HOPPING ON THE COLOURED SQUARES OF BRIGHT LIGHT Cooke, Beatrice Illustrated by Joan Caldwell Port Alberni (B.C.), Blue Nun Press, 1991. 72pp, paper, $10.50 (plus $2.00 postage), ISBN 0-96949191-2-0. CIP Grades 3 to 5/Ages 8 to 10 Reviewed by Pearl Herscovitch Volume 20 Number 4 1992 September This is a chronicle of events and a series of character sketches from Beatrice Cooke's childhood in Nanaimo. The text is broken into chapters with a few uninspired pen-and-ink drawings. There is potential for individual chapters to be used independently in the classroom, but the writing is disjointed and the author skims over too many details, dismissing events that might provide the reader with a sense of the period and era. A miner's strike, for example, results in Jessica and Mary being labeled "scabs," but when Jessica questions her father about the incident, he responds, "There's a lot of bad feeling because the strike's gone on so long. It'll be over soon." In the same chapter, one of the senior girls at school cries because "Her boyfriend was killed in battle," but this statement is immediately followed by a description of the hay and turnips her father grows. For individuals with an interest in Nanaimo in the early 1900s, this may prove informative or nostalgic, but young readers will find it unappealing. Pearl Herscovitch is a curriculum librarian in the Faculty of Education al the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta.