Kathryn's Inbox

Olive Branche, the bubbly adapatable star of the Click series is back ... and busier than ever. The fifth book in the series has Olive over-committing on a number of tasks. She has guitar lessons, she is taking part in a special project for the student council and she has just seen an advertisement for a filmmaking contest that she desperately wants to enter. Then, through a little manipulation from her friend Willow's parents, she finds herself joining Berry Scouts. Soon Olive finds herself exhausted and unable to keep up with everything. What will she do? This was not the more enjoyable instalment in the series, with a plot that feels very thin and cliched. However, it is also true that I am not in the target audience and it wasn't written for me--instead it's for kids who might find themselves in that situation or who see a friend going through the same thing. And the book satisfies that requirement just fine. That said, the whole thing is resolved well and has a great ...

I doubt that I am saying anything groundbreaking here, but The Baby Dragon Cafe had me at the title alone. Immediately it had me thinking of all of my favourite cozy, cafe themed reads ... but with a very cute and fiery twist. Fortunately, the title sets the theme perfectly for this cosy fantasy novel. Saphira has just opened a cafe, one where dragon owners are allowed to bring their baby dragons with them. This is a novelty in her hometown as other cafes do not allow baby dragons inside--and with good reason it turns out, as the baby dragons keep burning or breaking everything in the cafe. Anyway, apart from the massive financial costs of replacing burned equipment, Saphira is happy with her new venture. It is the closest that she will ever get to caring for a baby dragon. That is, until one day, the very eligible bachelor Aiden steps into the cafe with a baby dragon that he has very reluctantly inherited, and he wants Saphira to be the one to train baby Sparky.  This was an unco...

Ellidy was living the dream. Despite growing not believing in true love or happy endings, she found herself living on the Gold Coast in a blissful, happy relationship with her partner Olympic snowboarder Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin. They were planing to have children. Then the life they had built together came to a tragic and unexpected end when Chumpy passed away in a spearfishing accident. Within hours, Ellidy made a surprising decision. If she couldn't have a baby with Chumpy, then she would have one for him. I am not going to pass judgement on parts of this one--the ethics of post mortem sperm retrieval or the author sharing the story so publicly online--because well, it's not my journey. Also her life is so far removed from my own experiences that I barely feel qualified. So I will leave that aside. Although marketed as the story of Pullin's pregnancy, the focus was a bit choppy, at times feeling more like a biography of Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin written by his par...

What a joy it was to revisit my favourite, and arguably the best, book in Beverly Cleary's classic Ramona Quimby series. Written over a span of forty-four years (and itself a spin-off of the Henry Huggins series the first volume of which was published in 1950,) the books have a delightful timeless quality about them. The setting is slightly ambiguous, thanks to limited references to technology and the fact that the Quimby's are most definitely working class and non-political, nothing points to one decade, it could be any time point in the second half of the twentieth century. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 is a particularly joyous instalment in the series as we see Ramona come into her own more, while sensitive big sister Beezus is most definitely a teenager. We watch as Ramona starts at a new school, rides the school bus for the first time, and uses creative problem solving when it comes to her two enemies--Yard Ape from her class at school, and Willa Jean, the vivacious and bossy pres...

Only Mostly Devastated is the perfect story of a summer fling gone wrong. Ollie and Will are opposites who fall for one another. Then, the summer holidays end. Will stops messaging Ollie, and a heartbroken Ollie consoles himself with the fact that he will be back in California soon. Then his parents make a surprise announcement. They're staying in this small town permanently and Ollie is enrolled at a local school where he soon discovers that Will runs with the popular sporty crowd and he is most definitely not out. And no friend of Ollie's ... This was an entertaining read, a queer YA romance with some very definite parallels with Grease.  Ollie is an easy character for the reader to feel sympathetic toward. Fortunately, Will is portrayed as a sympathetic character as well, a popular sporty kid in a small town who may not necessarily had the support he needs from his family if he comes out. There's also a cast of slightly loopy supporting characters who I did not care for...

If I could describe Ducks , a graphic memoir, in one word it would be bleak. Cartoonist Kate Beaton (creator of Hark! A Vagrant ) tells the all too real story of the two years that followed her graduation from college. After receiving an arts degree, she returns to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia where she discovers a stark reality. Employment opportunities, especially full time ones, for arts graduates are non-existent in this part of Canada.  She also has a large student debt which is only going to get worse if she doesn't find a way to pay it back. So, she takes a different career path, moving to Alberta, working in the oil sands. As I said at the beginning of my review, Ducks is bleak. A once hopeful student, Kate Beaton finds herself discovering some harsh realities about employment after university, and even harsher realities about jobs on the oil sands. Each frame perfectly showcases that bleakness and the experiences that she has along the way, putting up with lower than expect...