New Release Books by Pamela Porter

In this delightful bedtime rhyme a young child bids good night to the moon, recalling all the familiar things surrounding her.

"The ways of war in the Middle Ages never cease to fascinate. There is a glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds which appeals to the modern imagination. Because medieval warfare had its colourful side it is easy to overlook the face that war was a very serious business in an age when brute force was the recognised way of settling a quarrel, and conflict formed a normal way of life at every level of society.0This book illustrates the art of war with dozens of medieval images from books and manuscripts, and reveals a wealth of social and military background on heraldry, armour, knights and chivalry, castles, sieges, and the arrival of gunpowder.0This new edition is completely revised with a selection of new illustrations from the British Library''s medieval manuscripts."--Dust jacket.

In 1941, the four Loney children, orphaned and alone in a small Saskatchewan prairie town, manage to pull themselves up and survive under the watchful eye of a pair of ghosts.

A powerful first collection of poems which bear witness to difficult lives in Latin America, in the mining towns of the USA, in prairie families ruined by hardship and losses and incest. Pamela Porter''s poetry has both gravitas and grace, it speaks about important matters beyond the personal and domestic concerns of the writer herself, yet many of the poems fall within the personal narrative tradition. These poems are earthy and metaphysical, personal and universal, geographically and historically diverse. The details are beautifully, often hauntingly, realized. Porter keeps her own sense of outrage in check, creating startling and invasive images and refusing to trespass by bludgeoning or imposing a response on the reader. There''s an undercurrent of hope, of confidence in individuals'' capacity to survive and make meaningful lives in the wake of tragedy. We come to the end of the book disturbed, deeply stirred, but not devastated.

Poetry. In this breathtaking collection of poems, Pamela Porter invokes the twin mysteries of love and loss to illumine the heart burdened by grief, yet comforted and renewed by the beauty of the natural world. In the long poem "Atonement," Porter takes us into a human drama, rich with astonishments: "There was no snow, but you could say the snow buries everything, and you''d be right." In simple language at once lyrical and powerful, these poems are a meditation on vulnerability--"how fragile we are, a word shatters us"--on nature, where plum blossoms are "kissed eyelids, moths, / the night''s numberless secrets, / little messengers that whisper, release," and on the heart''s ability to mend, even under the most difficult circumstances. To love deeply, to grieve and, ultimately, to praise, carries us into the country of possibility, where we "begin again / to name each thing; Say water. Say breath. / Say empty. Say heart," and ultimately, arrive, changed and blinking in the light.

Eleven-year-old Georgia lives with her grandparents, Paw Paw and Gramma, on the edge of the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Spring comes, and it rains and rains until one afternoon the creek behind their house suddenly becomes a wall of water, washing away everything the family owns -- their house, their barn, and even Daisy, the only stuffed animal Georgia has ever had. Through sheer determination, Georgia and her grandparents gradually rebuild their lives, but it''s not until Georgia finds Sky -- a foal that somehow survived the flood -- that the family begins to heal and find meaning again despite their losses. Based on the true story of Georgia Salois and written in the haunting voice of a young child, "Sky" vividly describes the historic flood of 1964 and its effect on Georgia and her people. Their courage in overcoming disaster, poverty, and discrimination provides young readers with a compelling portrayal of endurance.

Shortlisted for the Sheila A. Egoff Children''s Literature Prize In a small prairie town like Argue, Saskatchewan, everyone knows everybody else''s business. Everyone knows that the Lonely family has been barely hanging on - the father, George, reduced to drink and despair since the loss of his farm and the death of his wife, Margaret. That the four Loney children do not get along with George''s second wife, the pious, bitter Effie. Then George dies in a drunken stupor - locked out, it seems, by Effie to freeze to death on his own doorstep. Effie takes off with a traveling Bible salesman, and it looks as though the children are done for. Who''s to save them when everyone is coping with their own problems - the lingering depression and the loss of the town''s young men to the Second World War. Yet somehow the children find a way, under the watchful eye of their ghostly parents and through the small kindnesses of a few neighbors, but mostly by dint of their own determination and ingenuity. This is an extremely powerful novel about children at risk because of adult hypocrisy, indifference, self - interest and outright immorality, all cloaked in a self - righteous exterior. In the end they redeem their own lives by drawing good people to them and by rising to the occasion themselves. And when they at last are able to leave Argue, they do so together, as a family looking ahead to a future of promise and hope.

