Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: At Rope’s End
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Toronto
STATE: ON
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kay_(writer) * http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0996116/ * http://www.crookedlanebooks.com/authors/edward-kay/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2014133361
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2014133361
HEADING: Kay, Edward
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100 1_ |a Kay, Edward
370 __ |e Toronto (Ont.)
372 __ |a Television industry |a Journalism |a Writing
374 __ |a Screenwriter |a Television producer |a Journalist |a Writer
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a His Sink and destroy, 2014: |b title page (Edward Kay)
670 __ |a Wikipedia, Oct. 8, 2014 |b (Edward Kay; Toronto-based writer of live-action and animated television comedy; television producer; print journalist; writer of the novel Star academy)
670 __ |a Amicus, Oct. 8, 2014 |b (est. hdg.: Kay, Edward; scénariste; Canada; assc. lang., eng)
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Screenwriter, writer, journalist, and television producer. This Hour Has 22 Minutes, writer and producer, four years; The Itch, supervising producer; Olliver’s Adventures, co-creator; Atomic Betty, teleplay writer; Jimmy Two-Shoes, co-creator, 2007; Finding Stuff Out, co-creator.
AWARDS:Gemini Award for Best Animated Program, for Olliver’s Adventures; Canadian Comedy Award, Canadian Screenwriting Award, and three Gemini Awards, all for This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Edward Kay works in Canada as a journalist, screenwriter, and television producer, and he is also the author of several novels, including STAR Academy, Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic, and At Rope’s End.
Sink and Destroy
In Sink and Destroy, Kay presents a historical novel based on Canadian naval contributions during the Second World War. The protagonist, sixteen-year-old Bill O’Connell, trains as a gunner and then takes a dangerous mission, sail with supplies from Canada to Britain. Through Bill’s adventures, Kay portrays how Canadian sailors protected supply lines and avoided enemy detection. Bill knows the the gasoline, food, and ammunition he carries are pivotal to the war effort. Yet, he and his fellow sailors must traverse 600 miles of open water (known as the Black Pit) to successfully complete their missions. Together, they will inevitably face violent clashes as they move back and forth across the Black Pit.
While several critics praised the novel, Mary Thomas in the online CM: Canadian Review of Materials warned: “While I learned a lot, and was certainly glad that Bill survived, I had no great sense of involvement in his story. Sink and Destroy will be enjoyed by those ‘into’ war and armies, but for readers who want an adventure that keeps them flipping the pages, the book will be rewarding but a bit disappointing.” On the other hand, National Reading Campaign website correspondent Penny Draper announced: “Full of detailed information about guns, ammunition and shipboard life, Sink and Destroy is an action-packed navy adventure with a thought-provoking core.” Myra Junyk, writing in Resource Links, was also impressed, and she advised that “this novel would be a good source for students researching World War II, the Royal Canadian Navy, heroism, warfare at sea and German submarines. It would also be a wonderful read aloud for Remembrance Day ceremonies!”
At Rope's End
At Rope’s End offers a far different novel, one that combines psychology with detective work. Forensic psychologist Dr. James Verraday works as a professor, teaching classes on criminal profiling and eyewitness testimony. James believes police detectives often fail on these two counts, but he has an opportunity to right this wrong when Detective Constance Maclean asks for his input on a recent case. The body of a young woman has surfaced in a cranberry bog not far from Seattle. Constance believes the body may be tied to a prior case; in fact, she believes a new serial killer may just be getting started, and she wants James to look over both cases and create a potential profile. Constance also suspects that the lead detective in her department has been arresting innocent men to pad his success rate. Unfortunately, this means that a suspect has already been arrested for the prior case, so Constance’s department refuses to consider the possibility of a serial offender. Of course, Constance fears prove correct, and James agrees to join her investigation.
Sparks fly between James and Constance along the way, leading to what a Kirkus Reviews critic called a “detection-cum-romance enlivened by the profiler’s own moderate but heartfelt interest in sadomasochistic erotica, which produces an ending as twisted as it is gratuitous.” Echoing this sentiment in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer announced that “Kay spins a good whodunit with a juicy bonus twist at the end.” Offering further applause in the online Literary Window, a columnist declared: “This book is a real page-turner! I had a hard time putting it down to go to sleep at night. The characters are incredibly likable and Edward Kay does a great job of describing a scene so that it leaves a memory afterward.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of At Rope’s End.
Publishers Weekly, November 7, 2016, review of At Rope’s End.
Resource Links, December, 2014, Myra Junyk, review of Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic.
ONLINE
CM: Canadian Review of Materials, http://www.umanitoba.ca/ (December 5, 2014), Mary Thomas, review of Sink and Destroy.
Globe and Mail Online, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ (September 29, 2009), review of STAR Academy.
Literary Window, http://literarywindow.com/ (December 28, 2016), review of At Rope’s End.
National Reading Campaign Web site, http://nationalreadingcampaign.ca/ (May 29, 2015), Penny Draper, review of Sink and Destroy.
Quill & Quire Online, http://www.quillandquire.com/ (October 1, 2009), review of STAR Academy.*
Edward Kay is a Toronto-based screenwriter, story editor and novelist with a background in both live-action and animated television comedy, as well as print journalism.
Kay spent four years as a writer and producer on the political satire, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, before becoming supervising producer of The Itch, a comedy series starring Jason Jones formerly of The Daily Show, and Jessica Holmes. Kay then co-created the animated children’s series, Ollie's Under-the-Bed Adventures (later known as Olliver's Adventures) and wrote the pilot episode, which won a Gemini Award for Best Animated Program. He has written numerous episodes of Atomic Betty, a television series broadcast in more than 100 countries. With Sean Scott, he is the co-creator of Jimmy Two-Shoes, an animated comedy series that in December 2007, was put into production by broadcasters Disney XD and Teletoon. He is the co-creator of Finding Stuff Out, a comedy-inflected science show that airs on TVO and Knowledge Network.
Kay's first novel, a YA sc-fi comedy entitled STAR Academy [1] was released September 15, 2009 by Random House/Doubleday.[1] The sequel, Dark Secrets, was released on September 13, 2011. He subsequently was commissioned by Scholastic Books to write an historical novel about the Battle of the Atlantic, entitled "Sink and Destroy".
His latest novel is a thriller entitled "At Rope's End", which will be released by New York City based publisher Crooked Lane in January, 2017.
Kay’s writing for This Hour Has 22 Minutes has garnered him three Gemini Awards,[2][3][4] a Canadian Comedy Award,[5] and a Canadian Screenwriting Award.[6] For his work in print journalism he has received two Canadian National Magazine Award Honourable Mentions.
Edward Kay is an award-winning author and screenwriter with an eclectic background in live-action and animated television, as well as fiction and print journalism. He is best known for is work as a senior staff writer and producer for CBS’s International Emmy-nominated political satire This Hour Has 22 Minutes during its four most successful seasons. In addition to his TV credits, Kay has also written three YA novels. He currently lives in Toronto. This is his first mystery.
edwardkay.net
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Print Marked Items
Kay, Edward: AT ROPE'S END
Kirkus Reviews.
