Today is World Book Day, a day recognized by UNESCO to celebrate books and reading. UNESCO’s global celebrations this year included naming their annual book capital of the world—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for 2025— and a call to action that books represent the linguistic diversity of our world, further than the handful of languages that dominate the works published today.
We hope that this list of books that explore stories in BC and across the world, with picks for both children and adults (and a few translated titles!) will entice you to get reading this World Book Day!
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants by Ann Hui (Douglas & McIntyre)
From the publisher: In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.
Out now!
Signs of the Time: Nłeʔkepmx Resistance through Rock Art by Chris Arnett (UBC Press)
From the publisher: Rock art – etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves – appears as beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. What are these signs? The petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nłeʔkepmx territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than a collection of ancient motifs. Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art.
Out now!
The Dissident Club: Chronicle of a Pakistani Journalist in Exile by Taha Siddiqui & Hubert Maury, translated by David Homel (Arsenal Pulp Press)
From the publisher: In Islamabad in 2018, Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui is kidnapped at gunpoint and barely escapes being killed. He flees the country on the first plane to France with questions left unanswered: What motivated the attack? Was the tyrannical Pakistani military involved?
The Dissident Club is an action-packed graphic memoir about Islamic politics, complex family dynamics, and one man’s dedication to truth and principle. With illustrator Hubert Maury, Siddiqui, winner of the prestigious journalism award Prix Albert Londres, tells the story of his intriguing life and career.
Out now!
Speaking through the Night by Wajdi Mouawad, translated by Linda Gaboriau (Talonbooks)
From the publisher: Isolating in Nogent-sur-Marne, Wajdi Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Through Kafka and Star Wars, by way of French phonetics and the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, he explores the razor’s edge of madness, conjures a dream shared by all humanity, and probes the bestiality of our everyday lives.
Out now!
Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore (Talonbooks)
From the publisher: In Canoes seven stories orbit a central novella, creating a collection that resonates with the vibrations and frequencies of women’s voices. Daughters, friends, sisters, young and old, talkative or daydreaming – in this moving and poetic collection, Maylis de Kerangal casts light on them all, exploring human entwinement and the precarious balance between life and death.
Out now!
River Magic: Tales From a Life on 1000 Rivers by Mark Angelo (Hancock House Publishers)
From the publisher: River Magic: Tales from a Life on 1000 Rivers takes the reader on an amazing global adventure by river. Mark Angelo, one of the world’s most acclaimed paddlers and river conservationists, who has paddled more rivers than perhaps anyone on Earth, recounts a selection of his encounters with amazing animals, big fish, unique cultures, and wild rivers. This is a collection of short stories, each captivating and often spellbinding, with a conservation underpinning. The book enables readers of all ages to better appreciate the value and magic of rivers along with the need to better care for them.
Coming soon!
Is This an Illness or an Accident? by Daniela Elza (Caitlin Press)
From the publisher: When asked, “But where are you really from?” Daniela Elza responds with a challenge: “How much time do you have?” Is This an Illness or an Accident? is a profound exploration of belonging, identity, and the question of home. Drawing on the bleak and occasionally absurd moments encountered in being forced to label oneself on document after document, Daniela Elza’s evocative memoir challenges the conventional narrative of cultural integration, focusing instead on the concept of the world citizen.
Out now!
For Kids
No Huddles for Heloise by Deborah Kerbel (Orca Book Publishers)
From the publisher: Heloise likes a lot of things: sledding, giving rocks to her friends, and eating fish popsicles. She does NOT like certain things, like crowds, close-talkers and huddles. The problem is, huddles are a big part of being a penguin. Everyone gathers together to keep warm and stay safe from leopard seals. But huddles give Heloise the collywobbles! Heloise sets off to find others like her. Along the way, she meets other animals who don’t seem so friendly, and after a close brush with a leopard seal, Heloise realizes that she needs to get back to her community. Is there a way for Heloise to be a penguin and keep her personal space?
Out now!
The Freezies by Farrukh Dhondy (Tradewind Books)
From the publisher: Closely following the lives of three young people in today’s Britain, The Freezies is a call for compassion and understanding for those fleeing war and oppression in our troubled times.. Suleikha, Leo and Kai, a group of 12-year-olds known as the Freezies, befriend the intriguing and larger-than-life Mr Christaki, a traveller who camps with his converted school bus on their village green. When revealed as a refugee from Syria, he disappears with his four-year-old adopted daughter. The Freezies come up with a risky and audacious scheme to expose his desperate plight on national TV in an attempt to prevent his deportation.
Out now!
Fjord by Willy Wanggen (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books)
From the publisher: In a stunning fjord, Catmarin, a slender and graceful bird, gathers the other shorebirds (seagull, cormorant, guillemot) to share his discovery: they all live in a vast open book, older and more alive than those found in libraries, as ancient as their glacier and as fresh as a breath of air. This book is the world around them. Some see only mountains, waves, trees, and rocks. However, a keen eye will discern that the down of new snow is as soft and untouched as a blank page, that the prominent mountain sets the scene, that the raindrops serve as commas punctuating the day, and that the waves enclose the belugas like brackets.
Out now!
Mother Earth: My Favourite Artist by Carol Rose GoldenEagle (Medicine Wheel Publishing)
From the publisher: Award-winning Indigenous author, CBC journalist, and Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan (2021-2023) Carol Rose GoldenEagle brings readers a radiant tribute to the artwork within the everyday. Paired with stunning illustrations by Hawlii Pichette, My Favourite Artist encourages us to share in the simple wonder of nature, and honour the precious magnificence of Mother Earth and all of our relatives.
Out now!