Voices on the Bay

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

The adage about not judging a book by its cover certainly applies to
Voices on the Bay, for the excitement suggested by the cover
illustration—in which two seemingly fear-struck preteen boys peer
through tree branches at mist-shrouded

Pacific coast Indians paddling a dugout cedar canoe—is certainly not
found within the book’s plodding plot. Using the cover as a guide,
middle-school readers might expect to encounter historical fiction, or
perhaps even a time fantasy; instead, the book is a contemporary,
quasi-family story featuring 14-year-old Torontonian Dave Jones, who has
been sent to spend a week with his grandparents on B.C.’s Mayne Island
while his parents prepare to move to Chicago.

The plot, such as it is, has its origins in Dave’s Vancouver–Mayne
Island ferry ride, which terminates at Village Bay. Observing that there
is no “village” and informed that Indians once occupied the
location, Dave, his curiosity piqued, decides to find “out about those
people who used to live in Village Bay.” Dave is eventually joined in
his “quest” by local Rick Jones, 16 (no relation). Their
information-gathering activities are insufficient to sustain reader
interest, and parts of the book read like local geography and history
lessons. The characterization of the two mid-teen boys is inconsistent:
their behaviors are frequently puerile, while their speech patterns are
too adult. The only “exciting” incident—the boys’ canoe trip in
the fog to rescue “something”—really does not advance the thin
plot. Not recommended.