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Dear Canada
Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival
In these eleven original stories, characters bravely face the challenges of settling into a new life. In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada's top children's authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring. Told in first-person narratives, this collection features a diverse cast of boys and girls, each one living at a different point in Canada's vast landscape and history. With unforgettable protagonists ― such as Miriam, a Warsaw-ghetto survivor, now reunited with her family in Montreal; Wong Joe-on, a young Chinese immigrant who faces racism in a small Saskatchewan town; and Insy, an Ojibwe girl who makes her first trip to a "white" town in Northern Ontario ― young readers will be moved by the opportunities and difficulties that these characters face, as each one ponders what it means to be Canadian, and struggles to fit in. Hoping for Home includes stories by Jean Little, Kit Pearson, Brian Dowle, Paul Yee, Irene N. Watts, Ruby Slipperjack, Afua Cooper, Rukhsana Khan, Marie―Andrée Clermont, Lillian Boraks―Nemetz and Shelley Tanaka.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
4 people are currently reading
508 people want to read
About the author
Jean Little
108 books193 followersJean Little is a Canadian author, born in Taiwan. Her work has mainly consisted of children's literature, but she has also written two autobiographies: Little by Little and Stars Come Out Within. Little has been partially blind since birth as a result of scars on her cornea and is frequently accompanied by a guide dog.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 11, 2018
Easy read
Too many different stories, just as I get into one it ends
Too many different stories, just as I get into one it ends
July 19, 2020
Too many of the stories were events covered by Dear Canada in separate books so they felt unoriginal. Several didn't go with the theme of the collection. "Entrance Certificate" made absolutely no sense. As I usually find with short stories, I couldn't develop an interest in the characters.
The most interesting thing is that "The Charleston on the Trapline" is about Violet Pesheen's grandmother, Insy Pimash. This collection was published five years before These are My Words, so I wonder how long they had it planned.
The most interesting thing is that "The Charleston on the Trapline" is about Violet Pesheen's grandmother, Insy Pimash. This collection was published five years before These are My Words, so I wonder how long they had it planned.
March 25, 2011
story of immigrants to canada spread over time perios 1700-1900s
July 29, 2011
interesting different arrivals some funny some sarcastic some very sad
August 15, 2012
Another book from the Dear Canada series, this time featuring a collection of short stories by popular children's writers. Hoping for Home includes short stories featuring male main characters, which provides a different outlook from the traditional female main characters.
July 2, 2016
Hoping for Home is a great read, especially for those interested in learning more about Canadian history, without having to commit to reading one long story. The diverse short stories in this book, as well as their historical background, make this book a must read, especially for Canada Day! ;)
October 20, 2011
A collection of stories about immigrants to Canada. They come from different eras and different locations and sometimes the journey is within Canada.
July 6, 2012
My favorite story was:To learn...even a little.It was my favorite because it was most interesting and I like interesting books and stories.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2014
The book was nice.I like that you get different peoples persective on what it was like coming to Canada.
January 14, 2017
Read for a work project
July 19, 2019
I love the stories in this book but the reason why i gave it three stars is cause i rather have 1 whole story instead of 11 different small stories.
May 15, 2021
2.5 stars
Now that I've finally re-read this Dear Canada collection, my main takeaway from it is that the diary format is probably even trickier to work with in short story form. Some of the stories made it work pretty well, but with most there wasn't enough harmony of exposition and action to create an impactful ending. Before I get more into what didn't work for me, here are the most successful stories from this anthology:
-To Get Away From All That(by Rukhsana Khan): Storyline and character work are good.
-Prairie Showdown(by Paul Yee): A very strong story, by far the best one here. I'd like to read some more of Yee's work sometime.
-To Learn... Even a Little(by Afua Cooper): The narration can be too stilted and distant, but the plot and resolution work well.
-Hattie's Home(by Jean Little): One of the best endings in the collection.
Most of the other stories were either one-note and forgettable or struggled to fit an overly broad historical context into such a brief format. "Ghost Town" is the most obvious example of the latter case. It follows two Japanese-Canadian sisters during World War II, and their different impressions of the long trip to a detention camp similar to the ones where Japanese-Americans were forced to stay during the same era. But the story ends as they are moving in to the camp housing, with no resolution at all. This story also had confusing POV changes. At first I couldn't tell when the POV changed at all until I noticed the each of the sisters' entries had slightly different font. I don't really blame the author for this; an editor or someone really should have made it more clear when the POV was about to switch.
My least favorite story was "Entrance Certificate". The intro blurb to this tale pointedly says that the author likes to make his readers read between the lines, which is all well and good if said lines have any consistency or plot value. Instead, the main character Penman's story has lots of inane one-off observations that just feel like wasted words for such a brief format. It comes off as muddled and aimless and has nothing to do with the anthology theme, not even in a figurative sense.
Mild nostalgia makes me want to go easy on Hoping for Home, but it's a very uneven group of stories and most of them are sadly forgettable. It's not a horrible book, but I think my copy will soon be on its way to a nice new home.
Now that I've finally re-read this Dear Canada collection, my main takeaway from it is that the diary format is probably even trickier to work with in short story form. Some of the stories made it work pretty well, but with most there wasn't enough harmony of exposition and action to create an impactful ending. Before I get more into what didn't work for me, here are the most successful stories from this anthology:
-To Get Away From All That(by Rukhsana Khan): Storyline and character work are good.
-Prairie Showdown(by Paul Yee): A very strong story, by far the best one here. I'd like to read some more of Yee's work sometime.
-To Learn... Even a Little(by Afua Cooper): The narration can be too stilted and distant, but the plot and resolution work well.
-Hattie's Home(by Jean Little): One of the best endings in the collection.
Most of the other stories were either one-note and forgettable or struggled to fit an overly broad historical context into such a brief format. "Ghost Town" is the most obvious example of the latter case. It follows two Japanese-Canadian sisters during World War II, and their different impressions of the long trip to a detention camp similar to the ones where Japanese-Americans were forced to stay during the same era. But the story ends as they are moving in to the camp housing, with no resolution at all. This story also had confusing POV changes. At first I couldn't tell when the POV changed at all until I noticed the each of the sisters' entries had slightly different font. I don't really blame the author for this; an editor or someone really should have made it more clear when the POV was about to switch.
My least favorite story was "Entrance Certificate". The intro blurb to this tale pointedly says that the author likes to make his readers read between the lines, which is all well and good if said lines have any consistency or plot value. Instead, the main character Penman's story has lots of inane one-off observations that just feel like wasted words for such a brief format. It comes off as muddled and aimless and has nothing to do with the anthology theme, not even in a figurative sense.
Mild nostalgia makes me want to go easy on Hoping for Home, but it's a very uneven group of stories and most of them are sadly forgettable. It's not a horrible book, but I think my copy will soon be on its way to a nice new home.
October 14, 2022
Some of the stories were very good, but some (like the Penman's Journal) I found very disjointed and hard to follow. I know they're meant to be "short" stories but some felt like they just didn't have enough of a story to be engaging
June 30, 2023
I don’t like reading short stories but I loved reading this collection of fictional historical vignettes in Canada. My parents immigrated from Austria in 1954 to Canada. I thoroughly enjoyed the diversity and the stories of their experiences.
September 6, 2022
Favourite story: Hattie's Home
Least favourite story: Entrance Certificate
Least favourite story: Entrance Certificate
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews