Badir and the Beaver

  Text copyright © 2019 Shannon Stewart

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 Sabrina Gendron

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Stewart, Shannon, 1966–, author

  Badir and the beaver / Shannon Stewart, author; Sabrina Gendron, illustrator.

  (Orca echoes)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1727-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1728-9 (PDF).— ISBN 978-1-4598-1729-6 (EPUB)

  I. Gendron, Sabrina, 1984–, illustrator II. Title.

  PS8587.T4894B33 2019 jC813'.54 C2018-904687-2

  C2018-904688-0

  Simultaneously published in Canada and the United States in 2019

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954098

  Summary: In this illustrated early chapter book, new Canadian Badir confuses the beaver in his neighborhood park for a very large rat.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Sabrina Gendron

  Edited by Liz Kemp

  Author photo by Michael Diner

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  22 21 20 19 • 4 3 2 1

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact digital@orcabook.com.

  http://ivaluecanadianstories.ca/

  With thanks to my generous students at the Conseil scolaire francophone. And special thanks to Kirsten Pendreigh and Faziah Gamaz for their guidance.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  An Excerpt from “Lark Holds the Key”

  Chapter One

  Chapter

  ONE

  “It was a giant rat!” Badir said, spreading his hands wide apart.

  “Rats are not that big,” Nate said. “They’re only this big.” He held his hands closer together to show Badir the size of a rat in Canada.

  “I saw him! He was swimming in the small lake near my home,” insisted Badir.

  “A lake? We live in the city, Badir. There is no lake around here.”

  “A little lake,” Badir tried to explain, spreading his arms out again.

  “Right,” said Nate. “You saw a rat the size of a poodle in a little lake. Now I’ve heard everything!”

  Badir sighed. No one believed him. But the previous night he had seen the rat swimming in the water. He’d been taking a walk with his mother in Hinge Park. His mother had sat on a bench with the twins while Badir explored the paths around the park. There were songbirds in the trees and flowers blooming in the gardens.

  Badir had just walked over a bridge when he heard the rustling of leaves and saw some bushes shaking back and forth. He walked farther along the path, and when he rounded the bend, he saw it.

  A giant rat was swimming in the water with a stick in its mouth! It had dark-brown fur, a little black nose and small ears flattened against the side of its head. The rat was a really good swimmer. Badir ran back to get his mother.

  “I don’t see it, Badir,” she said, after she followed him over the bridge. They looked and looked, but the rat had disappeared.

  “It was huge!” Badir said.

  “I’m sure it was,” she said.

  After recess there was math. Badir was good with numbers.

  “Numbers are so easy!” Badir said.

  Marlene sighed. “You shouldn’t brag.”

  “Brag? What does brag mean?” asked Badir.

  “When you’re good at something and you let everyone know about it,” Marlene said, rolling her eyes.

  “But I am good at numbers!” said Badir. He took out his pencil and started writing down the answers to the addition problems. “My brain is like a calculator. I can add these numbers in my head.”

  Mr. George, the teacher, stood beside Badir and watched him write down his answers.

  “You are very good with numbers,” he said, putting check marks beside all of Badir’s answers.

  “See?” Badir said, looking over at Marlene. “I’m not bragging.”

  Mr. George laughed.

  Nate put his hand in the air.

  “Yes, Nate?” Mr. George said.

  “I think Badir likes to exaggerate things.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mr. George.

  “He said he saw a rat that was this big!” Nate spread his arms wide. Some of the other children in the class giggled.

  “No! said Badir. “It was this big!” He held his hands out so Mr. George could see exactly how big the rat was.

  “Really?” said Mr. George, smiling.

  “It was swimming across the lake in the park.”

  “Do you mean Hinge Park?” said Mr. George. “It’s a pond, not a lake, Badir. But I’ve seen rats there too. And squirrels and raccoons.”

  “See!” said Badir, jumping up in his seat. “Mr. George sees rats too!”

  “Well, not ones that big,” said Mr. George. “But I guess I’ll have to keep my eyes open! Maybe you saw a dog swimming?”

  “NO!” yelled Badir. “It was a rat!”

  “Okay, okay,” said Mr. George. “Let us know if you see it again.”

  After school Badir waited for his brother, Anis, to walk him home. Anis was in high school, and he was often tired and grumpy when he met Badir. Anis found it difficult to study in English all day long.

  The boys walked by a travel agency on Main Street. Anis stopped. In the window there was a travel poster showing palm trees, clear blue water, a sandy beach and a white hotel. There were children playing on the sand.

  “I miss home,” said Anis, looking at the poster. Badir knew Anis also missed his friends. They used to spend every afternoon after school playing soccer in the fields near their home in Tunisia.

  “We may have had beautiful, warm seas at home,” said Badir, “but we didn’t have giant rats who are very good swimmers!”

  Anis looked at his little brother. “Enough about the huge rat, Badir! No one believes you!”

  Badir smiled.

  “One day you will believe me,” he said. “I saw what I saw.”

  Chapter

  TWO

  When Badir and Anis came home, there were chores to do. Then Badir played with the twins while his mother rested in the bedroom. Anis sat at the kitchen table, doing his homework.

  Badir unlocked the baby gate that kept the twins out of the kitchen. He t
ook some tins of beans out of a cupboard.

  He built a tower of beans in the living room.

