Each December, NWT Literacy Council staff members choose books that they will be giving as a gift, would like to receive and read over the holiday, or a favourite book they have been given in the past. This is the first group of our picks. Read our blog again December 10 and 17 to see more.
My choice for this year’s book recommendation is The Wild Heavens by Sarah Louise Butler. It was originally recommended and gifted to me and my colleagues by another talented author, Richard Van Camp, after a trip to Fort Smith together. It is not easy for an author to instantly and vividly transport me to another time and place with their writing, but Sarah Louise Butler managed to do just that in her debut novel. It was a beautiful, mysterious, and heart-wrenching story that I could hardly put down.
--Stephanie van Pelt, Community Oral Health Literacy Coordinator
I Love You More Than the North is Vast by Isis Essery and Rhiannon White. This year I will be giving this heartwarming book to my three-year-old son. Each year, I like to purchase at least one locally written book for my kids, and I was quickly taken by the beauty of this book. I think he will enjoy exploring each of the illustrations to find all the different animals and elements. After a summer of being especially bothered by mosquitoes, I think he’ll like the page about wild mosquitoes!
-- Katie Johnson, Family and Community Literacy Coordinator
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by asha bandele and Patrisse Cullors. I will be giving my copy of this book to a friend this year because I want to normalize giving second-hand gifts. This is a memoir by the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Patrisse Cullors, and award-winning author-journalist asha bandele. It takes place in Los Angeles, California and details Cullors’ experiences, as well as the history of prejudice, persecution, profiling, and brutality. It also shows us the love, humanity, justice, survival, strength, and resilience of Black lives and gives us all a call to action.
-- Coleen Hardisty, Youth Literacy Coordinator
One of the books I’m choosing to recommend this year is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This is a book I read while on a canoe trip this summer, and it was easily the favourite among the entire group. The story centers around Kya, alone and abandoned in the marshes of North Carolina, and her coming of age story. The beautiful descriptions of the natural world, romance and mystery make for a compelling tale that readers will not be able to put down.
-- Charlotte Upton, Family and Community Literacy Coordinator
