Based on her research and interviews with children on Vancouver Island, Tara Saracuse, a UVic Creative Writing student, has created 22 first-person narratives, ostensibly by "real-life kids," for Islands Kids (Brindle & Glass $12.95), a compilation of creative non-fiction to represent the culture of Vancouver Island, including the voice of Emily Carr, at age eleven, in Victoria, in 1882. Alice Murakami of Salt Spring Islander recalls the internment of Japanese Canadians in 1942. A nine-year-old recalls the Kuper Island Residential School in 1955. A child in Port Alberni recalls the tsunami of 1964. And so on. Island Kids ends with three Anderson brothers circumnavigating Vancouver Island in 2009.

BOOKS:

Islands Kids (Brindle & Glass $12.95) 978-1-897142-43-1

[BCBW 2010]