It is 1965, and twelve-year-old Emaline lives on a wheat farm in southern Saskatchewan. Her family has fallen apart. When her beloved dog, Prince, chased a hare into the path of the tractor, she chased after him, and her dad accidentally ran over her leg with the discer, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. But perhaps the worst thing from Emaline''s point of view is that in his grief and guilt, her father shot Prince and then left Emaline and her mother on their own. Despite the neighbors'' disapproval, Emaline''s mother hires Angus, a patient from the local mental hospital, to work their fields. Angus is a red-haired giant whom the local kids tease and call the gorilla. Though the small town''s prejudice creates a cloud of suspicion around Angus that nearly results in tragedy, in the end he becomes a force for healing as Emaline comes to terms with her injury and the loss of her father. In the tradition of novels such as Kevin Major''s Ann and Seamus and Karen Hesse''s Out of the Dust, novelist and poet Pamela Porter uses free verse to tell this moving, gritty story that is accessible to a wide range of ages and reading abilities.

It is 1965, and twelve - year - old Emaline lives on a wheat farm in southern Saskatchewan. Her family has fallen apart. When her beloved dog, Prince, chased a hare into the path of the tractor, she chased after him, and her dad accidentally ran over her leg with the discer, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. But perhaps the worst thing from Emaline''s point of view is that in his grief and guilt, her father shot Prince and left Emaline and her mother on their own. Despite the neighbor''s disapproval, Emaline''s mother hires angus, a patient from the local mental hospital, to work their fields. Angus is a red - haired giant whom the local kids tease and call the gorilla. Though the small town''s prejudice creates a cloud of suspicion around Angus that nearly results in tragedy, in the end he becomes a force for healing as Emaline comes to terms with her injury and the loss of her father. Pamela Porter uses free verse to tell this moving, gritty story that is accessible to a wide range of ages and reading abilities.

The ways of war in the Middle Ages never cease to fascinate. There is a glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds which appeals to the modern imagination, while the technical ingenuity of mighty war engines is a source of admiration.

This stunning collection will break your heart and put it back together again, as Pamela Porter unravels a long-held family secret in a moving personal search for redemption, face to face with the question of her own identity. As she says, "It was this way when Rome was burning, / and was not so different / when dark fires flared / outside the walls of Eden." These poems brim with deep longing, remorse, the beauty of the natural world, an abiding thirst for the truth, and finally, acceptance and peace, as when there is "a choir of foxes, out from their hollow / in the early dark, / yipping, yipping and singing, / praising the bright, the unkempt world." Late Moon is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and to the transformative power of language - with Porter writing to rise "above the grief-stricken world/ and sing all night."

Cathedral takes us on a journey -- a very personal journey of Pamela Porter''s own -- to Africa and South America, those corners of the world the news reports rarely seem to cover. Winner of the Governor General''s Award for The Crazy Man, Porter here gives us another book to treasure

Pamela Porter''s poems celebrate a world awaiting discovery. She opens this new collection with a poem entitled "An Offering" in which she brings to the ceremony "poems / for every season - of dreams born, / burning, broken" and, in particular, one that "begins like a perilous grace" to develop as "naked and tender and wanting." Throughout, one hears and sees images that connect both the poet and reader to other dimensions. Always for Porter, there is the moment tentatively coming into being where the mundane is transformed into something totally unexpected and otherworldly. The image can be one that develops from the natural world as in "Branches, Early Spring," where she sees how "the trees'' red sap set the sky on fire." Another poem based in nature is "Naming" in which "small birds life into the sky / holding in their beaks / the words we don''t need to say." Throughout, Porter''s poems celebrate moments when we experience "the beginning of the world again."

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Poetry. Pamela Porter says of this new collection--her fifth with Ronsdale Press--"I knew then what was required--that I must carry the rest of the story." In DEFENDING DARKNESS, starting over is a constant theme as she explores what wisdom can be gained in "waiting on the heart to finish her grieving," and then to move on--across borders, through time, even into eternity. What these poems accomplish is to carry the adversity we all must endure with a kind of singing that is "older than praise, younger than light, cousin to regret, sister to fate," and finally, to declare, "We were instruments of music, every one... we sang for a season." With such singing, even darkness itself can be defended. Pamela Porter has been praised for her deeply redemptive poetry and its deceptively simple style, which has been said to "evoke the poetics of Rilke." Powerful, searing, lyrical, DEFENDING DARKNESS is surely a book to treasure.