When Heidi Hallett purchased Frog Hollow Books in Halifax’s Park Lane Mall a little over two years ago, she did so out of a lifelong love for literature. After almost a decade as a co-owner of The Coast, Halifax’s only independent weekly newspaper, she decided that it was time to turn the page on her profession.

“I have been a big reader ever since I was a little girl,” she says. “Books were my way of both escaping the world and making some sense out of it. I have always been a big supporter of Atlantic Canadian literature and believe that we have some of the best authors in the country here on the East Coast. I wanted to play my part in our great tradition of storytelling.”

Ms. Hallett is not alone in her struggles, as independent booksellers from coast to coast feel the pressure from the onslaught of deep-pocketed big-box stores, online purchasing, the high dollar and the cost of prime real estate.

Ms. Hallett is doing what she can to keep her dreams alive by spreading the word about regional scribes through book launches and in-store author appearances. “Local literature is a vital part of our culture here, and I am concerned that if more independent bookstores like mine start going under, we risk losing that history and heritage forever.”

Dave Hill is the manager of Munro’s Books in Victoria, one of the country’s oldest and most successful independent booksellers. He says that stores like Frog Hollow have to find and work with their core strengths. “The key is to focus her efforts upon the things that the big chain outlets or online sellers cannot offer their customers,” he says. “First and foremost, that means excellent service and expert advice.”

To that end, Ms. Hallett and her staff should always make it a point to engage their clients in literary chit-chat. “Bookstores are tailor-made for browsing and discussing ideas,” he says. “What she ideally wants is for the bookstore to become a point of destination for readers of all ages. Along with that literary expertise and those added personal touches, things like author readings and signings, special events, weekly or monthly theme sales, on-site contests, book clubs, having an activities area for children and even serving coffee and muffins will all add up to a higher volume of in-store traffic.”

He adds that Frog Hollow must then use its in-house and front-of-store display space as effectively as possible. “A real emphasis should be placed upon specialty products, such as local and regional authors and books,” he says.

“Ultimately, however, Hallett is going to build her reputation in the community through word of mouth and referrals.”

Eleanor LeFave agrees. President of the Canadian Booksellers Association and owner of Mabel’s Fables Children’s Bookstore in Toronto says businesses like hers must make the most of their marketplace. “We will never be able to compete with the Chapters/Indigo outlets or the Amazon.coms of the world,” she admits, “but we can find a good niche for ourselves and make ourselves a vital and vibrant part of the neighbourhood.” That means reaching out to the local community as well. “Getting involved with local literary festivals, or bringing books or book discussion into the schools or libraries is always a great way to keep up visibility,” she says.

“Sending out a weekly or monthly e-mail is an effective and cost-efficient way for Hallett to keep her existing customers up to date on current and upcoming releases and events.” Ensuring that the store’s website remains fresh and dynamic is a vital component of the marketing mix as well. That technology can also help to cut costs in other ways. “It sounds tedious,” she admits, “but by establishing best-business practices through process streamlining, Hallett will be in a better position to keep an eye on cash flow, stay on top of special orders and monitor inventory. With such a low profit margin, there really is no wiggle room for any kind of systematic errors.”

Excerpted from the Globe and Mail, April 28, 2008

Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia

Jasper is still sleeping when I wake up. He sleeps a lot these days. He’s sprawled out, taking up half the bed like he always does. I nudge him gently with my foot, but he keeps dozing. That’s okay. He can sleep in. Today is his day.

Today we are celebrating Jasper’s Day. It was my idea. Mom and Dad are staying home from work. I’m staying home from school. Everything we do will be in honour of Jasper - sort of like a birthday. But it isn’t Jasper’s birthday, and I tell myself not to think about what day it really is.

Riley’s family celebrates Jasper’s last day. In the morning, their beloved Golden Retriever gets his very own serving of his favourite breakfast - scrambled eggs with cheese, and bacon. Riley remembers to bring the camera as he and his family take Jasper out for a ride in the van.

