Depending on your definition of summer, it’s more or less here! Grab a blanket and some snacks, and let’s head to the park! And a hat; don’t forget a hat. And water; it’s important to hydrate. Okay, now let’s head to the park! These four reads are the perfect companion to an easy afternoon of lazing around in the grass.
Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox by Danielle Daniel (Groundwood Books): Taking some young ones with you to the park? Then take this book with you as well! Winner of the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox is an introduction to the Anishinaabe tradition of totem animals. Accompanied by illustrations of children wearing masks of an animal guide, young readers will delight in explaining why they identify with one animal or the next. A great way to keep young children engaged and occupied!
The Flower Can Always be Changing by Shawna Lemay (Palimpsest Press): In between sessions of serious cloud busting, relax into this collection of brief and contemplative essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty – graceful, noble, ghostly.
Death and the Intern by Jeremy Hanson-Finger (Invisible Publishing): Shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, this is the perfect way to spend five hours under a shady tree. Featuring an ensemble cast of unscrupulous, high-strung, and hilarious characters, Death and the Intern combines hospital drama and hard-boiled detective genres with equal parts humour and pathos. It’s Scrubs meets The Maltese Falcon and The Crying of Lot 49!
Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches Our Tables by Glen C. Filson and Bamidele Adekunle (Wilfrid Laurier University Press): Planning to visit a farmers market on your way to the park? Then Eat Local, Taste Global is a must-read. Of interest to food activists, Eat Local, Taste Global shows how the increasing demand for ethnocultural vegetables is at odds with the corporate food regime, and makes the claim that social justice requires that people have both food security and food sovereignty