As playgrounds are for kids, so is the cityscape for parkour enthusiasts, otherwise known as traceurs.   Play is theme of this month’s issue of PaperTigers and so I have selected a young adult book that explores the world of parkour.  In parkour, one aims to get to a destination by negotiating with the physical objects of a place by jumping, leaping, running, or doing whatever necessary to clear the ‘obstacle,’ so to speak.   Parkour has become very popular and there are many videos of it to be seen on YouTube.   It is really a way to ‘play’ the city like a child would in a playground.

Anita Daher‘s Two Foot Punch (Orca, 2007) has as its heroine, a young fifteen year old traceuse (a female parkour athlete), named Nikki, who has moved to Winnipeg, Canada from Toronto.  She leaves behind a tragic past — the death of her parents — an incident which involved her eighteen year old brother, Derek, also a traceur.   While adjusting to life in a new city with her brother and their new guardian, their Aunt Sylvia who is a judge in the criminal court system, Nikki begins to explore Winnipeg’s colorful downtown district known as The Exchange through parkour.  She makes a friend, Rain, who joins her, and the two of them unwittingly stumble onto an illegal operation taking place in the many empty warehouse spaces of the district.  Nikki’s brother, Derek, is unfortunately involved, and Nikki must take action in order to save him.

Do you have parkour enthusiasts in your city?  Have you noticed young people jumping, leaping, running across and over and up buildings, bike racks, walls in certain parts of town?  It could be a parkour group.  In talking to Anita Daher, I found out that Winnipeg has its own group called Winnipeg Parkour who meet regularly in a downtown location called the Oodena Celebration Circle at the Forks (where the two rivers of the city,  the Assiniboine and the Red, intersect.)  I’ve yet to see them in action, but now with summer on us, I’m sure I’ll catch a glimpse of them sometime soon!   In the meantime, check out this brand new illustration of parkour  at the right by Toronto illustrator David Namisato whose book I reviewed for the PaperTigers website.

The PaperTigers’ Book of the Month choice for March is One Peace: True Stories of Young Activists (Orca, 2008), by self-proclaimed “passionate pacifist” Janet Wilson.

The marketing material we received from Orca, along with our review copy of the book, says: “For the future to be better than the past, better than the present, we must equip our children with an understanding of the world around them and encourage faith in their ability to bring about change.” The latest issue of PaperTigers heartily echoes their sentiment, and One Peace encapsulates it perfectly: by telling the stories of youth who have taken leadership roles, it inspires young readers to take their own steps toward world peace. Told through art, poetry, quotations, and photographs, the book includes profiles of Farlis Calle, who started Colombia Children’s Movement for Peace; Craig Kielburger, three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with Free The Children, an organization he founded at age 12; Kimmie Weeks, who established Voices of the Future, Liberia’s first child rights advocacy group, and many more.

The idea for the book, which has been included in the 2008 Smithsonian Notable Books for Children list, came during a presentation, when Wilson was asked by a child “why children are taught about war but not peace.” One Peace was, ultimately, her response. But she has more to say about the matter: her plan is to write a series of books about “building a more peaceful and just world under the guidance of our wise children.” Hurray for that!

To read about Janet Wilson’s painting of the activists’ portraits, check here. And for more of her artwork, take a peek at her PaperTigers gallery.