In 1995, Beryl Young won the People's Poem Award in the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Letter. That year she was also writer-in-residence at Wallace Stegner House in Saskatchewan. In 1997 she held the same position at the Wurlitzer Foundation for the Arts in New Mexico. She has produced recordings for children including "Lullabies and Laughter with the Lullaby Lady" which received a Gold Record in 1998.

Beryl Young's debut young adult novel Wishing Star Summer (Raincoast $9.95), published on the fifteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, explores the intricacies of friendship. When Tanya arrives in Vancouver from Belarus, with sores on her face from exposure to Chernobyl radiation and speaking only two words of English, "no" and "toilet," she's not the summer exchange student 11-year-old Jillian expected. Or wants.

Beryl Young's father never told his daughter about his past as a 'Home Child,' one of nearly 100,000 children who were sent to Canada as indentured labourers between 1870 and 1938, until Beryl Young discovered the story when she was twenty during a visit to England. Decades later she has written a tribute to his life, Charlie: A Home Child's Life in Canada (Key Porter $19.95). Her father Charlie Harvey was one of seven children whose English shopkeeper father died of pneumonia in 1910. First sent to live at Leopold House in London, one of several homes founded by Dr. Thomas Barnardo as a safe haven for destitute children, he was sent to Canada to work as a child labourer on an Ontario farm in 1911 at age twelve. He fought in World War I for Canada, was wounded at the Somme, became an RCMP officer and escorted Queen Elizabeth on her first visit to Canada.

Beryl Young's third book, Follow the Elephant, describes the challenges of a thirteen-year-old boy travelling with his Grandmother through India. The adventure teaches the boy how to deal with the recent death of his father.

In Beryl Young's picture book Would Someone Please Answer the Parrot! (Peanut Butter, 2013) a family receives a talking parrot named Guapo who drives the household up the wall with his antics-imitating absolutely everything, even the microwave-seemingly generating confusion on purpose. Guapo can perfectly imitate the sound of a ringing telephone, for example, hence the title. The family ultimately welcomes their unruly pet as an asset when it turns out only Guapo can vanquish an even more objectionable presence, the nasty and miserable Auntie Pattie, an unwanted annual visitor. Illustrations for this whimsical and slightly audacious story are by Jason Doll.

CITY/TOWN: Vancouver

DATE OF BIRTH: November 8 1934

PLACE OF BIRTH: Canada

AWARDS: Wishing Star Summer is a CCBC Recommended Book and was nominated for the B.C. Chocolate Lily Award, 2003, the B.C. Red Cedar Award 2003-4 and Saskatchewan's Diamond Willow Award 2004

BOOKS:

Wishing Star Summer (Raincoast, 2001) 1-55192-450-1

Charlie: A Home Child's Life in Canada (Key Porter, 2009) $19.95 978-1-55470-200-8

Follow the Elephant (Ronsdale Press, 2010) $10.95 978-1-55380-098-9

Would Someone Please Answer the Parrot! (Peanut Butter Press, 2013) $19.95 978-1-927735-00-8. Illustrated by Jason Doll

Miles to Go (Wander Fox, 2018) $12.95 978-1-77203-264-2

A boy from Acadie: Romeo LeBlanc's Journey to Rideau Hall (Bouton d'or Acadie, 2019) $19.95 978-2-89750-125-9

Show Us Where You Live, Humpback (Greystone, 2022) $22.95 9781771645737

A Boy Named Tommy Douglas (Midtown Press, 2022) $19.95 9781988242415. Illustrated by Joan Steacy.

[BCBW 2022] "Kidlit"

Show Us Where You Live, Humpback
by Beryl Young
(Greystone $22.95)

Humpback whales live much of their life in the cold waters near the south and north poles. To give birth to their calves, females migrate to warmer waters where it is safer to have their babies.

One of the chosen birthing areas is the Pacific Northwest where Beryl Young first saw humpbacks swimming off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Another good birthing place for Humpbacks is Hawaii, and while vacationing there, Young would hear their songs when she ducked her head underwater.

“Humpbacks are wonderful whales,” she writes in her seventh title Show Us Where You Live, Humpback, a picture book for 3- to 7-year-olds. “It’s an unforgettable experience to watch them leap powerfully into the air with their long flippers out like wings.”
The book introduces children to a mother humpback and her calf, and a human mother and child with a call-and-response format—the mother observes and the child responds—made especially to be read aloud.

