Kid’s Gift Book List 2023
As Seen on CTV Your Morning
Here are the 8 Canadian kids’ and teen titles featured in my CTV Your Morning book segment on December 7th. You can watch the segment here or below:
Picture Books
Those familiar with my work will recognize this first picture, How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by yours truly, and featuring incredible handmade art by Miki Sato. This is my ode to family traditions, exploring how each ornament tells a story. The Hockey Skates is from super-coach Karl Subban, a former principal and father to 3 NHL players, and is a fun read-aloud about a boy desperate to get out there and play hockey, but keeps getting sent the wrong skates.
Graphic Novels
In Scaredy Squirrel Gets Festive (ages 5-10), beloved Canadian kidlit icon Scaredy Squirrel manages his holiday-related anxiety with the help of his friends and lots of lists. 8 Tiny Reindeer (ages 8-12) is structured into 24 sections, just like an advent calendar. You can follow along day by day or sit and read them consecutively. Based on a podcast of the same name, the story follows two elves who try to save Christmas from an all-powerful tech baron. In the fantasy adventure The Secret of the Ravens (ages 9-12), a pair of starving twins follow a series of raven quests all the way to the city in hopes of winning enough money to eat and maybe stay and improve their quality of life, but a quest gone wrong puts the twins in mortal peril.
Middle Grade Novels + YA
Green Mountain Academy (ages 9-12) is an adventure story set on a snowy winter evening. This is the second book featuring tween survivalist Francie, but you don’t need to read the first book to enjoy the second one. The Probability of Everything (ages 9-12) is a big, gorgeous story about love, family, and grief. An asteroid approaches earth and eleven-year-old Kemi preps by creating a time capsule full of beloved family mementoes, but as the novel unfolds Kemi is revealed as an unreliable narrator who has constructed a reality for herself (and the reader) that allows her to cope with an unimaginable tragedy. Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy (ages 13+) is a contemporary romance that flips stereotypes and expectations. When awkward hockey player Alix enlists beloved and popular Drama kid Ezra to help her overcome her anger issues, the last thing she expected was to fall in love.