A Tale of Two Kitties
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95It was the best of meows, it was the worst of meows….
Mittens and Boots have nothing in common. Nada. Zilch. Okay, maybe they live in the same house, but sharing is NOT in their vocabulary. They each have their own food bowls, bathing rituals, and bad habits. And they like it that way. Life is glorious until IT arrives, replacing their usual cozy armchairs. The loveseat. PAW-lease. This wasn’t love. It was revenge. Plain and simple. Payback from their humans for the litter box situation. It really wasn’t good. Soon, it’s two cantankerous cats against one loveseat, leather-bent on being the new bestie. Setting aside their differences won’t be easy for the furry adversaries, but cat naps are calling. A Tale of Two Kitties celebrates that while each of us is unique, we’re similar in all the ways that truly matter.
Acadian Christmas Traditions
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Based on written sources and interviews with Acadians throughout the Maritimes, Acadian Christmas Traditions offers a fascinating look at the evolution of Christmas. This very readable book shows how customs, both spiritual and secular, take hold in families, in villages, and in a culture as a whole. Georges Arsenault, the well-known historian and folklorist, examines all the aspects of the feast of Christmas, from midnight mass to holiday foods. As he chronicles the cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries, he proves that Acadian Christmas today is the result of a wonderful blending of old, new, and borrowed traditions.
Are We Friends Now? An Anthology By and About 2SLGBTQ+ Youth
Editor: Tom RyanPublisher: Acorn Press$17.95Are We Friends Now is a dynamic and exhilarating collection of writing from LGBTQ+ youth and allies from around PEI. The product of a collaboration between PEERS Alliance and the PEI Writers’ Guild, the multi-genre selections in Are We Friends Now are the result of several months of workshopping and brainstorming at the Queer Youth Writing Club, and also include pieces from adult volunteers. Are We Friends Now will appeal to readers of all ages, and makes a great addition to classroom and library collections.
Flitt’s Call
Artist: K. Shawn LarsonPublisher: Acorn Press$12.95Flitt is a little bank swallow who returns to his beloved Prince Edward Island every spring to nest in the same seaside cliffs. But this year, things are different. The land has changed, he can’t find as many insects to eat, and there are fewer swallows to play with. When his chicks are born, Flitt realizes he needs to teach his little swallows, all the swallows, a special call. Flitt’s Call is a bank swallow’s prayer and plea for the earth. It will open people’s hearts, move others to protect the land, and remind everyone of our shared connection to this fragile, beautiful home called Earth.
Flitt’s Call Activity Guide
Publisher: Acorn Press$9.95This activity guide will accompany Flitt’s Call. The intention is to encourage young people to foster their keen observation, to encourage them to learn about the natural world they are a part of, and to act with integrity towards the protection of all species and the habitats they call home.
For the Love of Sea View
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95It all started with a familiar sign: House for Sale: To Be Moved. Family farms on PEI had disappeared in the thousands in the mid-1900s.Tourists would scoop up the farmhouses, fix them up and speak glowingly of the authenticity they had re-introduced to the old building. But this wasn’t a house like those houses. It had started out at Park Corner, on the pond Lucy Maud Montgomery called “The Lake of Shining Waters.” Then it moved up above Brander’s Pond and finally became know as “a little dollhouse” on the Sea View landscape. Once she saw it, Hilary fell in love and couldn’t stop herself from buying it, starting a thirty-year adventure with an Island community she came to love.
Pockets Full of Sea Glass
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95This sweet picture book follows the day in the life child whose anxiety seems to fill their days. Letting go is so hard to do and worry weighs down every step. Even walking on the beach is difficult until finding a glimmer of hope among the rocks helps to make the day brighter. With a piece of sea glass found, the worries seem to melt away. Pockets Full of Sea Glass is a wonderful introduction of the mindfulness children can achieve by spending time in nature, one piece of sea glass at a time.
The Bygone Days Folklore, Traditions & Toenails
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Reginald—better known as “Dutch”—Thompson is a multi-faceted storyteller with unforgettable voices—those of Roy from Murray Harbour North, Adelaide from Bunbury, Gus from Chepstow, and countless others—to tell the stories of the Bygone days in Prince Edward Island [sometimes NS, too]. Stories that, without Dutch’s talent and care, might be remembered only by family and close friends or lost altogether.
Remember when the train ran from tip to tip and along all the small branches, taking goods, people, and baseball teams to other parts of the Island? How about when ice cream and two pieces of cakes cost 10 cents at White’s Ice Cream Parlour on Kent Street? When lobster was not the gourmet’s delight it is now and the backs were used to fertilize the crops? That butchering the pig before a full moon will mean less fat on the meat? Or that it was bad luck to cut your nails on Sundays.
From CBC Radio to the pages of this book, you’ll hear Dutch’s voice encouraging these informative, illuminating, poignant, and hilarious stories from the minds and hearts of Maritimers born between 1895 and 1925, almost as if they were all still here and telling them to you.
The Sacred Space
Publisher: Acorn Press$25.95In this intimate collection of writing and art, Brian J. Francis invites us to explore the sacred space within.
The Sea That Sings To Me
Artist: Marla LesagePublisher: Acorn Press$13.95In this story an Island girl can hear music in the ocean — not as a metaphor, but as melodies, percussion, harmonies ringing from the waves. With lyrical words and beautiful illustrations, The Sea that Sings to Me is an ode to the special connection we have with the natural world.
Turk
Publisher: Acorn Press$24.95Gerard “Turk” Gallant started playing hockey as a young boy in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. He moved up through minor hockey, playing above his age group and garnering the attention of major junior teams and the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings drafted him as an eighteen-year-old and he became a rising young star, being selected to an NHL All-Star team the same year he played for Team Canada in the World Championships. When a back injury ended his playing career, Turk applied his talents to coaching. He began, in 1995, by shaping the Summerside Western Capitals into a winning junior A team. It won the Royal Bank Cup ( now the Centennial Cup) in 1997, the first from the Maritimes to win in the tournament’s twenty-six-year history. In the Quebec league, Turk did the same for the Saint John Sea Dogs, in 2011, as it became the region’s first major junior team to win the coveted Memorial Cup. Stints coaching at the semi-professional level led to a stellar career in the NHL, where he took two teams, the Vegas Golden Knights, in their inaugural year, and the New York Rangers, an Original 6, to the Stanley Cup finals. In 2021, Team Canada won a gold medal, at the World Championship, under Turk Gallant.
Turk has won numerous awards, most noteworthy are his three nominations for the Jack Adams Award, which goes to the NHL’s top coach. He won in 2018. He was also inducted into several sports halls of fame. Turk lives in Clinton, PEI, in with his wife Pam.
