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Slick by Sara Cassidy (Orca $9.95)
Sara Cassidy's novel for young readers, Slick, is about oil, politics and people-not the massive spillage that has decimated the Gulf of Mexico but rather the slow seepage of corruption and environmental degradation in Guatemala as it infiltrates daily lives on Vancouver Island.
Liza is in grade seven and she likes her little brothers. She has an environmentally-minded mom who collects butter knives. Their family scoots around Victoria in a Vixen Red "limpet-size" hybrid car. Trouble is, Liza's Dad has moved out, plagued by sadness.
The absence of Liza's father enables Robert to become her mom's boyfriend. Liza has nicknamed him Slick.
It's disconcerting for Liza to see her normally level-headed mom suddenly dolling up her hair and wearing lipstick, making excuses for Slick's gas-guzzling SUV and defending the oil company that Slick works for.
The plot thickens-with oil-when Liza conducts some research and discovers Slick's company has been breaking the law in Guatemala. It owes Mayan farmers half-a-million dollars in compensation for drilling damage to croplands and buildings, pollution and the deaths of farm animals.
Before you can say "Girl Power," Liza has organized GRRR! That's the acronym for Girls for Renewable Resources, Really.
The girls in GRRR! set up a Facebook page, write letters to the newspapers and begin planning a demonstration at the oil company's head office which just happens to be in Victoria. Okay, so it's fiction.
When Liza's mom finds out, she says, "I can't keep this a secret from Robert." So is all Liza's hard work going to be for naught? Is her own mother going to betray her?
How exactly Sara Cassidy cleans up this domestic mess shall remain a mystery.
But we can reveal that in a future Orca Currents (ages ten and up) book, Liza will travel to see the Peten-Izabel pipeline in Guatemala. As well, GRRR! will respond to real-life activist Lynne Hill's vision of a symbolic protest against oil tanker traffic in the form of a four-kilometre crocheted chain stretching across the coastal channel.
A mother of three in Victoria, Sara Cassidy has been a human rights witness in Guatemala and won a Gold National Magazine Award. 978-1-55469-352-8
Review by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2010]
Liza is in grade seven and she likes her little brothers. She has an environmentally-minded mom who collects butter knives. Their family scoots around Victoria in a Vixen Red "limpet-size" hybrid car. Trouble is, Liza's Dad has moved out, plagued by sadness.
The absence of Liza's father enables Robert to become her mom's boyfriend. Liza has nicknamed him Slick.
It's disconcerting for Liza to see her normally level-headed mom suddenly dolling up her hair and wearing lipstick, making excuses for Slick's gas-guzzling SUV and defending the oil company that Slick works for.
The plot thickens-with oil-when Liza conducts some research and discovers Slick's company has been breaking the law in Guatemala. It owes Mayan farmers half-a-million dollars in compensation for drilling damage to croplands and buildings, pollution and the deaths of farm animals.
Before you can say "Girl Power," Liza has organized GRRR! That's the acronym for Girls for Renewable Resources, Really.
The girls in GRRR! set up a Facebook page, write letters to the newspapers and begin planning a demonstration at the oil company's head office which just happens to be in Victoria. Okay, so it's fiction.
When Liza's mom finds out, she says, "I can't keep this a secret from Robert." So is all Liza's hard work going to be for naught? Is her own mother going to betray her?
How exactly Sara Cassidy cleans up this domestic mess shall remain a mystery.
But we can reveal that in a future Orca Currents (ages ten and up) book, Liza will travel to see the Peten-Izabel pipeline in Guatemala. As well, GRRR! will respond to real-life activist Lynne Hill's vision of a symbolic protest against oil tanker traffic in the form of a four-kilometre crocheted chain stretching across the coastal channel.
A mother of three in Victoria, Sara Cassidy has been a human rights witness in Guatemala and won a Gold National Magazine Award. 978-1-55469-352-8
Review by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2010]
Submitted on November 10, 2010 in By David.
