Nelly Furtado.

Gregory Bryan is a member of the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

The “Remarkable Canadians” series of books by Weigl Educational Publishers highlights the lives and achievements of famous Canadians in history and the modern day. Two famous modern-day Canadians featured in the series are the popular singers, Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado. In these two books, readers learn of the hard work Lavigne and Furtado invested in their careers when they were young, eventually creating opportunities for themselves to showcase their prodigious talents.

Both Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado are simple, introductory biographies. Each book is likely to pique the interest of young readers but neither book contains a lot of detail. As suggested by the “Remarkable Canadians” series name, the books focus only on the positive parts of the lives of the subjects. There is little depth or complexity to the portrayals of these talented young musicians. We do learn that Nelly Furtado is driven by what she sees as the need to be a good Portuguese role model. Outside of her own family, Furtado apparently did not see Portuguese role models when she was growing up in Canada. I was interested to learn that Lavigne played hockey in a boys’ hockey league when she was young. She also got a big break when she won a contest that enabled her to sing with Shania Twain. These types of anecdotes are interesting but more detail is required.

Each book contains full-colour photographic illustrations. The text is limited and some of the space seems to me to be wasted with unnecessary photographs. For instance, in Avril Lavigne, the space used for the photograph of the Statue of Liberty would have been better used with another photo of Lavigne. Dedicating a page in the same book to explaining what a musician is also seems unnecessary, particularly when the accompanying photograph is not of Lavigne, but of unknown, unidentified children practising music in a basement.

Each book contains a table of contents, a simple timeline, a glossary, and an index. For young readers, the books might serve as an introduction to the biographical genre, but fans of Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado are likely to want more detail and more photographs. Fans are also likely to wish for a tighter focus on their idols, rather than some of the general material dedicated to the explanation of biographical writing.