Introducing a mother and her calf in the water, Young writes: “She floats close by you, a small shadow in this new world. You glide together through the sparkling sea. Your flippers sway like gentle curtains, keeping your young one safe.”

To which the human child, pictured walking with their mother on a grassy area surrounded by palm trees replies, “This is where I live, my home, where I learn and grow, where I am safe.”

At the end of the book, Young includes a section titled About Humpback Whales that contains facts, such as a newborn calf is about the size of a compact car and will double its weight in two weeks. The mother humpback can be as big as five elephants and can live for fifty years.

When the calf is big and strong enough, it will journey with its mother back to colder waters.

“Female whales give birth every two or three years, and so the cycle of the wonderful humpback whales begins again,” writes Young.
Much of the book works to create a connection between children and whales. There are descriptions of the mother whale and calf blowing through their blowholes with attendant sound effects: “Surprise us when you blow, Humpback. Look! A plume shoots up from your blowhole,” is sounded out as “WHOOSH!” And “a jet of sparkling bubbles,” is linked with “FWISSH.”

To this, the child says, “I can puff. I can blow. WHOOSH! I can make bubbles too.”

As if anticipating that this book will be read at bedtime, Young ends with, “Now we will drift and dream of the wide sea and the whales in this wondrous world we share.”

Young’s poetic whimsy is matched with illustrations in soft, watercolour hues by Japan-based Sakika Kikuchi, who holds an M.A. in illustration from the Cambridge School of Art (UK).

9781771645737

(BCBW 2022)

A Boy Named Tommy Douglas
by Beryl Young with art by Joan Steacy (Midtown Press $19.95)

Ages 5–8

The preacher-turned-politician Tommy Douglas (1904–1986), who is widely regarded as the father of Canada’s Medicare, was inspired by what happened to him as a boy when there was no universal health care. The young Tommy needed expensive surgery to prevent his leg from being amputated, but his parents couldn’t afford to pay for it.
A stroke of good fortune reverses this near tragedy, and Tommy never forgets what almost happened to him— nor about other unfortunate children with parents who couldn’t afford to pay surgeons. He felt it wasn’t fair, and as an adult, he set out to change this injustice—as told in the graphic novel A Boy Named Tommy Douglas, written by Beryl Young.

The cinematic art by Victoria-based Joan Steacy reveals an energetic young Tommy (he was never called “Tom”), who gashes his leg to the bone after tripping and falling upon a sharp stone while running in a field. The sports-loving boy must stay indoors for months to let his leg heal. He can’t play hockey at school with his friends or build snow forts. Instead, Tommy turns to reciting poetry by Robbie Burns.

“His friends clapped and cheered when Tommy performed at school concerts,” writes Young, who traces the long period of illness that leads to hospital time where a doctor finally says the leg has to be amputated.

Young captures the tragic moment with simple but powerful words that show a child’s emotions: “Amputate! Tommy couldn’t get his breath. ‘You mean cut my leg off?’ The doctor nodded.”

A famous bone surgeon happens to encounter Tommy crying in the hospital and agrees to perform a free operation if his parents let him use the case to teach his students. The operation works, and Tommy is able to return to playing sports and leading the life of a normal boy.

In her art, Joan Steacy captures the historical buildings and fixtures of early 20th-century Saskatchewan, including the ubiquitous grain towers with pointed roofs, woodburning stoves and coal oil lamps. While much of the book deals with Tommy Douglas’ early years, the last third covers the community-minded years of his life as a pastor and then politician, including the year 1968 when Medicare is finally available to all Canadians. As the story progresses, Steacy’s illustrations cleverly display 1960s artwork on walls, starburst clocks and boxy TV sets to reflect the changing times.
We learn of Tommy’s strong social conscience in his first career as a preacher in the 1930s. Young quotes him as saying, “This church won’t be just for worship. We will help people in the community.”

Soon it’s the Great Depression when most people are desperate, with many jobless and not having enough food to eat. While consoling a farmer one day after his daughter has died of a burst appendix, Tommy makes the fateful decision to enter politics because, as Young writes, he “could do more to help people as a politician than as a church minister” by working “to pass laws to help people.”

Tommy’s years reciting poems as a boy made him a powerful speaker. He inspires crowds. “They believed in his dream of medical care for everyone,” writes Young. “Today every Canadian, young or old, rich or poor, whether they live in a town or in the country, in the south or in the north, has the medical care they need.”

More details about Tommy Douglas are provided at the end of the book. In 2004, in a CBC TV vote, he was named the greatest Canadian of all time by people across the country.9781988242415

[BCBW 2022]