It's on the back of Canada's five-dollar bill: the opening lines of Roch Carrier's "The Hockey Sweater". 1979; House of Anansi, 2012 That's how central this story, only four pages long, is to Canadians. A short story about hockey, a 10-year-old French-Canadian boy's crowning disappointment, and the cultural
First, it's small enough to fit in a pocket. The book, not the moose. And there's something charming about that, right? And something seductive about the idea that you can easily sit down with a book and meet its characters and stay with them, in a single sitting,
Finally: a story about animals that won't leave you in a puddle, heart-broken, swearing off all other animal stories for life. (I won't name them here, because including them in this context is truly spoilerific, but you know the stories I'm referring to. We probably cried in all the same
On occasion, I have to wonder if perhaps my grandmother and great-aunts didn't have a point. How many times did they instruct me that I should not, so often, have my nose in a book. Because sometimes I really wonder how I missed something huge. Like, for instance, Robert Lepage's
When life and story intersect: that's where this story takes place. (And isn't that the best place ever to set a story?) Groundwood - House of Anansi, 2012 But, okay, in the beginning, when readers step aboard That Night's Train, they are actually in a railway carriage. "The train
