion, and – if needed (and possible) – get to a local cooling station. But if you want to read some books that are just as sweltering as the weather (the same kind of rationale as drinking coffee in the heat), get ready to sizzle – we’ve got hot books, books about how the earth is heating up, and books with the hottest summers ever recorded – so far.

PICTURE BOOKS

If you think you’re hot, imagine what it would be like in this heat as a long-haired dachshund! That’s the predicament the hero of Hot Dog by Doug Salati faces: this is a wiener pup who is overheated and overwhelmed. He’s had enough of a sizzling city summer, so his owner hails a cab and finds them so relief on the beach!

A book of value to anyone in a heat wave is Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right by Caroline Arnold and Annie Patterson. In easy-to-understand writing, young readers will discover the many different ways humans and animals adapt to heat and cold. Have you ever wondered why you sweat when you’re hot? Or why dogs pant in the heat? These burning questions and more are answered within.

How can young readers prevent this summer’s heat wave from being the first of regular occurrences? Climate Action: The Future Is in Our Hands by Georgina Stevens and Katie Rewse has a few ideas! Not only does this book outline for young readers the causes of climate change and how it is affecting our world, it provides some innovative ideas for tackling climate breakdown, inspired by the positive stories from young people effecting change all around the (currently very hot) globe.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

If you’re looking for books about the causes of the incredible heat and how climate change contributes to it, but for a slightly older reading level, there are several great books to choose from. What Is Climate Change? by Gail Herman and John Hinderliter presents all sides of the climate change argument in this fact-based, fair-minded, and well-researched book that looks at the subject from many perspectives, including scientific, social, and political. And it has a polar bear on the cover, who we currently envy (even if its ice floe is looking mighty small!).

Once you’ve figured out what climate change is, and want to do something about it, you’ll want to read This Book Will (Help) Cool the Climate by Isabel Thomas and Alex Paterson, which offers 50 different ways to “cut pollution, speak up, and protect the planet” from bartering to assigning school some eco-homework. (No word on if anything will immediately turn the temperature down, but every bit helps!)

Want more ammunition on cooling the climate? Naomi Klein and Rebecca Stefoff‘s How to Change Everything has what you need. As the book notes, temperatures are rising all over the world, leading to wildfires, droughts, animal extinctions and ferocious storms (and that’s just this week). Using examples of change and protest from young activists around the world, Klein shows we can help make things better – if we’re willing to change everything.

For something (mostly) fictional in the same vein, try Carrie Firestone‘s The First Rule of Climate Club, in which eighth grader Mary Kate Murphy starts a podcast on climate activism and rallies her friends to create lasting change in their small suburban town. (It’s like the kids in this book read How to Change Everything!)

You may identify with the protagonist of our next book: Penelope March Is Melting by Jeffrey Michael Ruby. Set in a frozen town, Glacier Cove, that sits atop a literal iceberg, it seems like the book’s resident bookworm Penelope March need not worry about heat waves. But when the iceberg begins to melt, Penelope and her friend Miles must set out on an adventure.

And it wouldn’t be a heat wave without deadly forest fires. Cue Canadian Iain Lawrence and his forthcoming novel, Fire on Headless Mountain, in which eleven-year-old Virgil is separated from his siblings in the midst of a disastrous forest conflagration, and must use his wits and mother’s lessons to survive on his own.

YOUNG ADULT

Moving from forest fires to another kind of heat, Kasie West‘s YA romance Sunkissed finds Avery spending a hot summer at a family resort, with – surprise, surprise – an even hotter resort staff member, Brooks. This swoony love story won’t give you heat exhaustion, but it will make you sweat.

And Say Yes Summer by Lindsey Roth Culli emanates a similar heat, as Rachel Walls spends a sweltering summer saying “yes,” to everything – yes to new experiences, yes to spontaneous road trips with crushes. Let’s just hope she also says “yes” to drinking plenty of fluids and finding shade.

Summer Fires by Giulia Sagramola is a graphic novel that depicts summer heat so well in its color palette and its characters languid movements, you’d think you’ve been transported to southern Italy. The book, translated from the Italian, follows two sisters faced with impossible choices of teenaged life, which mirror the massive forest fires (again!) in the surrounding hillsides of the town. Turn on the ceiling fan and dive in!

Speaking of forest fires, Julie Buxbaum‘s Year on Fire uses fire season in Wood Valley as a backdrop for changing friendships as a single kiss with new boy Rohan shakes the foundation of the connection among twins Arch and Immie and their best friend, Paige. There’s even an arson in the school bathroom, if you need more heat!

There are few things better to beat the heat than ice cream. Melt with You by Jennifer Dugan is a funny and heartfelt queer YA rom-com about two girls on a summer road trip in an ice cream truck. Former best friends Fallon and Chloe haven’t talked since a fateful summer they hooked up. But a year later, a series of unfortunate events mean they’ll be working an ice cream truck together through a heated road trip. Not since the Smashing Pumpkins‘ “Today” music video has an ice cream truck been filled with such angst!

As Bruno Mars noted in “Uptown Funk,” there’s not much hotter than a dragon’s breath – at least we think that’s what he’s talking about when he croons, “Too hot. Make a dragon wanna’ retire, man.” E.K. Johnston agrees, as her book The Story of Owen: The Dragon Slayer of Trondheim combines the heat of dragon fire with the heat of climate change. See, sixteen-year-old Owen is training to be a dragon-slayer in modern-day Canada, so he (and his friend and bard Siobhan) can protect his rural town from dragons who feed on fossil fuels. Yes, in this world dragons feed on carbon emissions (!).