The family drives to Jasper’s favourite stream where he used to swim and fetch sticks when he was more agile. Jasper’s sight and hearing are also failing, and his arthritis makes it difficult for him to move about. After the stream, Riley and his parents stop at The Big Scoop for a treat. Riley’s father orders the “usual” for Jasper and himself - butterscotch ripple. Riley’s father tells the ice-cream shop owner about Jasper, and the man comes out to the van to say good-bye to one of his loyal customers. After the ice cream, the family stops at Riley’s Grandma’s house, and she and her dog, Nikki, bid farewell to Jasper. Along the journey, Riley has taken several photographs of Jasper.

The family returns home, but only Riley and his mother get out of the van. It is time to say goodbye. Riley whispers in Jasper’s ear, “You’re the best dog in the whole world.” Jasper licks Riley’s cheek, and then he and Riley’s father depart. Even though Riley knows that the veterinarian will give Jasper a shot and death will be quick and gentle for Jasper, it is terribly difficult to say goodbye to his beloved dog.

Riley’s father returns home with Jasper’s body wrapped in an arrowhead blanket, and the family buries him in the backyard. They gently place Jasper’s old chew toy, a stick, his water dish and a picture of the family in his grave. The family laughs and cries as they remember Jasper and say their final goodbyes.

That night, the house is empty without Jasper. Riley’s chest aches as he tries to fall asleep. Mom and Dad got Jasper before he was even born; Jasper had always been in his life. Tomorrow will be Riley’s first day without Jasper.

Riley looks at the photograph of himself and Jasper on his nightstand and thinks of all the photographs he took today, he gets the idea to make a memory book of Jasper’s life. He will never forget his friend.

Marjorie Blain Parker’s tender and unsentimental treatment of a child’s dealing with the death of a pet resonates with readers of all ages. The gentle and honest story speaks of lessons about love, acceptance, and remembrance. Janet Wilson’s soft and expressive illustrations are rendered in chalk pastels on coloured paper.

Jasper’s Day won the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award.

A Memory Book for Harry

Recently, a friend in our online community lost her Golden Retriever to an aggressive cancer. The story of Harry and the beautiful memory book that was created for him and his surviving sister Lucy appears on our sister site, Red Star Café. The story includes a YouTube version of the memory book, with a haunting rendition of Into the West by Annie Lennox (from Lord of the Rings). Read the story here.

Manga Shakespeare is a series of graphic novel adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays. A fusion of classic Shakespeare with manga visuals, these are cutting-edge adaptations that will intrigue and grip readers. Drawing inspiration from trend-setting Japan and using Shakespeare’s original texts, this series brings to life the bard’s words for students, Shakespeare enthusiasts and manga fans.

Manga is a dynamic, emotional and cinematic medium easily absorbed by the eye. Its attractive art and simple storytelling methods enthuse readers to approach Shakespeare’s work in the way he intended – as entertainment.

The first Manga Shakespeare books – Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet – were published in March, to great critical acclaim in the UK. With Romeo and Juliet set in modern-day Tokyo, and Hamlet in a cyberworld, these backdrops make Shakespeare more accessible to today’s reader. Richard III and The Tempest were then released in September 2007 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was published in February 2008. There are more titles in the series to follow including Macbeth and Julius Caesar in June and As You Like It and Othello due in November.

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s most famous love story, unfurls in a dramatic manga setting, in which Verona becomes a street in the highly fashionable Shibuya district of Tokyo. The star-crossed lovers, touching in their youth and innocence, are caught up in a bitter feud between two Yakuza families (Japan’s ‘mafia’) whose rivalry erupts into violence and killing on the streets. Romeo, a rock star, is a Montague who falls in love with Juliet, a Capulet. They defy their parents and consummate their passion in secret. This is a story of love, revenge, violence and tragedy.

