Let's Call it Canada: Amazing Stories of Canadian Place Names by Susan Hughes, Clive Dobson, and Julie Dobson introduces children to the history, culture, and to a lesser degree, geography of Canada. It does this, though, through place names.

The book opens with the nation's name. Like La Jolla, California, it's a bit of a misnomer. La Jolla, which means something like "hole in the cliff" for all the caves carved by the ocean into the sandstone cliffs, was misunderstood to be La Joya (the jewel). Canada isn't the name of the land as first thought. Nope, Canada (or canata) is the word for a village or a collection of houses.

From there the book goes through the provinces and territories. After that the book goes for the place names in different categories: named for people, animals, weather, and so forth.

As a non-Canadian, I think I would have gotten more out of the book if it included some maps. I know where the major places are but when the book started focusing on smaller areas (towns and villages or minor rivers and lakes), I felt like I should have been reading with Google maps open (or an atlas of Canada).

Despite the lack of maps, it's an interesting and entertaining book. There's a sense of humor to the history that I haven't seen in similar books on United States history or geography. We take ourselves much too seriously down here. ( )

A fun and informative book about the origins of Canadian place names, Let's Call It Canada is a wonderful teaching and learning resource for an upper elementary or middle school, junior high classroom (I know that I would have loved using a book like this when we were doing units on Canadian geography in grades six and seven social studies).

While I did not enjoy the accompanying illustrations all that much, and sometimes wanted a bit more detail, all in all, this book is both informative and entertaining, with a writing style that is quite engaging for a nonfiction book. For further reading and research, there is even a detailed bibliographical section, featuring both books and online resources. Highly recommended (and not only for children, adults will likely find the information presented of interest as well). ( )