"It's really difficult to operate here. It's one of the probably toughest places to get stuff done creatively," says DJ Chew.
"But if you can, something beautiful and powerful comes out of it, like a flower pushing up from a crack in the concrete."
“VenCo” is an incredible novel of social rejection and acceptance, of finding a community to belong to and flourishing in that supportive environment. Dimaline’s plot proves that no one is chained or ensorcelled by their past actions, and that it is always possible to venture forth to new beginnings or more fruitful experiences. The most important part of this transition, however, lies in finding new family and friends who can support, care and love the person during the process.
“The Librarian of Burned Books” is not a young adult novel, but it should be read by young adults. In fact, it is a novel that should be read by anyone and everyone who cares about books in a day and age where books and their subject matter are once again being challenged by school boards and parents throughout the country.
“A philosopher”, according to an old joke retold in this book, “is someone of whom you ask a question and, after he’s talked for a bit, you don’t understand your question”.
Whether or not true words are spoken in that jest is what’s examined in this excellent and often witty primer on the art, or aspiration, of thinking clearly and logically and ethically.
Peter Freuchen spent the winter of 1907 alone in the dark. A junior member of a Danish scientific expedition to northern Greenland, he was, in his own words, “just past 20, full of a lust for novel adventures,” and so, “like a fool,” he volunteered to spend the season manning a remote weather station. As wolves slaughtered his dogs and the icy condensation of his breath caused his cabin’s frozen walls to creep inward, his thoughts turned “sterile and unattractive” and he began having extended conversations with his cutlery. But the ordeal did not break him, for Freuchen had fallen in love with the Arctic.
Freuchen is the subject of Reid Mitenbuler’s “Wanderlust,” an attempt to reconcile the contradictions of, as Mitenbuler writes, “a highly sociable person who, somewhat inexplicably, was drawn to some of the most isolated places on Earth.” Mitenbuler paints Freuchen as the rare explorer who saw the world’s remote corners not as territory to be conquered but as a place to call home. Although narratively clumsy, it is a charming portrait of a man who traveled the world with an open mind, whose natural warmth never faltered in the cold.