Hamlet is set in a dramatic futuristic world. The year is 2017. Global climate change has devastated the Earth. This is now a cyberworld in constant dread of war. The state of Denmark has grown prosperous and defended itself successfully against neighbouring states. But could it be that its greatest threat comes not from without, but from within the state itself?

It is in this cyberworld that we find the young Hamlet. His grief over his father’s recent death turns to something far darker when the ghost of his father appears to him. Hamlet is very soon to discover that something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

SelfMadeHero, winner of the UK Young Publisher of the Year award for 2008, is an imprint of Metro Media Ltd, a UK-based book publisher specializing in manga and graphic novels.

Self Made Hero

In related news, the publisher introduced the Eye Classics series in October 2007, transforming classic literature into another art form. The books feature acknowledged leaders in the world of graphic novels and bandes dessinées. Titles include The Trial, Nevermore, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Master and Margarita, and Crime and Punishment.

Eye Classics

While you’re surfing, check out another UK publisher of illustrated classics: Classical Comics.

A female collie mix, so beautiful, all gold and white and dirty; she’s in the last cage on the aisle, curled up quiet, watching everything - but when I get too close she goes completely crazy, biting at the bars, herself, anything in reach, until I back off and away. Her growl’s like ripping metal, jagged, dangerous, and strong . . . Don’t mess with me, that growl says. I may be in a cage but I can still bite.

Rachel is happiest when she’s volunteering at the animal shelter, especially after she meets the feral collie she names Grrl: they’re both angry and alone. When a teacher encourages her to write about the dog, Rachel finds another outlet for her pain and frustration. Writing about Grrl is easy. But teaching Grrl to trust her is a much tougher task. And when Griffin, the new boy in school, devises a plan to bring Grrl home, Rachel finds that the dog isn’t the only one who must learn to trust. Kathe Koja offers a raw and emotional tale about a girl who risks breaking out of her own cage to find the help she needs.

straydog is Kathe Koja’s compelling debut novel. Koja writes for young adults.

Writing straydog, my first book for young people, ushered me into a world I knew already as a reader. Many of the characters I love best in fiction — Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet, J.D. Salinger’s Holden and Franny and Zooey, Francesca Lia Block’s Witch Baby — are people who say what they think, show their bewilderments, struggle with hard ideas, love with all their hearts; exasperating, funny, intense people. Young people.

I’m a strong supporter of animal rights, so I’m especially proud that straydog was honored by both the ASPCA and the Humane Society. I believe that you can learn everything you need to know about a person by watching the way s/he acts with animals and little kids, the powerless ones.

“So what’s up with that collie?”

Melissa’s at her desk, an old-fashioned school teacher’s desk, dented metal drawers and heaping piles of junk: fund-raising appeals, cruelty investigation forms, food orders, a busted leash tagged DON’T BUY THIS KIND!!! At the center of the heap is the brand-new computer, the one new thing in the place, a donation from some distributor. Now Melissa scrabbles like Shiva through the mess, hunting for “The pen,” she says to herself, “where is the pen ?” and then to me “What collie?” She gives me the major Melissa-stare, her wide blue eyes like What! do! you! want! Her hair’s really, really short and blonde, she gels it so it sticks up like porcupine quills. “You mean the one Jake brought in?”
“Yeah. Grrl.” It was what I called her, writing last night in my paper; it fit, it’s just right but “The feral one, you named her?” and she rolls her eyes. “Rachel, before you start, stop, all right? She’s been all her life on the streets, you know what they’re like when they’re –”

“I know, I know.” You can almost never socialize the feral ones, they’re almost always euthanized .I’ve seen dozens of dogs, and fallen in love with half of them, and cried my heart out when they died; that’s how it is here. But this one is different, somehow. There’s something about her, something in her eyes, I can’t stop thinking about her: as if I know what she’s like, know her from the inside out. And I have a plan for her, or at least the plan for a plan so “I just want to try,” I say to Melissa, “just get to know her a little. And it won’t interfere with my work schedule, I’ll still do all my regular stuff –” 

“I don’t have time — there you are! — to argue with you now,” she says, snatching up her pen. “Go away. Go talk to the dogs,” which I do, sweep and swab and water and feed, all the while sneaking little looks at Grrl in her cage lying on a blue blanket, one of the old torn-up blankets from the rescue van. Her eyes are half-closed, cloudy; the cage card says she’s got a fever from the leg infection. When I reach to put the card back she growls at me, that ripping, ugly sound: Don’t mess with me , that growl says. I may be in a cage but I can still bite.