(Nov. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kay, Edward AT ROPE'S END Crooked Lane (Adult Fiction) $25.99 1, 10 ISBN: 978-1-68331-000-6
TV writer/producer Kay's debut mystery (Sink and Destroy, 2014, etc.) lures a forensic psychologist out of his
University of Washington classroom to help a Seattle cop track the killer of two known victims and perhaps many
more.Ever since a local cop tackled and cuffed him during a peaceful demonstration, Dr. James Verraday, who'd already
seen his mother killed and his sister crippled by a police car that ran a red light and slammed into their car when he was
still a child, has been perfectly comfortable with this new relationship with the Seattle Police Department: suing it for
damages. While his lawsuit is still pending, he's surprised, and not in a good way, to meet Detective Constance
Maclean, who begs his help in identifying the man who beat and strangled Rachel Friesen, who moonlighted as a fetish
model for the Assassin Girls website. Even though Detective Bob Fowler, the lead investigator in the murder of highend
escort Alana Carmichael six months ago, has focused on Peter Cray, a man with a long rap sheet whose DNA was
recovered from Alana's clothing, as his leading suspect, Maclean sees so many similarities between the two cases that
she's convinced the two murders are the work of a single man, and she wants Verraday to use his profiling skills to
identify that man. Verraday refuses indignantly but, changing his mind after a vivid nightmare, agrees to lend his
uniquely categorical judgment to Maclean. "Peter Cray didn't murder Alana Carmichael," he assures Maclean, and
briskly dismisses fetish shop owner Aldous Whitney as a suspect even before he meets him: "Whitney's not the killer."
But who is? Detection-cum-romance enlivened by the profiler's own moderate but heartfelt interest in sadomasochistic
erotica, which produces an ending as twisted as it is gratuitous.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Kay, Edward: AT ROPE'S END." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865817&it=r&asid=ef07b1d1c76ee460bf59b28bc1b2e5f3.
Accessed 30 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865817
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At Rope's End: A Dr. James Verraday Mystery
Publishers Weekly.
263.45 (Nov. 7, 2016): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
At Rope's End: A Dr. James Verraday Mystery
Edward Kay. Crooked Lane, $25.99 (304)
ISBN 978-1-68331-000-6
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Screenwriter Kay's intriguing mystery debut blends academia and law enforcement in what looks to be a promising
marriage made in the name of crime. Det. Constance Maclean of the Seattle PD is convinced that the murder of a
beautiful young woman, whose body was fished out of a cranberry bog, is the work of a serial killer. Clues are hard to
come by, and because she's bucking a senior officer who doesn't put any stock in her hunches, Maclean decides to
circumvent department policy. Turning to forensic psychologist James Verraday, a university professor, as a consultant
is a definite breach of protocol, but it sets the stage for an enduring partnership. Both characters are single. Both have
complicated pasts and even more complicated presents, and both share similar political ideologies, though Verraday is
more liberal. Aside from rather lengthy passages expounding on topics such as criminal profiling and bipolarism, Kay
spins a good whodunit with a juicy bonus twist at the end. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"At Rope's End: A Dr. James Verraday Mystery." Publishers Weekly, 7 Nov. 2016, p. 42. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469757481&it=r&asid=cb7d32632184c77ab0777ca4768be109.
Accessed 30 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469757481
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Kay, Edward: Sink and Destroy--The Battle of
the Atlantic (I Am Canada Series)
Myra Junyk
Resource Links.
20.2 (Dec. 2014): p36.
COPYRIGHT 2014 Resource Links
http://www.atcl.ca
Full Text:
KAY, Edward
Sink and Destroy--The Battle of the Atlantic (I Am Canada Series) [G]
Scholastic Canada, 2014. 202p. Gr. 6-9. 978-1-4431-0781-5. Hdbk. $14.99
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Bill O'Connell and his family live in Iroquois, Ontario on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Times are very difficult
for the family during the desperate years of The Great Depression. As a result, fifteen-year old Bill jumps at the
opportunity to earn some money during his summer vacation working as a deck hand on the SS Huronia. He
immediately falls in love with life on the water. By the spring of 1940, Bill drops out of school and starts to work as a
seaman just as World War II begins. As Hitler advances through Europe, Bill decides to lie about his age and enlist in
the Navy.
This novel describes Bill's training as a sailor and a gunner in Halifax and Greenock, Scotland. His first trips across the
Atlantic are plagued by seasickness, leaky boats and isolation. Once he arrives in Scotland, he befriends a Scottish girl
named Arlene. They soon develop a relationship, and he looks forward to returning to Scotland after the long and
dangerous trips across the Atlantic. Bill must face great danger from German submarines as well as stormy seas. Will
Bill survive the Battle of the Atlantic?
