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September 01, 2020When Your Father is Your Biggest Fan
I don’t believe that any father was more proud of having a son for a writer than my own dad. Whenever I met somebody who knew him—it might be a waiter in a restaurant—the person would say, “Oh, ...
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June 09, 2020
What Makes a Good Children’s Book?
You’re buying a book for a new baby, or for your own restless 12-year-old. You know what books delighted you when you were a kid. But are those books actually good? And are they likely to please and ...
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September 02, 2020Combat Populism with an Excerpt from Jonathan Manthorpe's Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence
It's been hard to miss the rising tide of populism that has crept into democratic discourse in North American and Europe in the past decade. What to do about it and what it means are trickier challenges, ...
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June 12, 2020
Why are Canadian kids’ books so darn good? (And they are!)
We Canadians are pretty good at downplaying our accomplishments. “Cutting down the tall poppies” and “familiarity breeds contempt” should perhaps be emblazoned on our coins and flag.So it may ...
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September 03, 2020How To Become That Kind of Bitch (or, One-Night Stands and New Selves)
Before the pandemic, I had a one-night stand with a person I met at a rave, Tyler. The morning after we slept together, I was buttering my toast and he began to ask probing questions about my life and ...
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June 16, 2020
The School Library - Why It Matters More Than Ever
School libraries, now sometimes called Information Centres, have been getting short shrift in the last decade or so. Budgets have been slashed, staff hours cut and distributed among multiple locations, ...
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September 03, 2020Read an Excerpt from Farzana Doctor's New Novel, Seven
Sharifa, the main character in author Farzana Doctor's new novel, Seven (Dundurn), is getting more than she bargained for when she decides to dig into her family's history.After landing in India alongside ...
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June 19, 2020
To Pre-read, or Not to Pre-read?
Should you be vetting your kids’ reading material? For many, the answer seems so obvious, you don’t even need to ask the question. To make sure kids are choosing books that meet their approval, ...
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September 03, 2020
My One Week on the Bestseller List
On Saturday, June 21, 2014 I opened the Globe and Mail to the books section (back in the time when newspapers had book sections) and after reading the reviews I began to idly scan the bestseller list. ...
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November 12, 2020Montreal's Matthew Hollett Wins CBC Poetry Prize for Pandemic Inspired Poem
Today, CBC Books announced Matthew Hollett of Montreal as the winner of the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.His winning piece, "Tickling the Scar", was written during the early days of the pandemic, when Hollett, ...