So I start talking like I always do, to all the dogs — hey you guys, how’s it going — but once in awhile I say “Grrl”, looking into her eyes, making sure she knows it’s meant for her. “Grrl, Grrl,” almost like her growl but warm and crooning, the name and the idea came to me like a gift last night as I sat looking over the essay, two gifts at once because I’m going to write about that dog, I thought, about Grrl and from “A Dog’s Life” I changed the title to “straydog,” all one word, like a dog would think of herself.

And once I’d done that the words just, just flew, it was like I couldn’t write fast enough. It was like I knew her, knew how she would think and feel and fear, knew it all from the inside out and when I finally stopped writing — not done, only just started but my hand was hot and aching, and my eyes were as dry as little rubber balls — I felt so good, so full , I don’t know how else to explain it; like I’d eaten at a banquet, like I was a banquet. — Oh, that’s not it either, how can words say exactly what you want sometimes and sometimes nothing at all?

Winner of the Humane Society’s KIND Book Award
Winner of the ASPCA’s Henry Bergh Award
A BOOK SENSE 76 Top Ten Summer Teen Reads pick
A selection of the Junior Library Guild
A selection of the Children’s Literature Choice List for 2003

Kathe Koja website

In the exhibition catalog: From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig, at the Jewish Museum, the artist’s daughter, Maggie Steig, recalls a game her father used to play with her: “What would you rather be?

”Would you rather be a tree (sturdy, long-lived, a home for birds) or a flower (a short but exciting life, carried in weddings, pressed into books by princesses)?

What would you rather be, Maggie’s father would also ask, “a knee or an elbow?” Or more adventurously: “A pinch of pus or a pile of puke? A scab or a wart?”

Children may know William Steig as the creator of Shrek, but their grandparents can trace the ornery green ogre’s roots through a body of children’s books, New Yorker cartoons and drawings dating back to the Depression.

The child of immigrants, Steig was fortunate to come of age at an auspicious time for cartoonists. An entire industry of penny weeklies was devoted to boosting morale during the Depression and World War II. He was 23 when he began contributing to The New Yorker in 1930, and the magazine continued to publish his drawings, including several covers, until his death in 2003, at 95.

Brimming with scenes of domestic discord and references to Jewish immigrant life in the tenements, Mr. Steig’s early cartoons and drawings were a radical departure from the upper-crust dinner-party gags of previous New Yorker cartoons.

Steig also made a body of work exploring psychological states, some of which were collected in About People: A Book of Symbolic Drawings (1939). He produced deft images that were considered too serious for The New Yorker of the time, distilling amorphous mental conditions into precisely drawn caricatures. In Melancholia (1939) a woman lies on her belly in a child’s wooden cradle, too large for its enclosure, leaning on her crossed arms, bleakly staring into the distance. Our Marriage Will Be Different (1947) proclaims a cartoon showing a couple heading offstage after a song-and-dance-number; we know the show will be over. Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s editor then, called these works “too personal and not funny enough,” but they caught on with devotees of psychoanalysis.

The novelist Henry Miller put it best, in a letter to Steig that is on display at the museum: “You give a sort of geography of the emotional reactions of man, his tiny little globe built around a microscopic ego.”

Steig’s overwhelming sense of isolation found a more resonant expression in a remarkable series of children’s books he started to produce in the late 1960s. Most have become classics, with grown-up ethical and philosophical dilemmas couched in the antics of lovable farm animals. In these works Steig’s sensitive, wavering line finds a parallel in his expressive writing.

