It's time once again for Canada Reads, Canada's yearly book competition where 5 well known Canadians each defend one book and battle it out to decide what one book all Canadians should read. Throughout the week, books are voted out one by one until only one remains. This year's selections explore "stories that inspire readers to reflect on community and who we are in the world we live in" (Meet the Canada Reads 2022 Contenders) We thought we'd share this year's books with you so you can check them out and follow along with the discussions happening March 28-31. Let us know if you've read any of them and what you thought. Also, as always, click the book title to access the book in our catalogue and place it on hold.
By Michelle Good
Defended by Christian Allaire (Ojibway author and Vogue fashion writer)
By Catherine Hernandez
Defended by Malia Baker (Actor and activist)
In Scarborough, a low-income urban neighborhood, three kids struggle to rise above poverty, abuse, and a system that consistently fails them. The adults in their lives either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside; together, they make up a troubled yet inspired community that refuses to be undone.
By Omar El Akkad
Defended by Tarek Hadhad (Entrepreneur and former Syrian refugee)
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though she and the boy are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, she determines to do whatever it takes to save him. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy's life and of how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety. But as the novel unfurls we begin to understand that this is not merely the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world, it is the story of our collective moment in this time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one.
By Clayton Thomas-Müller
Defended by Suzanne Simard (Forest ecologist and author)
An electrifying memoir that braids together the urgent issues of Indigenous rights and environmental policy, from a nationally and internationally recognized activist and survivor. There have been many Clayton Thomas-Mullers: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse, enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada's residential school system; the angry youngster who defended himself with fists and sharp wit against racism and violence, at school and on the streets of Winnipeg and small-town British Columbia; the tough teenager who, at 17, managed a drug house run by members of his family, and slipped in and out of juvie, operating in a world of violence and pain. But behind them all, there was another Clayton: the one who remained immersed in Cree spirituality, and who embraced the rituals and ways of thinking vital to his heritage; the one who reconnected with the land during summer visits to his great-grandparents' trapline in his home territory of Pukatawagan in northern Manitoba. And it's this version of Clayton that ultimately triumphed, finding healing by directly facing the trauma that he shares with Indigenous peoples around the world. Now a leading organizer and activist on the frontlines of environmental resistance, Clayton brings his warrior spirit to the fight against the ongoing assault on Indigenous peoples' lands by Big Oil. Tying together personal stories of survival that bring the realities of Canada's First Nations into sharp focus, and lessons learned from a career as a frontline activist committed to addressing environmental injustice at a global scale, Thomas-Muller offers a narrative and vision of healing and responsibility.
By Esi Edugyan
Defended by Mark Tewksbury (Olympian and LGBTQ+ advocate)
In 1830, two English brothers arrive at a Barbados sugar plantation, bringing with them a darkness beyond what the slaves have already known. Washington Black -- an eleven-year-old field slave -- is horrified to find himself chosen to live in the quarters of one of these men. But his new master is not as Washington expects him to be. He is the eccentric Christopher Wilde -- naturalist, explorer, inventor and abolitionist -- whose obsession with perfecting a winged flying machine disturbs all who know him. Washington is initiated into a world of wonder: a world where the night sea viewed from a hilltop explodes with light, where a simple cloth canopy can propel a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning -- and where two people separated by an impossible divide can begin to see each other as human.
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