Sink and Destroy--The Battle of the Atlantic is part of the Scholastic I Am Canada Series. This novel focuses on the
heroism of members of the Royal Canadian Navy as they guard convoys bringing much needed supplies to Britain
during World War II. Sailors had to adapt to extremely challenging conditions: sleeping only four hours at a time, being
soaked by water sloshing around the mess deck, working with hand-me-down equipment from the First World War, and
enduring extreme weather conditions. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of their duty was that the convoys never
stopped--even for survivors of torpedoed ships. "Evety instinct told me to help them. Blit until the attack was called off
there was nothing that I or anybody else could do." (p. 102)
Three of Edward Kay's uncles served in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He used their experiences and
interviews with veterans as the basis for his novel. During his research. Kay discovered that even though the
contribution of the Canadian navy to the success of the Allied war efforts was critical, it was a story seldom told in
books about World War II. This novel would be a good source for students researching World War II, the Royal
Canadian Navy, heroism, warfare at sea and German submarines. It would also be a wonderful read aloud for
Remembrance Day ceremonies!
Thematic Links: World War II; Submarine Warfare; Canadian Navy; Atlantic Ocean; Heroism
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[E] Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
[G] Good even great at times, generally useful!
[A] Average, all right, has its applications
[P] Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented
Junyk, Myra
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Junyk, Myra. "Kay, Edward: Sink and Destroy--The Battle of the Atlantic (I Am Canada Series)." Resource Links, Dec.
2014, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA404446216&it=r&asid=0589dd8968e4e43c3c0edea96c9a233f.
Accessed 30 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A404446216
DECEMBER 28, 2016 BY JENNIFER ROSE
At Rope’s End
At Rope’s EndAt Rope's End by Edward Kay
Published by Crooked Lane Books on January 10th 2017
Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Fiction
Pages: 304
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Synopsis: Dr. James Verraday is a professor of forensic psychology specializing in eyewitness recall and criminal profiling. He’s a brilliant original thinker with a passion for social justice and a very antagonistic relationship with authority, especially the police force. So when Detective Constance Maclean appears in Verraday’s lecture hall at the end of one of his classes, he bristles. But the body of a young woman has just been found in a cranberry bog south of Seattle, and Maclean is convinced that this murder is tied to an earlier killing.
The Seattle police already have a suspect in custody for that case, but Maclean suspects the lead detective is knowingly putting away an innocent man to boost his numbers and quiet his critics. Verraday reluctantly agrees to use his skills as a profiler to help out with the investigation--if only to satisfy his own conviction that law enforcement is riddled with corruption. They form an unlikely alliance and soon find themselves tied up in a deadly game to find a serial killer whose wealth and influence make him almost untouchable.
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My review: This roller coaster of a book starts with the naked body of a young girl being retrieved from the depths of a cranberry bog. She has been beaten and strangled. Detective Constance Maclean thinks this death may be linked to a murder that occurred six months earlier. The victims were about the same age, similar in appearance, with prominent tattoos and piercings. The major problem was that the Seattle Police Department already had a suspect in custody for the first murder. If Detective Maclean was right, then they had the wrong man in custody and a serial killer in their midst. If that was the case, it was only a matter of time before the killer struck again.
Detective Maclean seeks assistance from James Verraday, a forensic psychologist with a specialty in criminal profiling. He was working as a college professor when approached to assist with the case. Verraday had a long and troubled past with the Seattle P.D., and he was more than reluctant to help initially. But the allure of Detective Maclean and the thought of catching a serial killer was too much to turn down. So the two work together to try to solve the case before another young woman loses her life. Time was ticking!
