Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Bantam, 1971 It’s ironic that what most stands out in the first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is her voice; when she was a girl, she stopped speaking for a time, but, in looking back on the experiences of her
Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993) Bantam-Random House, 1999 “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” From the opening sentence, this novel has an ominous tone. Doesn’t it? ::squirms in chair:: And it’s pervasive. Only a few pages later, his younger sister is whispering about “The Ceremony
If I was trying to convince readers to try Alice Munro, choosing this sampling of three stories might not be the best way to approach the matter. Each is stuffed with sadness, with resignation and despair to season the blend. But it’s as though there is also a dash of
Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion Knopf, 1987 I first read this as a teenager. I’d already been reading a lot of adult literature, even if I was still regularly re-reading childhood favourites like the Anne books and still discovering some classics like K.M. Peyton’s Flambards stories and
Robert Kroetsch’s What the Crow Said General, 1978. Some students are introduced to Robert Kroetsch in university; his novel Badlands was on my introductory English course, but apparently the professor opted for another work. So I discovered What the Crow Said thanks to a list compiled by Aritha van Herk.
