Terre d'accueil, Terre d'espoir

Dear Canada

by Kit Pearson, Shelley Tanaka, Rukhsana Khan

Terre d'accueil, terre d'espoir est une compilation de nouvelles par certains des meilleurs auteurs jeunesse canadiens. Aussi émouvant qu'instructif, chaque récit raconte la force indomptable et le courage nécessaires pour affronter les difficultés inhérentes à l'arrivée dans un nouveau pays. Les jeunes lecteurs s'attacheront aux personnages &mdash comme Miriam, rescapée du ghetto de Varsovie et réunie avec sa famille à Montréal, ou Wong Joe-on, un jeune immigrant chinois en proie au racisme dans une petite ville de la Saskatchewan &mdash et suivront avec émotion le récit de leurs réussites comme de leurs difficultés. Racontés à la première personne, ces récits présentent des garçons et des filles à des moments différents de l'histoire du Canada. Cette nouvelle terre ne se montre pas toujours aussi accueillante qu'ils ne se l'imaginaient.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Canada, Fiction, Childrens, Historical, Diary, Young Adult

254 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Kit Pearson spent her childhood between Edmonton Alberta and Vancouver, British Columbia. As a high-school student, she returned to Vancouver to be educated at Crofton House School. She obtained a degree in English Literature at the University of Alberta, and spent several years following the degree doing odd jobs or travelling in Europe.
In 1975, she began her Library degree at the University of British Columbia and took her first jobs in that field in Ontario. She later obtained an M.A. at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature in Boston. Returning to Vancouver, she completed her first novel "The Daring Game" which was published by Penguin Books.
Pearson now lives in Victoria, British Columbia, a few blocks from Ross Bay Cemetery, one of the settings in Awake and Dreaming.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy read
Too many different stories, just as I get into one it ends

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many of the stories were events covered by Dear Canada in separate books so they felt unoriginal. Several didn't go with the theme of the collection. "Entrance Certificate" made absolutely no sense. As I usually find with short stories, I couldn't develop an interest in the characters.

The most interesting thing is that "The Charleston on the Trapline" is about Violet Pesheen's grandmother, Insy Pimash. This collection was published five years before These are My Words, so I wonder how long they had it planned.

[Vandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

story of immigrants to canada spread over time perios 1700-1900s

[Renaissance · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting different arrivals some funny some sarcastic some very sad

[Shanelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book from the Dear Canada series, this time featuring a collection of short stories by popular children's writers. Hoping for Home includes short stories featuring male main characters, which provides a different outlook from the traditional female main characters.

[Shanelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoping for Home is a great read, especially for those interested in learning more about Canadian history, without having to commit to reading one long story. The diverse short stories in this book, as well as their historical background, make this book a must read, especially for Canada Day! ;)

[JennLynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories about immigrants to Canada. They come from different eras and different locations and sometimes the journey is within Canada.

[Twyla · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite story was:To learn...even a little.It was my favorite because it was most interesting and I like interesting books and stories.

[Chels.67 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was nice.I like that you get different peoples persective on what it was like coming to Canada.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a work project

[Amanda Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the stories in this book but the reason why i gave it three stars is cause i rather have 1 whole story instead of 11 different small stories.

[LobsterQuadrille · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Now that I've finally re-read this Dear Canada collection, my main takeaway from it is that the diary format is probably even trickier to work with in short story form. Some of the stories made it work pretty well, but with most there wasn't enough harmony of exposition and action to create an impactful ending. Before I get more into what didn't work for me, here are the most successful stories from this anthology:

-To Get Away From All That(by Rukhsana Khan): Storyline and character work are good.
-Prairie Showdown(by Paul Yee): A very strong story, by far the best one here. I'd like to read some more of Yee's work sometime.
-To Learn... Even a Little(by Afua Cooper): The narration can be too stilted and distant, but the plot and resolution work well.
-Hattie's Home(by Jean Little): One of the best endings in the collection.

Most of the other stories were either one-note and forgettable or struggled to fit an overly broad historical context into such a brief format. "Ghost Town" is the most obvious example of the latter case. It follows two Japanese-Canadian sisters during World War II, and their different impressions of the long trip to a detention camp similar to the ones where Japanese-Americans were forced to stay during the same era. But the story ends as they are moving in to the camp housing, with no resolution at all. This story also had confusing POV changes. At first I couldn't tell when the POV changed at all until I noticed the each of the sisters' entries had slightly different font. I don't really blame the author for this; an editor or someone really should have made it more clear when the POV was about to switch.
My least favorite story was "Entrance Certificate". The intro blurb to this tale pointedly says that the author likes to make his readers read between the lines, which is all well and good if said lines have any consistency or plot value. Instead, the main character Penman's story has lots of inane one-off observations that just feel like wasted words for such a brief format. It comes off as muddled and aimless and has nothing to do with the anthology theme, not even in a figurative sense.

Mild nostalgia makes me want to go easy on Hoping for Home, but it's a very uneven group of stories and most of them are sadly forgettable. It's not a horrible book, but I think my copy will soon be on its way to a nice new home.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were very good, but some (like the Penman's Journal) I found very disjointed and hard to follow. I know they're meant to be "short" stories but some felt like they just didn't have enough of a story to be engaging

[Barbara Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t like reading short stories but I loved reading this collection of fictional historical vignettes in Canada. My parents immigrated from Austria in 1954 to Canada. I thoroughly enjoyed the diversity and the stories of their experiences.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favourite story: Hattie's Home
Least favourite story: Entrance Certificate