The third volume in Niki Tate's series featuring teenage writer Heather Blake, begins innocently enough. In Trouble On Tarragon Island, Heather's grandmother, along with the other embarrassingly saggy and liver-spotted members of Ladies of the Forest, poses nude for a fund-raiser calendar. The Ladies of the Forest (a fictional take on the BC-based direct action group Women in the Woods) are determined to stop logging of old-growth forest and soon the "wrinkle brigade's"; weekly meetings and the painting of banners turns to confrontation with angry loggers. Then her grandmother is arrested and Heather, voicing author Tate's conviction that kids are "perfectly capable of making up their own minds about tough issues,"; must decide for herself whether breaking the law is a criminal act. 1-55039-154-2

--review by Louise Donnelly, who writes from Vernon.

[BCBW 2006] "Kidlit"