Big Winner

Volume XXIX / Issue 26 - March 10 / 2023
Big Winner

Big Winner

Author: 
Sylvia Taekema
Series: 
Orca Currents
Victoria, BC: Orca, April, 2023
117 pp., trade pbk., pdf & epub, $10.95 (pbk.)
ISBN: 
9781459834064 (pbk.)
9781459834071 (pdf)
9781459834088 (epub)
Grades: 
Grades 5-8
Ages: 
Ages 10-13
Review by: 
Christina Pike (Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy)
4
Excerpt: 

I’d been at this job for about a month. I was pretty new to Kentville and wasn’t having a lot of
luck with the whole making friends thing at school. Maybe the black hat, black jeans, black
jacket and boots thing put them off, but hey, I dressed the way I felt. My mom had been
unhappy with her job in Calgary for a while and wanted to come back to Nova Scotia, where
she grew up. Don’t ask me why. It wasn’t like we had any family left down here. To make a
terrible idea even worse, she decided we would move during Christmas break. That meant
messing up our holiday and destroying my first semester of high school. She had gotten a job
as a nurse at one of Kentville’s old folks homes. It was the same place she had volunteered at
when she was in high school.

“Isn’t that great?” she had said. “It’s like it’s meant to be. It’s like coming back home.”

I didn’t know about that. To me it felt like going backwards instead of moving forward.

Big Winner tells the story of Skye, 14, and the move back to her mother’s hometown of Kentville. Skye is not pleased about the move, and, to show her displeasure, she dyes her hair black with blue tips, dresses all in black and refuses to allow herself to try to make friends and fit in. In her words, she just wants to feel sorry for herself. Being offered a part time job at Brew-n-Bake and meeting Digby Jones begin the turning point in all of Skye’s happiness. All she has to do is to let herself smile a little.

The meaning behind the title of Taekema’s novel Big Winner is twofold. On a literal level, there is gossip around the identity of a million dollar lottery winner who bought the winning ticket in Kentville. On a deeper level, Skye becomes the big winner when she allows herself to open up and become Digby’s friend, and, with that, she believes, his protector. Digby believes he may have the winning million dollar ticket and enlists Skye’s help to make his list of how he is going to spend his money. As Skye dreams about how she would spend a million dollars, it is through Digby’s unselfish gestures that she begins to understand that being happy is not that complicated. In the end, many of the town’s people are big winners from Digby’s generosity. Although he has not won the million dollars, Digby’s inheritance gives him enough to help others with their needs. Skye, through her friendship, is the biggest winner as she truly understands what happiness means and finally allows herself to see things from others’ eyes.

Well-written and beautifully told, Big Winner is a must-read.

Highly Recommended
Reviewer: 

Christina Pike is the retired Principal of Macdonald Drive Junior High in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.