Status
Available
Call number
Call number
FIC CUR c. 3
Collection
Description
Juvenile Fiction. Juvenile Literature. HTML: Cass and her mom have always stood on their own against the world. Then Cass learns she had a grandmother, one who was never part of her life, one who has just died and left her and her mother the first house they could call their own. But with it comes more questions than answers: Why is her Mom so determined not to live there? Why was this relative kept so secret? And what is the unusual mask, forgotten in a drawer, trying to tell her? Strange dreams, strange voices, and strange incidents all lead Cass closer to solving the mystery and making connections she never dreamed she had..
Genres
Publication
Toronto, ON : Second Story Press, [2016]
Language
User reviews
LibraryThing member Carlathelibrarian
I really enjoyed this book. The story is about Cass, a 12 year old girl whose Mother inherits her Mother's home. She does not want to accept the inheritance as she was abandoned when she was young and brought up in foster homes. Cass convinces her that she wants to live in the house as they have
Show More
never lived in the same place for any length of time. Cass was also bullied in her present school and this was a way to get out of the situation. Cass finds a mask in a drawer in the bedroom she has claimed as her own and hears it singing to her. She also begins to have some strange dreams. Meanwhile at her new school, she meets a Native boy who is being bullied and teased by a rich boy. She befriends him and his mother explains about Spirit Masks. When the mask is not where she left it, a mini adventure occurs. This book deals with bullying, poverty, residential schools, drugs and alcohol dependence. There are some supernatural aspects in this story surrounding the mask and the Native American spirituality which assist in telling the story of Cass and her family. The fact that the issue of residential schools did not just affect the residents but generations that follow is demonstrated in this story. This is a good story to assist children in understanding the residential school issues that is so relevant today. The author did an amazing job with this story that she wrote echoing her own discovery of her roots. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book via Netgalley. Show Less
LibraryThing member jennybeast
This is a really complicated story (in some ways), and a really compelling one. There's just a lot to take in -- Cass experiencing intense bullying because of her poverty, and then navigating not perpetuating that on others when her circumstances change; Cass' mother and her abandonment and
Show More
experiences with the foster system; the lost heritage that the residential schools hand down through the children who endured them and struggled from the weight of their abuse; the reconciliation and healing represented by an unexpected legacy and a trickster mask; the path that brings the lost back into a family heritage and the Iroquois/ Cayuga Nation. It's a beautiful book, a raw one, with fable-like qualities at the center of it. It reads as strangely dated to me -- I feel like this is a book from the early nineties, for no specific reason, but it might just be Canadian cultural differences underpinning the story. Really well done, and has a slightly creepy tension throughout when we don't know the mask's intentions -- that will appeal to upper elementary and middle grade readers. Show Less
ISBN
9781772600131