Sure it’s hot now, but is it horses-combusting-into-flame hot? Then you need to read Ashlords by  Scott Reintgen, an epic fantasy story about three “phoenix riders” who compete in a multi-day horse race in which the horses, made of ash and alchemy, are summoned back to life each sunrise with uniquely crafted powers to cover impossible distances and challenges before bursting into flames at sunset. (Kentucky Derby, time to up your game.)

Stay cool, stay hydrated, and enjoy some hot reads!

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Tundra Telegram: Books that Won’t Leave You on Read

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we illuminate the topics that have us all chatting, and recommend some great books to generate further discussion.

Last Friday, nearly half of Canada found itself without telephone or internet service as one of Canada’s few major telecommunications companies, Rogers, experienced a massive network blackout. Millions of people were unable to make a call (even for 911 emergencies), send an email, or – in many cases – make a purchase via debit or credit card. People crowded around outside coffee shops and stores (on networks other than Rogers) for their sweet, sweet WiFi. The Weeknd was forced to cancel a show – ironically at the Rogers Centre – due to the outage’s effect on venue operations and ticketing.

The big telecommunications company has remained vague about the reason for the nationwide outage, and customers are, understandably, still upset. (In fact, as of this writing, there are still many Canadians affected by the outage who still have no service!) So, we thought we’d highlight some books on outages, telephones, and general communication breakdown. If you still have internet service: enjoy!

PICTURE BOOKS

To remind you of what we all lost in the Rogers outage, we recommend Pamela Druckerman and Benjamin Chaud‘s Paris by Phone. Little Josephine decides that Paris is where she really belongs, and all it takes is a quick call on her magical phone to whisk her away to the City of Lights. And though she loves her visit, she finds herself missing home. It’s a love letter to Paris (and to home) and a metaphor (at least we think it is?) for the independence a telephone can grant.

Before there was WiFi, there was Grace Banker and switchboard operators like her. Grace Banker and Her Hello Girls Answer the Call by Claudia Friddell and Elizabeth Baddeley is a historical picture book about a telephone switchboard trainer in New York who becomes the Chief Operator of the 1st Unit of World War I telephone operators in the battlefields of France. Thirty-two female telephone operators transferred orders from commanders to battlefields and communicated top-secret messages between American and French headquarters. (And you thought telephones were just for Candy Crush!)

In this instance, it wasn’t a power outage – though if your lights and other home electronics were connected to “the internet of things” – it may have felt that way. Nevertheless, we recommend astronaut Chris Hadfield and The Fan Brothers‘ The Darkest Dark, to remind you that the dark (whether the dark of infinite space or a downed network) is beautiful and exciting And the newest edition has a special glow-in-the-dark cover, in case you are caught in a real blackout.

And if you do find yourself in a real power blackout – not just a telecommunications one – you should make sure you have a copy of Ray by Marianna Coppo handy. The humorous picture book is about a light bulb who spends most of his time at the end of a hall in darkness until he goes on a magnificent journey. It’s also a book about the power of imagination – something you’ll need to rely on without access to social media or streaming services!

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

To understand the tremendous Rogers outage, you have to start at the beginning. And that’s with Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? by Bonnie Bader and David Groff. Learn all about the man who invented the telephone – a sometime Canadian, no less! – whose technological revolution resulted from his work with teaching deaf students. Fun fact: his namesake telecommunications company (Bell Canada) did not experience a monster outage last week.

Mya’s Strategy to Save the World by Tanya Lloyd Kyi is, ostensibly, about protagonist Mya Parsons and her quest to get her own cell phone. So, she would be understandably upset by the network outage of last week. That said, she also runs her school’s social justice club and is determined to change the world for the better, so she’d probably be against large corporate communications oligopolies (look it up!) anyway.

And a novel that starts with faulty network communications and goes downhill from there is Frances Greenslade‘s Red Fox Road. Francie’s family vacation goes awry with the GPS leads them astray. Soon, she becomes stranded alone – no phone, no internet – in the bush, and must rely only on her survival skills to keep her alive in this modern-day Hatchet.

And though it’s not available until the fall, Babble!: And How Punctuation Saved It by Caroline Adderson and Roman Muradow is the perfect book to talk about communication breakdowns. Chaos reigns in the village of Babble! All day, the residents fight, yell and argue, and no one is heard or understood – it’s like a life full of network outages. But then … punctuation arrives to build bridges. This book is both a parable for communication failures and catnip for grammar teachers.

YOUNG ADULT

If you’re talking outages, you’re talking the gripping Rule of Three series by Eric Walters: The Rule of Three, Fight for Power, and Will to Survive. One ordinary afternoon, every single machine in sixteen-year-old Adam’s high school computer lab stops working. Cars won’t start, phones are down, and a blackout is widespread. Follow Adam and his allies in this epic survival adventure about what happens when all the modern technological amenities on Earth suddenly just … stop working. (Some of it is pretty violent!) And check out the standalone book, The Fourth Dimension, which follows fifteen-year-old Emma’s journey in that same all-encompassing power outage.

And if you or the young readers in your life are looking to “unplug” a bit more this summer (voluntarily, of course), Tundra Book Group is involved in a number of excellent summer reading programs we encourage you to check out, like:

Tundra Book Group