The street life of friends inspired his early series of Small Fry cartoons, in which snowball fights, sibling rivalry and fantasies of glory turned cartooning into a form of emotional documentation: here is how children play, tease, laugh, dream.

The children’s books became a way for Steig to combine and reconcile these ideas and sentiments. Animals are the main characters because they are literally fabulous, condensations of personal traits, elemental even to a child. When we read that Doctor De Soto “outfoxed the fox,” we know exactly what that means and why the dentist-mouse was right to mistrust the animal. Such villainy is part of the natural order.

Exaggeration often makes these tales most affecting. The more bizarre the artifice and the more ornate the language, the more potent they become. A ring of power? That’s the stuff of fiction and fantasy. But a talking bone! Who could have imagined such a thing? And what powers might it possess? “I didn’t know you could do magic!” Pearl the Pig breathlessly tells the bone after it rescues her, as if there had been no previous sign in the bone’s use of German, its imitation of trumpets, or in the sounds of its sneezes.

And of course the magic and the villainy are often both close to home, found in pebbles, bones and home-brewed potions, in ordinary animals and simple yearnings.

We are never fully sure of that adult world, except that it will have both trees and flowers, elbows and knees, scabs and warts. And unpredictable pleasures. Pearl the Pig, restored from the clutches of the fox by the magic bone, brings the bone home and the “two chatterboxes” are often whispering or singing together. The bone joins her family.

“And they all had music whenever they wanted it,” Steig concludes, “and sometimes even when they didn’t.”

New York Times review

William Steig at the Jewish Museum

This week, Canada’s Globe and Mail began a new literary series, the 50 Greatest Books.

Over the coming year, an international panel chosen by The Globe and Mail will select the 50 Greatest Books ever written. Each week, a single work will be discussed by an expert or a writer passionate about the work in question.

As columnist Martin Levin explains, “I know, it’s an entirely presumptuous label, and no doubt we’ll leave off dozens that readers feel belong. So why not simply 50 Great Books?”

In part, because the G&M wants readers to engage in the discussion through its forum for outraged advocates or critics, clever ripostes and tut-tutting over obvious oversights — and in part because in making distinctions, the G&M implicitly rejects the postmodern view that won’t allow privileging Anna Karenina over the James Bond books.

A great book is adjudged a great book over time by virtue of offering things — astonishing ideas, unforgettable characters, imaginative sublimity, glorious prose — that cannot be got elsewhere, and that tell us something new about the human (or other) condition.

The 50 will not be ranked in order. Just choosing them is adventurous enough. The entries will be derived from discussions among members of the panel. Their carefully guarded identities will be revealed only at the end of the series, when readers will be invited to engage with them more directly. Each entry will be written by someone with knowledge, usually extensive knowledge, of the book in question.

We realize the abounding questions as to establishing criteria. One juror has raised several important points, perhaps the central of which is how to mediate between a book’s literary or intellectual qualities and its importance. Given that the King James Bible (not the Hebrew or Greek versions) is both poetically magnificent and of unsurpassed significance, I find it hard to imagine its absence. But what about the Koran, clearly almost unparalleled in its influence, though perhaps not in literary value. But it may be to readers of Arabic, which raises another issue: How does one judge a work (as pure work) in a foreign language?

Never mind works in Japanese or Arabic. Our juror cites Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. There is common agreement among German speakers that the writing is beautiful, but can a jury of English-speakers tell? A case that blends both translation and “importance” is Rousseau’s The Social Contract. The book has had incalculable influence, informing the work of Kant, Hume, Tolstoy and of almost every post-Rousseau French writer. Our juror suggests, though, that as a work marrying literature to ideas, most English-speakers might opt for The Confessions.