This book is a real page-turner! I had a hard time putting it down to go to sleep at night. The characters are incredibly likable and Edward Kay does a great job of describing a scene so that it leaves a memory afterward. In most mysteries that I read, I feel like I know what is going to happen before it happens, but this book had some unexpected twists that definitely kept me on my toes! I particularly enjoyed the ending, hopefully, this will become a series of books… I will surely be watching for more to come from Detective MacLean and James Verraday!
This book was given to me, by NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Edward Kay himself, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the pleasurable reading experience!!!
THE DAILY REVIEW, TUESDAY, SEPT. 29
Muggles only, thank you
REVIEWED BY JOAN YOLLECK
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Sep. 29, 2009 10:33AM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012 12:32PM EDT
0 Comments Print
In Edward Kay's first children's book, STAR Academy, he writes a comic adventure set in the world of academia and what J.K. Rowling's characters would call Muggles. Two hundred children with the very best and brightest scientific minds are rounded up to study at the Academy for Superior Thinking and Advanced Research. But who has brought them together? And, in a whirlwind of action that rockets from slapstick to satire and sometimes crosses the line into cruelty, where does it all lead? The answer: Into the inventive, comedic mind of Edward Kay.
The story begins at the local high school, where students are being judged on their entries in a science fair. Eleven-year-old Amanda Forsythe's exhibit consists of diagrams describing laser-powered interstellar travel in a spacecraft equipped with photon sails. The concept, based on quantum physics, is far beyond the comprehension of her dunderheaded principal and teacher, and, as their first line of defence, they turn to ridicule.
"Unfortunately, the presentations ... are supposed to be about science fact, not science fiction," Mrs. Wheedlbum says.
"Why ... go off into space in ... this protein-sail space thingy?" Principal Murkly asks.
The trophies goes to a vacuum cleaner made to look like a robot and a scary project to cure hunger in Third World countries by re-engineering human genes. A computer-modified photo shows children "down on all fours wearing loincloths, happily grazing on grass, leaves, and soil."
Although Amanda loses the contest, two odd-looking women approach her; "their eyes seemed slightly large," and one has pencilled in eyebrows. Dr. Oppenheimer and Professor Leitspied from STAR Academy explain that they would like Amanda to take the entrance exam for a full scholarship to their boarding school.
Amanda's father, sales manager for the Achilles Bunion Remover Cream Corp., gives his consent, once he establishes that there are no hidden costs. Mrs. Forsythe wavers, however, thinking the academy might be a cult, setting the scene for a humorous encounter with a science tutor: "The hems of [Cyril Hopwood's]trousers hesitated unnaturally some distance above his ankles ... a huge colony of micro-organisms had established itself under his armpits ..." When Amanda tries to open the window, Mr. Hopwood complains of a chill and cranks up the thermometer. In the rising temperature of the enclosed room, the lesson begins.
Kay is worth watching to see where his imagination might take us in a sequel
"He pulled out an old, dog-eared volume ... and flipped it open to a mustard-stained page ... 'I think that's Mars over here,' he added, scratching at a small red sphere ... As he picked at it, the red sphere fell off onto the table. 'Oh, sorry, bit of dried ketchup,' he said."
Entering the over-heated, odoriferous room, Mrs. Forsythe cuts the lesson short and Amanda is allowed to attend STAR Academy.
The academy is outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, bedrooms have private labs, the cafeteria serves the finest food from every culture, and classrooms, meant to inspire, are decorated with holographic posters of endangered species.
The flip side to these lush facilities is that the school is a hotbed of politics, infighting and conspiracy. The headmistress divides the children into two competing teams. The assignment is to invent a method of erasing bad childhood memories and, consequently, unhappiness in adults. Electrical impulses to the brain figure in both presentations, but Amanda's team wins by taking it one step further, demonstrating their theory on the evil Eugenia Snootman. (It seems more like temporary lobotomy when Eugenia can't even remember her name.) In the second competition, Eugenia offers Amanda $1-million to hand over her research. Naturally, our heroine declines.
