February 8th, 2016
“Alberta-based Geoffrey Bilson Award-winning author Karen Bass draws on the Cree legend of the Wîhtiko for her latest YA novel, which blends adventure, horror, and some good old-fashioned coming-of-age wisdom. En route to spend the summer with his mining-executive father in Yellowknife, 15-year-old Jared Fredrickson’s private jet crashes in a remote swamp in Northern Alberta. […]
Posted in The Hill
November 10th, 2015
“…On the whole, I found Evie engaging and solidly voiced, while she worked through her grief she did find many intriguing and new things, and animals galore—from exotic (Iguanas and snapping turtles) to ordinary dogs and cats. Well developed, you can see the city through Evie’s fresh eyes, and understand her needing to keep busy […]
Posted in Evie Brooks is Marooned in Manhattan
October 30th, 2015
“Although it opens with yet another dead mother, Evie Brooks Is Maroonedin Manhattan is a fresh take on the duck out of water trope. Evie finds herself living in Manhattan with her uncle, a veterinarian—about as far from her late mother’s bohemian life in Dublin as Evie can imagine. After a few funky days, Evie […]
Posted in Evie Brooks is Marooned in Manhattan
July 23rd, 2015
“German sailor Erich is not a Nazi, despite being part of the Third Reich’s military. Max, a Canadian boy from a German family, does not support Hitler, but peers in rural Alberta subject him to vicious torment anyway. When Erich is taken prisoner, he crosses paths with Max at a logging camp where several of […]
Posted in Uncertain Soldier
July 23rd, 2015
“Uncertain Soldier, by the award-winning author of Graffiti Knight, is a taut, adrenaline-fuelled novel of enmity and loyalty set in rural Alberta in the years 1943 and 1944. The conflicts and prejudices of World War II play out with violent consequences in Canada as well as overseas…. Bass writes with a visceral power. As she […]
Posted in Uncertain Soldier
June 29th, 2015
This Canada Day, celebrate your patriotism the literary way. CBC Books has rounded up 100 Young Adult Books That Make You Proud To Be Canadian. How many have you read? Take the quiz on the CBC Books website. Among the chosen 100 are Nix Minus One by Jill MacLean and Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass. […]
Posted in Graffiti Knight, Nix Minus One
May 29th, 2015
Pajama Press is pleased to announce that Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass has been nominated for the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader’s Choice Award. This award program, open to participants in three age groups from Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and Washington, asks children and teens to read a shortlist of nominated titles […]
Posted in Graffiti Knight
February 12th, 2015
“It is June 1913, when Ali breaks the news to his fiancée Zeynep that he will be leaving their Anatolian village to go to Canada. Once there, he hopes to finally be able to save enough money to pay for her passage, and to build a new life for them there. But the world is […]
Posted in Dance of the Banished
February 1st, 2015
“Gr 8 Up–Skrypuch continues to tell the stories of young refugees—as in The Hunger (2002), Nobody’s Child (2003, both Dundrun), and Daughter of War (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2008)—in her latest historical novel. Set between 1913 and 1917, it features two Alevi Kurd teenagers in Anatolia as World War I breaks out and Turkey begins the […]
Posted in Dance of the Banished
October 24th, 2014
“…The inside covers contain maps detailing the geography of both Zeynep and Ali’s stories, and the ‘Author’s Note’ provides considerable background on the Alevi Kurds; both offer a better sense of the journeys undertaken by both main characters and of their cultural context… Dance of the Banished is definitely a worthwhile acquisition for middle and […]
Posted in Dance of the Banished
