Adult Canadian Books for Strong Teenage Readers. Margaret Mackey and Ingrid Johnston. Edmonton, AB: School of Library & Information Studies, University of Alberta 3-20 Rutherford South, T6G 2J4), 2006. 105 pp., pbk., $10.00 (cheque or money order only). Young adult literature, Canadian (English)-Book Reviews. Teenagers-Canada-Books and reading. Professional. Review by Dave Jenkinson. ***½ /4

This retrospective selection tool is a compilation of 10 years of annual columns of "contemporary Canadian adult books with potential appeal for good readers" that have appeared in Resource Links: Connecting Classrooms, Libraries & Canadian Learning Resources, a Canadian reviewing journal that is published five times per year. (For subscription information, go to www.resourcelinks.ca) . The reviews of 240 books, mostly Canadian adult fiction (both novels and short story collections), plus some poetry and nonfiction titles, have been divided into 17 different categories, with some of the categorizations being genres ("Mystery and true crime" or "Speculative/science fiction and fantasy") while other groupings are by subject or theme ("Contemporary life," "Childhood" and "Women") while still others are literary forms ("Poetry," "Short stories and novellas" and "Memoirs.") Title and author indexes are included.

      Although an accompanying letter from Margaret Mackey cautions that "the booklist contains recommendations for private reading rather than materials suited for class study...", her statement does not mean that teachers will be unable to identify potentially "teachable" books from amongst the more than 200 titles.

      While Adult Canadian Books for Strong Teenage Readers is available for purchase, it can also be freely downloaded from: http://www.ualberta.ca/~mmackey/adultbooklist.pdf

      The listing will be updated in two ways. Annual additions will first appear on the Resource Links website in October and then some six months later will integrated into the previously noted University of Alberta website. Hopefully, funding will become available to permit a finer subject analysis of the contents of the reviewed books.

Highly Recommended.

Dave Jenkinson teaches in the Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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