Is it a cheat to cite the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which contain at very minimum a half-dozen works of genius? Or do we simply opt for King Lear or Hamlet? Is it the collected works of T. S. Eliot, or Four Quartets? Or neither? If we think Emily Dickinson deserving, how is it possible to single out an individual work?

And how are we to estimate texts that were once of overwhelming scientific influence: Aristotle, Newton, Galileo, Vesalius? Since science proceeds by falsifiability, it is in the very nature of the scientific text to be superseded. Newton’s Principia Mathematica may be almost unread now, but our world is inconceivable without it.

So many issues, so many books.

First entry: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Read Huckleberry Finn online

Raincoast Books, the Vancouver, British Columbia company that brought the blockbuster Harry Potter series to Canadian readers, announced Monday its imminent departure from the publishing business.

The Vancouver-based company is halting its publishing program and announced other cost-cutting measures, putting the blame on the strong Canadian dollar and the resulting detrimental effect on the book retail industry. The 15 books set for release this spring will be the final slate from Raincoast, which largely counted West Coast and children’s book authors in its publishing stable.

Raincoast officials said the company plans to refocus on its core business of distribution and wholesaling, but the streamlining measures will mean the closing of its warehouse in Mississauga, Ont., axing about 20 jobs in Vancouver and Toronto and reducing the number of its distribution clients.

Nevertheless, the company will continue to offer the Harry Potter books — part of its ultra-successful venture with U.K. publisher Bloomsbury — to Canadians, they added.

Amid the rapid rise of the Canadian dollar last fall, anger grew among the book-buying public over the fact that prices in Canada remained significantly higher than those of U.S. retailers.

Raincoast, “just like every other publisher in Canada and distributor here, was faced with an unprecedented situation last year, namely the appreciation of the Canadian dollar [relative to the U.S. greenback],” marketing vice-president Jamie Broadhurst said. “There has been a fundamental sea change in the Canadian book industry. Canadians have spoken loud and clearly in terms of what they feel is a fair price for books, and publishers and distributors are going to have to adapt to that new reality.”

For Raincoast, “85 per cent of our business is import books from the United States. So as a result, an appreciation in the dollar’s value affects us very close to our heart.” Raincoast reduced its suggested retail prices by 20 per cent as a result of the rise in the Canadian dollar, he said.

Carolyn Wood, executive director of the Association of Canadian Book Publishers, described Raincoast’s move as “very sad news.” The company “has published some outstanding books over the years. When a publishing program as important and well supported as that one can’t be sustained, it tells you something about the precarious world in which Canadian publishers operate.”

“We’re definitely in a deflationary spiral,” said Brad Martin , president and chief executive officer of the country’s largest trade publisher, Random House Canada.

Martin predicted the trend of declining prices for both U.S. titles sold in Canada and Canadian-written books will accelerate in the next 12 months. And while this may be good news for consumers - provided, that is, a much-predicted recession doesn’t sharply diminish their purchasing power - it means “a difficult year” in terms of revenues for publishers, distributors and booksellers, especially among smaller, independent operators.

He acknowledged that the Random Canada conglomerate, a wholly owned foreign subsidiary with imprints such as Knopf, Doubleday and Vintage, “is better able to withstand the coming storm” than, for example, a Canadian-owned independent like Toronto-based House of Anansi, which has to make most of its money from Canadian titles.

However, prices, particularly prices of Canadian titles, can only come down so far here, especially given the limited economies of scale available in a country of 33 million. “If Canadian books had to be priced according to real costs in a totally sort of Adam Smith world, with no government support, they’d be way higher than they are already.”

Remarked Carolyn Quinn, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers: “You can’t get blood out of a stone. Profit margins in this country are “very small … and a book costs what it costs,” even with subsidies from the federal government’s Book Publishing Industry Development Program, among other publicly funded support networks.

Raincoast Books

Globe and Mail, January 8, 2008

Globe and Mail, January 9, 2008

New York City, April 1866: The driver of a cart laden with
coal is whipping his horse. Passersby on the New York City street stop to gawk not so much at the weak, emaciated equine, but at the tall man, elegant in top hat and spats, who is explaining to the driver that it is now against the law to beat one’s animal. Thus, America first encounters The Great Meddler.

Henry Bergh was born in 1813, the son of a prominent shipbuilder. His adult years found him to be a man of leisure, dabbling in the arts and touring Europe. As was befitting the life of an aristocrat, in 1863 he was appointed to a diplomatic post at the Russian court of Czar Alexander II. It was there he first took action against man’s inhumanity toward animals. Soon after, en route to America, he stopped in London to crib notes from the Earl of Harrowby, president of England’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in 1840.

Back in New York, Bergh pleaded on behalf of “these mute servants of mankind” at a February 8, 1866, meeting at Clinton Hall. According to the next day’s edition of The Sun Bergh impressed attendees with his indignant recollection of a family watching a bullfight in Spain who “…seemed to receive their most ecstatic throb from the maddening stab of the horned animal.” Bergh then detailed practices in America, including cockfighting and the horrors of slaughterhouses.

Fortified by the success of his speech and the number of dignitaries to sign his “Declaration of the Rights of Animals,” Bergh brought a charter for a proposed society to protect animals to the New York State Legislature. With his flair for drama he convinced politicians and committees of his purpose, and the charter incorporating the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was passed on April 10, 1866. Nine days later, an anti-cruelty law was passed, and the ASPCA granted the right to enforce it.

The ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award was established to honor books that promote the humane ethic of compassion and respect for all living things.

Publishers are able to submit nominations, and each year ASPCA staff and a panel of outside judges select the best books published that year for children and young adults. The awards are presented each year at the annual conference of the American Library Association.

The cover photo says it all—a distinctly canine face, half smiling golden retriever and half intense gray wolf. Once inside, young animal lovers will learn about the similarities and differences between the family pooch and one of the wild kingdom’s most fascinating creatures. Questions answered include “Why does my dog’s hair stand up?,” “Why does my dog chew my stuff?” and “Why does my dog love to lick my face?”; be forewarned, the answer to the latter may surprise you! (Ages 9 - 12)

Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award Winners

My name is Beautiful Joe, and I am a brown dog of medium size. I am not called Beautiful Joe because I am a beauty. Mr. Morris, the clergyman, in whose family I have lived for the last twelve years, says that he thinks I must be called Beautiful Joe for the same reason that his grandfather, down South, called a very ugly colored slave-lad Cupid, and his mother Venus.

I do not know what he means by that, but when he says it, people always look at me and smile.

In 1892, Halifax novelist Margaret Marshall Saunders travelled to the small lakeside town of Meaford, Ontario to visit her brother and his fiancée, Louise Moore.

The Moores had adopted a mistreated dog. Louise’s father had found him malnourished and bleeding, with his ears and tail chopped off, and although he looked pathetic, the Moores named him Beautiful Joe.

On her return to Halifax, Saunders heard of a contest sponsored by the American Humane Education Society. It challenged entrants to write a novel based on the 1877 bestseller Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, in which a horse recounts tales of cruelty and kindness to inspire humane treatment of horses.

Saunders wrote Joe’s story. In her manuscript, she renamed the adoptive family Morris and, following contest rules, set the tale in the United States – in the fictional town of Fairport, Me. She won.

The wonderfully successful book, entitled “Black Beauty,” came like a living voice out of the animal kingdom. But it spake for the horse, and made other books necessary; it led the way. After the ready welcome that it received, and the good it has accomplished and is doing, it follows naturally that some one should be inspired to write a book to interpret the life of a dog to the humane feeling of the world. Such a story we have in “Beautiful Joe.”

The story speaks not for the dog alone, but for the whole animal kingdom. Through it we enter the animal world, and are made to see as animals see, and to feel as animals feel.

