Review of Canaries Among Us

[Katherine Pitula]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Canaries Among Us" by Kayla Taylor.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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I give this book a 4 out of 5.

This is not my typical read. I’m a teacher and I tend to stay away from books about school. I simply do not find them relaxing nor entertaining. You could probably understand or relate to that. Some people read book to educate themselves, and others, like me, to entertain myself. Surprisingly this book was both: entertaining and educating.

It is written in the narrative form from a mother’s perspective. The mother tells the story of her bullied daughter and how she navigated in the system to find justice and peace for her child.
I was often able to relate to the narrator as I am also a mother of an 8-year-old child. Children can be cruel and as a parent we must wear many hats. Sometimes the “mama bear hat” and other times the “tough love hat”. The narrator navigates through many emotions and wears many “hats” and helps us understand her world. She teaches us empathy.

When I started off reading this book, I thought it would be a 5 star. It is beautifully written, and I was quickly immersed by the story. However, it lost one star after I felt it became a narrative essay. I believe the author wanted to prove a point. The education system doesn’t know how to deal with bullying in schools. To do that she had to educate herself on what is bullying and how to deal with it. She tries to prove to the reader that she did her research and that she doesn’t only speak from emotion. Her research findings tend to be more on the informative essay type rather than a narrative memoir. These are the parts I disliked. They could have been shorter, and the narrative memoir style would have been kept.

Finally, as for the writing style. It is accessible to all level readers. The writing flows very well despite a few awkward sentence structures. As they were intended to mimic verbal language.

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Canaries Among Us
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