As the principal of one of the most diverse elementary schools in Canada, Edmonds Community School in Burnaby, David Starr provides portraits of students who are surprisingly hopeful despite the many traumas they have faced in From Bombs to Books: Refugee Children, Their Families and an Exceptional Canadian School (Lorimer $22.95). Sometimes funny, sometimes touching and inspirational, Bombs to Books shows how children from troubled pasts can often put their families' grief and trauma behind them. The resiliency of children to adversity should not have to be news-but in an age when many parents are over-protective, Starr and his students have been featured in The Vancouver Sun, The Province, Globe and Mail, and on CBC Radio and Global News.

In David Starr's Golden Game (Lorimer 2017), a Syrian refugee, playing on a soccer team of fellow refugees, discovers how to cope with cripping flashbacks.

The Colour of Glass (Ronsdale $18.95) follows a string of trade beads, made on the island of Murano near Venice, as they are passed from generation to generation, from Captain Cook at Nootka Sound to a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry hearing in Northern British Columbia. The beads bear witness, over three centuries, to a family who unwillingly plays a central role in Canada’s collective record of colonialism, unbridled racism and genocide — and the rare acts of compassion and courage from settlers who saw injustice and risked everything to end it. Heavily inspired by real events and people, The Colour of Glass chronicles the relationship between Indigenous people and the fur traders, politicians, judges, police, priests and school staff who profited from assimilating and erasing Indigenous people and their cultures.

BOOKS:

From Bombs to Books: Refugee Children, Their Families and an Exceptional Canadian School (Lorimer 2011) $22.95 978-1-55277-860-9

The Nor'Wester (Ronsdale 2017) $11.95 978-1-55380-493-2

Golden Game (Lorimer 2017) 9781459412316 $12.95

The Colour of Glass (Ronsdale, 2021) $18.95 978-1-55380-650-9

[BCBW 2021]