It’s Battle of the Books time! Each year, elementary school students come together at the BWG Library to compete in a literary competition called Battle of the Books. While we might not know what the Battle will look like this year, it is time to start getting ready!
Before the Battle, students read nominated books and then battle it out, testing their knowledge against each other. These books come from the Forest of Reading Silver Birch list of nominees. The Silver Birch nominees are stories for children in grades 3 to 6 and include three categories: Silver Birch Express (picture books and shorter stories), Silver Birch Fiction and Yellow Cedar (non-fiction titles for grades 4 to 8). This week’s BWG Library Picks of the Week are some of the recently announced 2021 Silver Birch nominees!
Get ready for the Battle by reading these exciting new books. Find these titles in the BWG Library catalogue at www.bradford.library.on.ca to reserve your copy today!
Silver Birch Express Nominees
Peter and Ernesto: Sloths in the night by Graham Annable
Book number three of the Peter and Ernesto series: they love the jungle, but they know how dangerous it can be at night. From clumsy bats to crazed owls to rumors of a dragon, there are countless things that make the darkness perilous for sloths. That's why, one day, when their friend Bernard goes missing just as the sun is setting, Peter and Ernesto quickly gather their tribe to form a search party. However, while these sloths have some sense of the dangers that they'll face while looking for Bernard, there are surprises lurking in the shadows that will surpass their wildest imaginings!
Planet Hockey: First star of the game by J. Torres
Welcome to the GHL – the Galaxian Hockey League! In this action-packed, laugh out loud graphic novel, Isaac may be the Greatest Of All Time in online hockey, but he’s an epic fail on actual ice. Isaac is warped away to become the new superstar of the planet’s worst team of all time. Fortunately, Isaac’s friend Lily tags along — and she just might be the best goalie this side of the Milky Way.
But the interstellar game isn’t quite like hockey on Earth. Opposing players are shaped like trees, or built like actual boulders, or electrified. And even if Isaac can whip his disastrous new team into shape, Emperor Mad Maroon still might put them all in the Penalty Box of Pain.
Can Isaac score a win in the big game . . . and get back to home ice?
Silver Birch Fiction Nominees
The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson
In this junior fantasy fiction novel, meet Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities and are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected, from their culture and each other, and struggle to fit in at school and at their new home until they find a secret place, walled off in an unfinished attic bedroom.
Journey with them as a portal opens to another reality, Askí, bringing them onto frozen, barren grounds, where they meet Ochek (Fisher). The only hunter supporting his starving community, Misewa, Ochek welcomes the human children, teaching them traditional ways to survive. As the need for food becomes deperate, they embark on a dangerous mission in this Narnia meets traditional Indigenous stories of the sky.
The Ghost Collector by Allison Mills
Rooted in Cree stories, this ghost story follows Shelly her grandmother who are ghost collectors. Shelly and her grandmother collect ghosts and help them pass over into the afterlife. They also visit other ghosts in the cemetery who are not ready to move on yet. When Shelly’s mother dies suddenly in a car accident, her ghost is nowhere to be found. Told from before the accident and after, Shelly must deal with her grief of losing her mother. Shelly begins the search for her mother’s ghost and begins to spend most of her time at the cemetery and projects her grief onto her ghost collecting as she begins bringing ghosts back to her house rather than helping them pass through to the afterlife.
Music for Tigers by Michelle Kadarusman
Louisa wants to spend the summer practicing violin for a place in the youth symphony, but her family instead sends her to the Tasmanian rainforest to stay at a relative’s camp. Here she discovers her family history; they secretly protect the last of the supposedly extinct Tasmanian tigers.
Yellow Cedar Nominees
The Boreal Forest: a year in the world’s largest land biome by L.E. Carmichael
With excellent STEM applications in earth science and life science, this book aims to foster environmental awareness of the boreal forest and its interconnections with the entire planet. The Boreal Forest spans dozens of countries across our planet from Canada to the mountains of Japan and is so large that many remote areas of the forest have yet to be explored by humans. This world’s largest biome plays a vital role on our planet. The lyrical fictional narrative tells of the species that live in the forest, paired with informational sidebars that expand on key concepts and provide further context.
One Earth: People of color protecting our planet by Anuradha Rao
Learn the stories of some of our youngest environmental activists of colour from around the world. Rao profiles 20 young activists and their journeys. Their individual stories show that the intersection of environment and ethnicity is an asset, not an obstacle, to helping the planet.
Gone is Gone: wildlife under threat by Isabelle Groc
Gone is Gone looks at why and what species have become endangered, how scientists are learning about endangered wildlife, what people are doing to conserve species and what young people can do to help. This book will help educate and inspire young readers on what they can do to begin taking small steps towards big changes for endangered species around the world.
To find out more about the Forest of Reading Silver Birch nominees and see the rest of the nominated titles visit https://accessola.com/forest/award-nominated-lists/ or follow the Forest of Reading on Facebook at www.facebook.com/forestofreading.