The hidden agenda of the school finally surfaces when Sanjay, one of Amanda's team members, discovers that the academy is run by extraterrestrials, and that the aliens are bent on taking over the Earth. When Sanjay appeals to his teammates for help, they first suspect him of defecting to the other team, and think it is a ruse to get them expelled, or worse. But after Sanjay disappears and they see the aliens' spindly bodies for themselves, Amanda's team finds a way into town and contacts the police, and matters are brought under control.
Edward Kay masterfully uses a range of comedic forms, though his depictions of society seem harsh. From the inept school teachers to the simple-minded parents, the bumbling police and stereotypical government agents, there is little hope held out for our failing planet. Where are the lessons of understanding and respect in the greater school of human compassion?
But it is also true that Amanda and her colleagues bond in friendship, that family has value, and that Amanda doesn't sell out to Eugenia Snootman. Also true, research tells us humour can cure what ails us. The skillful Edward Kay is worth watching to see where his imagination might take us in a sequel. Indeed, the book's last line is, "Amanda had no way of knowing that her big adventure had barely begun."
Joan Yolleck works in administration at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her book, Paris in the Spring with Picasso, will be published next March.
STAR Academy
by Edward Kay
The Prince of Neither Here Nor There
by Sean Cullen
What is it about children’s fantasy lit that attracted two of Canada’s comedy writers and performers? A cynic would say it’s the urge to cash in on the success of J.K. Rowling et al. But there’s another element that dominates former This Hour Has 22 Minutes writer Edward Kay’s first novel for children and comedian Seán Cullen’s fourth, one that testifies to their backgrounds in television. These two new novels are highly visual, and play out as if onscreen, emphasizing physical appearances and relying on familiar stereotypes and special effects.
In The Prince of Neither Here Nor There, the first book in Cullen’s new series, Brendan Clair, plagued by all the zits, smells, and clumsiness possible in adolescence, finds the spiral scar on his chest flaring in agony when he is confronted by a “breathtaking, terrifyingly radiant” woman playing otherwordly music on a harp. She tells him he is a Faerie who has been adopted by humans. (Cullen distinguishes “Faeries” from “fairies,” which, the narrator tells us, are “ineffectual little things that flit about in children’s stories.”)
Brendan denies his true identity at first, but a fast-paced chase through Toronto with his school friend Kim, a Faerie guardian, introduces him to the trolls, kobolds, and silkies of the city’s subway and harbour, and goes some way toward convincing him. Not until he ends up on Ward’s Island in the Swan of Liir pub (strikingly similar to Rowling’s Leaky Cauldron) does he accept his destiny, and realize that it is up to him to repair the rift between the human and Faerie worlds. His complexion clear and his many Faerie powers evident, he returns home prepared for whatever awaits him in the next book in the series.
Prince is an uneasy mix of dumb adolescent humour (body odour, pants-wetting, jaunty footnotes from the narrator), the overblown grandiosity of epic fantasy (“I have wrought a Sending”; “the tone was fell and it throbbed with power”), and cliché (“her voice was irresistible as a hurricane, as inevitable as an earthquake”; eyes “blue as sapphires”; “his feet weighed a ton”). The prose is often startlingly banal, especially where characters’ feelings are concerned. Cullen clearly gets a kick out of describing Toronto and its environs and peopling it with animated action figures, but his lack of flexibility and originality as a writer is daunting. And although I myself appreciate a Deirdre who is “tall and dire” with a “gorgeous face,” an author who reveals that he is using his son’s name for his hero, then claims that the hero thinks “his father [is] just about the coolest person in the world,” is being a bit squirm-worthy.
Vivid characters and playful language are more in evidence in Edward Kay’s STAR Academy. Amanda Forsythe is an 11-year-old genius, and when her photon-sail space travel project is mocked at the science fair, she’s shattered. But then she’s offered a place in a school she’s never heard of before – the Superior Thinking and Advanced Research (STAR) Academy. After some initial hesitation, her parents allow her to enroll in this elite boarding school, and Amanda is soon working with her team to win the school challenge to “investigate the nature of synapses in the human brain and suggest a means of blocking the ones associated with memories.”