~~ From the introduction to the Phoenix Edition

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography appeared in 1894. By 1900, its sales stood just shy of 1 million. By 1939, it had sold 7 million copies in more than 10 languages. Around 1914, Saunders settled to Toronto and went on to write more than two dozen books. She died in 1947, at 85.

The book was out of print but, over the years, the dog’s grave had been located and a cairn built. A municipal Beautiful Joe Park had also been founded on the property once owned by the Moores.

In 1994 – the novel’s centenary – the Beautiful Joe Heritage Society was formed, and it got the book republished. The society held dog-oriented parades and put up statues in the park. One was a sculpture of Beautiful Joe, another a police K-9 memorial.

In 2002, the society also built a memorial to Sirius, the one police dog killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His partner, New York Port Authority officer David Lim, attended the unveiling with his superior officer.

Attached to the statue is an iron cross, forged from a fallen World Trade Center beam.

In the fall of 2007, vandals took a chisel to the memorial, in an attempt to remove the cross. They failed.

And, like Beautiful Joe, the statue has since been lovingly restored.

.

K-9 Sirius, Badge #17 was a yellow Labrador Retriever, born in January 1997. He became an Explosive Detection Dog upon graduation from the Port Newark K-9 Center on July 15, 2000.

Sirius and his handler, Police Officer David Lim, Badge #1219, were assigned to the World Trade Center. Their duties there included searching vehicles entering the WTC Complex,
clearing unattended bags and sweeping areas for V.I.P. safety.

Toronto Star

Beautiful Joe Heritage Society

Read Beautiful Joe online

Meaford Museum

After a lifetime of brutal treatment, including walking on burning embers, Bulgaria’s last three dancing bears will get to rest their paws at a mountain sanctuary, in an apparent end to the centuries-old performance tradition in the Balkans. Activists today purchased the freedom of Mima, 8, Misho, 19, and Svetla, 17.

Bulgaria is believed to have been the last country in the Balkans where dancing bears still performed, even though the practice was outlawed in 1993, when there were 20 to 30 such bears in the country.

The three bears will join another 20 brown bears on Mount Rila at a 12-hectare sanctuary for former dancing bears about 180 kilometres south of Sofia.

“Our aim is to make their life more bearable in their remaining years,” Ioana Tomescu of the Austria-based Four Paws Foundation, which created the sanctuary, told The Associated Press.

Throughout the Balkans, families, mostly among the Roma community, have long earned a living through performing bears. But the techniques to train them led the practice to be banned, and animal rights activists have moved to find the bears new homes.

Because dancing bears are illegal, authorities could simply have taken Mima, Misho and Svetla away from their owners in the eastern village of Getsovo.

Instead, the Four Paws Foundation decided to pay for their freedom by giving their owners small grants to set up new businesses. It did not reveal how much was paid. In return, the owners signed declarations pledging never to take up the bear dancing business again.

The Deliverance of Dancing Bears,
by Elizabeth Stanley

ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Awards and 1995 Australian Picture Book of the Year winner, this thought-provoking story presents the plight of the dancing bears of Turkey and Greece. The author tells the story of a captive bear whose dreams of freedom sustain her, even while being forced to perform in a Turkish marketplace by a cruel and angry keeper. During the quiet hours when she is confined to her cage, the bear imagines a different life in which she is free to wander through mountain streams and sleep lazily with her cubs. It is a kind-hearted peasant who liberates the bear and who reminds all of those watching of an important moral lesson about dignity and life.

Stanley saw her first “dancing bear” in 1979 in Athens and decided then to write a book to challenge the assumption that men could cruelly use wild animals to make money. In 1992 she took her written text to Turkey to take photos and to make sketches for the artwork. In the same year The World Society for the Protection of Animals effected the release and the return to the wild of all chained bears in Turkey. Today there are no dancing bears in Greece or Turkey. Today, it is the last Bulgarian dancing bears who have been freed.

But a recent WSPA report has revealed that the trade in dancing bears is still alive and well in India.