In a few short days, Vancouver will host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.  What better time than this to highlight a book on one of the city’s most well known landmarks — Stanley Park.  Warabe Aska’s Who Hides in the Park is a multilingual book about Vancouver’s municipal gem — a four hundred hectare urban park located on an almost island-like peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean.   The book explores the mysteries of the park in four different languages: English, French, Japanese and Chinese.

Aska, whose books I’ve posted on before, loves to play with hidden images.  Each page presents a familiar picture of the park while at the same time, containing images of hidden animals, people and spirits.  It’s always fun reading an Aska book with a child because of the pleasure one gets in finding the hidden creatures!   For example, a leafy shrub scene portraying a peacock in the front reveals multiple ‘hidden’ peacocks in the the shrubs that have leaves for feathers.  A forest path scene with frolicking children has embedded within it rabbits and squirrels and even two police officers on horses.

While the image is presented on the right hand page, the left hand page contains the text in the four different scripts of each language.  The text is easy to read and follow, and makes for a good study of languages relevant to Canadians, especially those living on the West Coast.   At the back of the book is a delightful map of the park and a list of facts about it.  This is a good book to take along to the park or buy as a souvenir of a visit to one of Canada’s most delightful, natural urban treasures.

Canadian Children’s Book Week, the single most important national event celebrating Canadian children’s books and the importance of reading, kicks off tomorrow. The official theme for Book Week 2009, Gold Medal Reading!, will celebrate sports in preparation for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games which will be held in Vancouver, BC.  The Book Week tour will have twenty-nine  authors, illustrators and storytellers visiting schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres in every province and territory across the country. Over 35,000 children, teens and adults will take part in the readings and workshops given by the Book Week tour participants.