Nana S Cold Days

When, after leaving the warm coast of Africa, Nana arrives into the cold winter of North America, she goes to bed and refuses to get up.

The essays in Home Words explore the complexity of the idea of home through various theoretical lenses and groupings of texts. One focus of this collection is the relation between the discourses of nation, which often represent the nation as home, and the discourses of home in children’s literature, which variously picture home as a dwelling, family, town or region, psychological comfort, and a place to start from and return to. These essays consider the myriad ways in which discourses of home underwrite both children’s and national literatures. Home Words reconfigures the field of Canadian children’s literature as it is usually represented by setting the study of English- and French-language texts side by side, and by paying sustained attention to the diversity of work by Canadian writers for children, including both Aboriginal peoples and racialized Canadians. It builds on the literary histories, bibliographical essays, and biographical criticism that have dominated the scholarship to date and sets out to determine and establish new directions for the study of Canadian children’s literature.

Full of humor, profundity, and obsession, these are tales of writers on peregrine paths. Some set out in search of legends or artistic inspiration; others seek spiritual epiphany or fulfillment of a promise. Their journeys lead them variously to Dracula s castle, Laura Ingalls Wilder s prairie, the Grimms fairy-tale road, Mayan temples, Nathaniel West s California, the Camino de Santiago trail, Scott s Antarctica, the Marquis de Sade s haunted manor, or the sacred city of Varanasi. All of these pilgrimages are worthy journeys redemptive and serious. But a time-honored element of pilgrimage is a suspension of rules, and there is absurdity and exuberance here as well."

Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft and making in the contemporary cultural economy, with a distinctive focus on the ways in which this creative sector is growing exponentially as a result of online shopfronts and home-based micro-enterprise, 'mumpreneurialism' and downshifting, and renewed demand for the handmade.

Jacquelina is a ten-year-old girl who lives in the beautiful Central American country of Panama with her beloved Abuelita and her younger sister, Nana. Her Papa works hard and is often away for work, while her Mama moved to the United States of America many years earlier in search of a better life. Panama gives Jacquelina all she needs: clean air to breathe, fresh fruit to eat, and genuine happiness. She has a supportive community, friends, and the loving family she is blessed with. When her Abuelita unexpectedly passes away, Jacquelina is faced with a difficult decision: Move to New York with Mama or stay in Panama with Papa. Jacquelina's story invites readers to experience how an immigrant child finds her identity, voice and purpose.

This book began as a letter to her daughter in answer to some specific questions about the old days. The author was encouraged to expand the letter into this delightful memoir that not only will engage her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, when they are old enough to enjoy it, but is universal enough in scope to inspire anyone who has ever had to meet some difficult challenges. Not many of us will ever have to buy our own cow to feed four youngsters under the age of five or grow and can our own food to keep from going hungry, or wait ten years for our husband to finally land a real job. During the Great Depression the author had to subsist on her wits and creativity. Like the time in 1939 when her over-generous husband invited a traveling wayfarer with an expensive camera and a German accent to share the old Virginia farmhouse which, unbeknownst to the author, was near a secret government facility She finally figured out he was a German spy.

Winner of the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize, Artichoke Hearts by Sita Brahmachari is an incredibly insightful, honest novel exploring the delicate balance, and often injustice, of life and death - but at its heart is a celebration of friendship, culture, and life. Twelve-year-old Mira comes from a chaotic, artistic and outspoken family where it’s not always easy to be heard. As her beloved Nana Josie's health declines, Mira begins to discover the secrets of those around her, and also starts to keep some of her own. She is drawn to mysterious Jide, a boy who is clearly hiding a troubled past and has grown hardened layers - like those of an artichoke – around his heart. As Mira is experiencing grief for the first time, she is also discovering the wondrous and often mystical world around her.