A day of Pride

by Roy Youldous-Raiss, , Illustrations by Yossi Madar, with Alex Maghen (Translator), Yanir Dekel (Translator)

It’s an exciting day, the Pride parade is on and everyone is going! The bright and bumptious display is carefully watched by the colourful Rainbow fairy, but there’s an unwelcome visitor close at hand. It seems the wicked Witch of Shame is out to ruin Pride and even has her sights set on the Rainbow fairy!

This book is full of colourful fun illustrations that have enough going on in them to add layers to your storytelling. Young children ages 2-5 will love the intricacies of the drawings and the smiling happy faces. The intrigue brought by the Witch of Shame will keep their interest piqued and the discussions flowing. Older children 5-7 will enjoy revisiting the story and it would be a good addition to a school library as a self-esteem resource, especially for those interested in LGBT issues

A day of Pride will be welcomed by diverse families everywhere. It’s charming and energetic and the addition of finding the author’s family shows how friendly a story it really is. The story itself is a simple one and highlights the need for children to feel ‘comfortable with who they really are’. With Pride parades so bold and widespread in cities and towns around the world A day of Pride is bound to interest questioning children and open discussions about tolerance and acceptance.

I adored the Rainbow fairy and so pleased that her grace and vibrancy shone through even the darkest challenge! I felt the tensions caused by the Witch of Shame (maybe there would be a more poetic translation, but it does the trick). The only issue I had was with the often clunky rhyme scheme, but a good storyteller will work this out. I can see a place for this book in Early Years shelves with lots of follow-up craft activities to complement library sessions.

Radio Life

by Derek B. Miller

Sometime around the end of the 21st century, an apocalypse on Earth causes universal disaster through (no surprise) the lunacy of a political power grab. Some 300 years later, we meet our own descendants. There aren’t many, and live in an amnesiac world. Divided into small factions, they live simple and separate existences. In the book, we meet the Commonwealth which values the collection and sharing of knowledge. Their pursuit of learning means they’ve accomplished a few engineering feats (human-powered electricity!) despite having to re-invent the process from mere scraps from anecdotes.

Soon, another power grab looms from a more aggressive faction, the Keepers, who wish to seize assets and knowledge for their sole use and to feed their need to dominate this damaged world. Another group of resourceful nomads, called the Roamers, have noticed the failure of crops to yield and flourish, and the Commonwealth decides the time has come to take action to ensure survival. They run reccy missions. One of the Commonwealth leaders is the plucky polymath, Lilly. When Lilly picks up a radio signal using the set she has engineered to life, she hears the message that rocks her world: the scout Elimisha has found the Internet.

There is a lot of humour and humanity in this story. Because the knowledge that the Commonwealth has collected is fragmented and out of context, jokes and malapropisms ease the heat from the usual sadness of the post-apocalyptic SFF genre. The main characters are more often than not female, which, too, is a break from the usual. That means the reader must have an open mind, and the author was able to world-build in a unique way without relying on stereotype.

In a stroke of authorial genius, The Commonwealth pieces human history together (literally) from a discarded game of Trivial Pursuit, which they use to catalogue their own archive of knowledge. They also rely on other random sources for information like texts from the Greeks and a set of Calvin and Hobbes. This creates an atmosphere of wonder in the reader. Is all information useful in some way? Later in the story, a larger debate begins, should all knowledge be preserved without prejudice?

I really enjoyed the book, especially because I am a career librarian, and I think its definitely a crossover title: of interest to both YA and adult readers. I got a pre-pub copy from NetGalley to read, but with this crazy year and extra work at school, my good intentions of waiting for a good time to immerse myself in the story came after the deadline and it disappeared from my reading deck. The copy I resorted to was from Audible where the reader did an excellent job. Knowing it was a long read, I ramped the speed to 1.25X and was able to listen while I supervise key worker children. In a way, it became more meaningful because of the hopefulness and perserverence of the main characters. There are strong nudges toward a sequel, and I will look forward to reading the real paper copy of that one.

This book is a not-to-be-missed title for 2021.