Off the Page

Is it poetry, or prose in verse, or a free verse novel, or a novel in verse?  All epithets have been used for the novel-length stories told in verse form.  Writing a book is challenge enough, but to write it in verse, rhyming or not, seems almost inexecutable.  Luckily, several authors have found their voices in this writing style and they are exceptionally skilled at it.  Judging by the awards bestowed upon the ten books in this list and the young readers of both genders who consume these stories voraciously, it is a style that has a solid foothold in kidsCanLit.
 

The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter:

After twelve-year-old Em loses her right foot in a farming accident, her father blames himself and ultimately leaves.  Her mother enlists the help of Angus, a quiet, hard-working man from the local mental hospital, to help with the farm. While dealing with her own disability, and desperately trying to find her father, Em witnesses how prejudice and abuse, particularly that levelled against Angus, has its roots in fear.

In The Garage by Alma Fullerton:

Living with her port-stain birthmark on her …

Nora Young is a writer-broadcaster, producer, and documentary-maker. She was the founding host and producer of Definitely Not the Opera and currently hosts CBC's national radio show Spark. She is fascinated with the intersection of technology and culture: how changing technology affects the way we see ourselves, and each other.

Find Nora Young at any or all of her online homes: NoraYoung.ca | @nora3000 | CBC's Spark | The Sniffer

Young has written an incredible book that's right up my alley, called The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us (McClelland & Stewart).

In it, she explores the impact of data mapping/self-tracking/life-caching — the virtual information we generate about ourselves, our own lives, our communities, and our government. Where we go, what we do, how we feel. The book then looks at the challenges around how we share that data — from Facebook status updates to Google Navigator — with an eye turned toward how we might build more responsive communities and governments. And while some would say that the privacy wars are over — and that we've lost — Young argues that the technologies and conversations are still in their early days, and that it's citizens, not technocrats, who should lead the next leg of discussions over how and w …

"It was assumed that John Cabot and Christopher Columbus were two of a kind, in both ambitions and origins. In truth, although their careers were deeply entwined in a race to prove a profitable new route to Asia’s riches that would defeat the Levantine monopoly of Venetian merchants, they were very different people, with one determined to remake himself as the other."

In the late fifteenth century, perhaps 100,000 people lived on the cluster of canal-laced islands within the laguna of the northern Adriatic that comprised the city of Venice. Known to its residents as the Signoria, the compact archipelago was the heart of the Venetian republic of the eastern Mediterranean. The Signoria’s artisans produced for export fineries of silk, damasks, satins, and crystal; other goods were sourced by merchants from around the Mediterranean, and from distant England came wool and hides. The republic was renowned foremost for its command of trade in precious commodities of the Orient, which arrived from its Levantine ports of Beirut and Alexandria from as far to the east as Borneo: ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, saffron, camphor, rhubarb, ambergris, sugar and molasses, and above all pepper. A Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, had explored the Indies of Asia two centuries earlier, but the Ori …

My name is Willow Yamauchi, and I am a Bad Mommy. I’m also an epic mommy, an awesome mommy, a funny mommy, a loving, caring over-functioning mommy. But the truth--the real truth--is that I am fundamentally Bad, and that’s OK with me.

I had my first child at the ridiculously young age of 24. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. I had a degree, a career, a husband, a mortgage. All I needed was the baby to have the complete package. What I didn’t get was how all this mommy business actually worked. What I also didn’t get was how alone I would find myself in my mommy-life. None of my friends were actively breeding. I was isolated in a baffling world of Mommy with little guidance.

Being a bibliophile I turned to books for direction and devoured--with great avarice--the Mommy tomes of the day: What to Expect When You Are Expecting, the Baby Book and the related gang of Mommy bibles became my lifeline. I faithfully memorized developmental charts, documented poopies and pee-pees and followed these books to the letter. I’ve always been compliant with direction, that’s my thing. I was being GOOD. Alas, my infant daughter didn’t seem to be reading the same books I was reading. Despite my adherence to all Mommy instructions, things just weren’t working out the way they were …

Robert Rotenberg is one of Toronto’s top criminal lawyers. He lives in Toronto with his wife, television news producer Vaune Davis, their three children, and their little dog Fudge. Visit him online at www.RobertRotenberg.com and follow him on Twitter as @RobertRotenberg.

Stray Bullets (Simon & Schuster) is Robert Rotenberg’s third intricate mystery set on the streets and in the courtrooms of Toronto.
Read an excerpt on Scribd.

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Julie Wilson: We know that The Scotiabank Giller Prize has a huge impact on the sales for the winning title as well as its author's long term career. You're nominated for the prestigious Crime Writers of Canada 2012 Arthur Ellis Award (announced May 31) for your novel The Guilty Plea. The other nominees are William Deverell, Louise Penny, Alan Bradley and Peter Robinson, each of whom has won the award in one of the categories for Best Short Story, Best First Novel or Best Novel. How integral are awards to writers of crime fiction?

Robert Rotenberg: It seems that in the last year or two the Crime Writer's of Canada has started to break through and this year, in particular, the Arthur Ellis Awards appear to be getting a lot of attention. The CBC has gotten involved, newspapers are more on top of it. All good.

I have a theory. The Canadians are the "New …