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The Holding
City of Ember
Elle

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The Holding

The Holding by Canadian writer Merilyn Simonds tells parallel stories of two different women who settle in the Madawaska Hills of Ontario a century apart. In the 1990's, Alyson, along with her reticent friend, Walker, leave Toronto and move to an abandoned farm. While wandering in the bush, Alyson comes upon the ruins of a cabin, and a cookbook over a hundred years old. In the back pages she discovers the hand written notes of Margaret, who emigrated from Scotland in 1859 with her three brothers. Both women raise herbs that come to have symbolic meaning as the story progresses. The characters struggle with the hardships of the Canadian bush as well as with the people they love, and their own inner fears. Complex, sometimes tragic, and deeply moving, The Holding will draw you in and hold onto you, long after you put it down.

     With Harry Potter behind us, and the summer ahead of us, what good book for teens is out there?What to take on your holiday that will keep them reading?   The answer could be the new release of The City of Ember  by Jeanne DuPrau.  Fortunately it is already in paperback ($ 6.99), so it is hardly the cost of a movie.  The story is fast moving, suspenseful, mysterious, and exciting.  It borders on science fiction and fantasy.  It involves a city on the verge of despair.  The builders of the city planned ahead and left instructions for the people to survive. However the instructions became lost.  How they are found, and who finds them becomes the adventure.  Will Lina and Doon escape the city?  PREPARE YOURSELF FOR A REAL TREAT OF READING!  Mom, Dad, the whole family will love this story! (Yes...it was supposed to be for teens, but parents have priviledges too!) There is a sequel, The People of Sparks.  But don''t read it until you finish The City of Ember, don't spoil the mystery.

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Elle
by Douglas Glover
 
This novel won the Governor General's award for 2003 but has not rceived the attention it deserves.  What do you do with a headstrong girl?  Many of us with daughters have asked that same question !  If it's the 16th century, you might drop her off on a deserted island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Based on a true story,  Elle is a qintessential Canadian novel of survival and ingenuity.  The novel describes the first contact between French colonists and the Canadian  native people and their inability to understand each others' customs and values. At times magical, at times humourous,  Elle is reminiscent of Life of Pi, but about a young woman on an island with a black mastiff named Léon, rather than a boy in a boat with a tiger.