In The Traveling Circus, long-suffering Charlie is being dragged on yet another family holiday. This time Charlie, his little brother Max, and his adventure-loving parents are off to Croatia. Since the co-creators of the Charlie and Max travel books are married and parents to two boys in real life, it’s fun to speculate about how autobiographical these stories are, especially when we learn that the mother in these chapter books is prone to sketching everything she sees and the father can’t stop regaling his family with historical details that he alone seems to find interesting.

Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel are to be commended for taking their fictional family to a part of the world that most travellers know very little about. Here we learn about the beauty and richness of this fascinating Mediterranean region. Amidst encounters with fierce old Dalmatian ladies wielding wheel- barrows, death-defying fishing trips, and hairpin turns on goat-strewn mountain passes, Gay and Homel manage to fit in a discussion about what war does to families, communities, and countries. Too bad that Charlie’s first person point-of-view sometimes falls flat, his revelations about the casualties of war and the importance of family sounding less like the thoughts of a pre-teen and more like the opinions of a world-weary adult who has been around the block a few times. Gay’s distinctive illustrations, as seen in the award-winning Stella series of picture books and countless other places, are charming when they appear in colour, but the black and white images included in The Traveling Circus do little to enhance or illuminate the text. While Gay and Homel’s personal relationship is an inspiring example of how married artists can creatively collaborate, The Traveling Circus does little to reveal the true talents of these well-respected members of the Quebec literary community.

In Learning the Ropes, we meet fifteen-year-old Vancouverite Mandy, who has always loved the circus. Despite her father’s misgivings, she plans to be a professional aerialist and rope climber one day. Mandy is finally on the way to realizing her dreams when she is accepted to Montreal Circus Camp. In Montreal, she immediately meets Genevieve, another aerialist, who does tissu, a performance art that involves climbing long strands of brightly coloured Lycra. Although Mandy needs a friend, only one aerialist will ultimately be chosen from the circus campers to attend the prestigious Montreal Circus College. Mandy encounters a wide variety of aspiring circus performers from around the world at circus camp: Hana, an acrobat from Korea; Anastasia, a Russian trapeze artist; and Cécile, a tightrope walker from France, to name a few. The plot is well structured, although some events, such as the visit to a Cirque de la Lune performance, add nothing to the story. With her strong dialogue and consistent narrative voice, Monique Polak succeeds in convincing the reader that a fifteen-year-old really is telling the story. It is an original idea to write about the circus. Most books about the performing arts describe more conventional disciplines such as singing, dancing, and acting. But even if the YA reader is not interested in circus arts or gymnastics, this book is still a guaranteed fun read. mRb