Amanda and her friends gradually realize that the school’s eccentric headmistresses, Leitspied and Oppenheimer, are aliens whose aim is anything but benign. The students have to resort to ancient methods such as carrier pigeons and smoke signals – not to mention plain old courage – to free an imprisoned classmate and foil the aliens’ plan.
Kay has his moments of body humour (references to Uranus and a five-page riff on vegetable-beef-soup-smelling B.O. among them) and his own crew of conventional characters – such as a couple of buffoon cops and A-list student Eugenia Asperger, who is always surrounded by sycophants. But his interest is in his heroes’ courage and enterprising intellects, and his long, calm sentences, if somewhat abstract in vocabulary and distant in tone, show an affectionate respect for his readers. A phrase such as “this riotous collection of mouth-watering scents gave her the appetite of a Dickensian waif in a workhouse” doesn’t have pizzazz, but it does have character. Although Kay’s plot is thin, the very notion of a collection of young geniuses able to outstrip adults in their knowledge of quantum physics is cheering.
But in the end, we are still left with something more televisual than literary. Both Cullen and Kay emphasize situation comedy and costume. More noticeably, their prose often tells instead of showing, and is chock full of passages that read like stage directions. Telling us that a character “radiates subtle strength, authority and power,” as Cullen writes of one Faerie, may give an actor something to go on, but it ducks the real work of storytelling, which is to convey implicitly – through dialogue, action, and imagery – everything that is beneath the surface. Such are the true special effects of literature.
Reviewer: Deirdre Baker
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
DETAILS
Price: $14.95
Page Count: 252 pp
Format: Paper
ISBN: 978-0-30737-244-4
Released: Sept.
Issue Date: 2009-10
Categories:
Age Range: 10+
Reviewer: Deirdre Baker
Publisher: Puffin Canada
DETAILS
Price: $12.99
Page Count: 386 pp
Format: Paper
ISBN: 978-0-14317-120-1
Released: Aug.
Issue Date: October 1, 2009
Categories:
Age Range: 11+
Children's Book Reviews: Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic (I AM CANADA series)
Publish May 29, 2015
Sixteen-year-old Bill O’Connell is a good hunter. He has to be; helping put food on his family’s table during the Depression is no easy task. When the war comes, it’s Bill’s steady aim that gets him assigned to gunnery training, beginning a deadly five-year mission to run supplies from Canada to Britain. Most books about the Second World War celebrate the front line soldiers. Edward Kay’s Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic tells the lesser known story of the sailors charged with protecting the supply lines, men whose task was not to engage the enemy, but instead, hide their precious cargo from them. Tanks, munitions, gasoline, and food sent from Canada to Britain were critically important to the outcome of the war, and during the treacherous journey, had to be protected from bombers and submarines. Bill describes the hardships endured as his convoy crosses the Black Pit—the 600-mile stretch of unprotected open water in the North Atlantic—and the harrowing sea battles that ensue when the convoy is discovered. Calm throughout the battles, Bill’s strongest emotions are reserved for the Canadian government. Critical of Canada’s military readiness, disturbed by the lack of support shown by the citizens of Halifax towards the soldiers, and frustrated that Germany has superior technical capabilities, Bill curses Prime Minister Mackenzie King for putting Canadian lives in danger. Based on his interviews with veterans, Kay has provided an intriguing look at times past. Full of detailed information about guns, ammunition and shipboard life, Sink and Destroy is an action-packed navy adventure with a thought-provoking core.
Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic (I AM CANADA series)
Edward Kay
Scholastic Canada
ISBN 13: 978-1-4431-0781-5
Penny Draper
Penny Draper Penny Draper lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the author of the award-winning “Disaster Strikes!” series, historical fiction that places young protagonists at the centre of real Canadian disasters.
