The Vancouver Stories set consists of two reading books (People in its History and Places in its History) and a book of reading and writing exercises. The two reading books contain, as one student said, “Stories that are interesting and not too difficult to read.” The books are small in size, but the print is large and there are interesting pictures.

People in its History includes stories about Sara McLagan, the first woman publisher of a Canadian daily newspaper, and Dominic Charlie, a hereditary Squamish chief. Places in its History includes stories about how Deadman’s Island got its name and how the Lions Gate Bridge was modeled on a bridge over the River Avon in England. Did you know that Granville Island used to be a huge sandbar which was underwater at high tide!

Feedback from students has been very positive.

“Through these books, I can upgrade my historical knowledge. I found these books quite informative.”

“I liked to read these books. I came to know the history of Vancouver.”

“The book was educational. It had true stories of famous people. It was easy to read. The layout was quite nice. It is a good book for literacy education programs.”

Each story is divided into sections and the workbook has exercises for each section. There is an excellent variety of exercises, and instructors can assign some or all of them, as they are at different levels of difficulty. Each section contains some of: map work, comprehension questions, word use, sentence work, reference work, writing.

Following is one instructor’s account of how she used this set in her class.

“We read the material together in class, did the exercises as a group activity, used the stories to find subjects and verbs and identify sentence types, and used the Internet to research some of the suggested topics like the Gold Rush and the Red Cross. We also did some of the paragraph writing exercises. The series has a good selection of activities and the stories are interesting. The students really looked forward to reading them.”

Reading and Writing Exercises states, “Any part of this publication may be photocopied for classroom and/or tutorial use, provided there are no fees charged.” I feel this set of books is a valuable addition to our list of resources.