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Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic. (I Am Canada).
Edward Kay.
Toronto, ON: Scholastic Canada, 2014.
202 pp., hardcover & EBK, $14.99 (hc.).
ISBN 978-1-4431-0781-5 (hc.), ISBN 978-1-4431-2884-1 (EBK).
Subject Heading:
World War, 1939-1945-Campaigns-Atlantic Ocean-Juvenile fiction.
Grades 6-8 / Ages 11-14.
Review by Mary Thomas.
*** /4
excerpt:
"Incoming torpedoes!" shouted the ASDIC operator. "Sounds like a freight train! They're coming straight at us from the stern, off to port side!"
Without a moment's hesitation the captain called out, "Hard to starboard!"
The bow swung round and the ship leaned over at a crazy angle. I hung on to my 4-inch gun to keep from getting thrown overboard. From my position I could see two trails of bubbles racing toward us from out of the dark, frigid water. Beyond that, there was just the blackness of a North Atlantic night.
After months of preparing and waiting, I finally had my first encounter with a U-boat. And now, as I watched the torpedo trails homing in on us and felt the ship turning agonizingly slowly as the helmsman threw the wheel around, I wondered if it would be my last.
Billy O'Connell was raised in the small Ontario town of Iroquois on the banks of the St Lawrence River at a time when the Depression was a presence in the home almost like a third parent. Not surprising then that, as the tide of joblessness began to recede with the threat of war, he quit school and went to work on a lakeboat ferrying grain from Port Arthur and Fort William down to the port of Montreal. After war was declared, it was a short step from lakeboat to corvette. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Canadian Navy.
Sink and Destroy gives a picture of life in the very stable, but hideously uncomfortable, corvettes as they did escort duty across the North Atlantic, guarding freighters carrying grain and other essential supplies across to beleaguered Britain. And back again, riding high and empty. Both ways they were harassed by German U-boats, especially in the "Black Pit" -- the mid-Atlantic air gap or 600-mile stretch of water where they were out of range for air cover from either side.
Danger on the high seas was countered by good times ashore, and Bill was amazed at how friendly and welcoming the Scots were, and by contrast, just how much sailors were mistrusted, resented, and exploited in Halifax. Billy doesn't seem to have had any idea why this should be, but it was not surprising that it was while he was stationed in Greenock that he acquired a girl friend, the thoughts of whom sustained him during times at sea. Their story should have ended happily ever after, but this was wartime, and it didn't. Aileen's house was bombed, and the whole family who had made Bill so welcome were killed.
As the historical note at the back of the book says, "When the war began, Canada's Navy, like its Army and Air Force, was small, understaffed and ill-equipped for a major conflict." Young Bill has some exceedingly caustic comments about Prime Minister Mackenzie King: "the cheap bastard, living in his dream world, betting against all odds that the war wouldn't come -- and that if it did it could be fought with hand-me-down equipment from the First World War." This, after failing to sink a U-boat that could have been destroyed if he'd had a proper gun. At least by this time in the war, Bill’s ship did have guns! The first corvette that Bill sailed across the Atlantic in came equipped with a grey-painted telegraph pole mounted on its prow! Why? "No more guns," he was told.
Sink and Destroy gives a graphic picture of the uncomfortable, dangerous life on board these corvettes, of the difficulties encountered on shore, and a lot of thoughts about the war, itself, as it ground on to its far-from-inevitable conclusion. What it does not give is a real feeling of immediacy and excitement. So, while I learned a lot, and was certainly glad that Bill survived, I had no great sense of involvement in his story. Sink and Destroy will be enjoyed by those "into" war and armies, but for readers who want an adventure that keeps them flipping the pages, the book will be rewarding but a bit disappointing.
Recommended.
Mary Thomas lives in Winnipeg and works in elementary schools there. Her engineer father spent the war in Ottawa, turning sewing-machine factories into gun producers, and this book indicates why he was more use there than in the trenches.