  The twins knocked it down.

  He lined up the tins on the floor.

  The twins drummed on them with wooden spoons.

  He rolled the tins toward each twin, bumping their feet.

  The twins squealed with joy when the beans knocked their toes.

  Badir’s mother woke up from her nap. Anis frowned as he tried to study his English.

  “No more beans,” Badir told the twins. “You’re too noisy.”

  “Salaam!” said their father, unlocking the front door. He held grocery bags in his arms. The boys helped him unload the lettuce, tomatoes, lentils and milk in the kitchen.

  Badir knew his brother was very hungry. Anis was watching his mother as she started to make dinner.

  It was Ramadan, and Badir’s family was fasting for the month. They could not eat any food from sunrise to sundown. Badir was too young to fast for the whole day, but he still had to remember not to lose his temper or say angry words. Ramadan was a time for good deeds, a time when it was especially important to be kind and help others.

  The twins started to cry, pointing to the cans of beans.

  “Take the twins for a walk,” said his mother. “We will eat and pray when the sun goes down.”

  Badir and Anis buckled the twins into their double stroller.

  “Let’s go to the park,” said Badir. “Maybe we’ll see the giant rat.”

  Badir pushed the Down button on the elevator. When it stopped and the doors opened, there was a girl with spiky black hair inside. She wore a baggy gray T-shirt that hung down to her knees. Someone had written Too Tired, Don’t Talk to Me across the front of the shirt with a black felt-tip pen. Beside the girl was a large, hairy dog.

  “Salaam!” said Badir.

  The girl just looked at him.

  “Salaam means ‘hello,’” Badir said.

  “Oh,” said the girl.

  “What is your dog’s name?”

  “Oscar,” said the girl, giving the leather leash a little tug.

  “I’m Badir, and this is my brother Anis.”

  The girl ignored him. Anis watched the numbers light up above the elevator door.

  When the doors opened, the girl turned around. “You’re new here, right?” she asked Badir.

  “Yes.”

  “I can tell,” she said, pulling her dog’s leash and walking away.

  “Do you have to talk to everyone you meet?” asked Anis.

  “I just wanted to be friendly,” said Badir.

  “I’ve seen that girl in my high school. Not everyone is as friendly as you.”

  When they arrived at the park, Badir rushed ahead to the pond. But there was no rat in the water. Anis pushed the stroller across the bridge and stood beside Badir.

  “It’s almost sunset,” said Anis. “Forget about the rat.” He unbelted one of the twins and began to rock him in his arms.

  “Look!” Badir cried, pointing to the shore. Some of the bushes were shaking back and forth. “Over there!”

  Chapter

  THREE

  Anis’s eyes opened wide. A large animal was waddling out of the bushes, a small branch in its mouth. It walked into the water and floated into the middle of the pond.

  “I told you it was a rat!” said Badir. “The biggest rat in the world!”

  “That’s not a rat!” said a woman in a bright-red jacket who had stopped to look over the railing with the boys.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. She plucked out a nickel and gave it to Badir.

  “This is a beaver,” she said, tapping the image on the silver coin. “And so is that.” She pointed to the animal in the pond.

  Badir looked at the coin in the palm of his hand. Then he studied the rat, which had the same strange wide tail shaped like a short paddle.

  “They are the same!” He smiled at the woman. “We don’t have this kind of animal in Tunisia, where I used to live.”

  “Then you probably didn’t have beaver lodges either.” The woman laughed and pointed across the pond. A large dome made out of branches rose from the shore.

  “That beaver is quite the builder, isn’t he?” she said. “He wove all those branches together with mud. He sleeps there during the day and comes out to find food at dusk.”

  “This beaver eats his meals after sunset, just like us during Ramadan!” Badir said.

  The woman chuckled and walked away. She called over her shoulder, “Welcome to Canada! That beaver is our national symbol!”

  Badir and Anis admired the beaver lodge. It was a fine home. Badir was amazed the beaver could make such a sturdy home out of sticks and mud.

  “Look, Badir!” said Anis.

  The beaver had climbed to the edge of the pond and was nibbling on a branch. He held it carefully between his front feet and used them skillfully, like two small hands.

  “We had better hurry home,” said Anis, looking at the sky.

  As they pushed the twins home, they saw the girl from the elevator walking along the street with her dog. She scowled and crossed to the other side when she saw them.

  “What did we do to her?” asked Badir.

  “Some people are better off left alone,” said Anis.

  Chapter

  FOUR

  In the living room of their apartment, Badir and his family listened to the sound of the prayer call on their wall clock. Then they each drank a glass of milk and ate some sweet dates to break their fast before praying. After prayers they sat down to eat iftar, the meal at the end of the day. Tonight Badir’s mother had made delicious lentil soup, tajine stew and salad.

  Badir’s father looked tired. He worked at a car-detailing shop where he spent all day vacuuming people’s cars and washing them inside and out. He had owned a grocery store in Tunisia. Badir and Anis had always stopped in for a samosa on their way home from school. His father knew most of his customers by name and often asked them about their families and their work. At the car-detailing shop, he knew no one.

  Badir watched his family sip their lentil soup slowly. He had eaten lunch at school, but this soup was the first food Anis and his parents had eaten since sunrise. They had not even had a sip of water during the day.

  “You must be so hungry,” said Badir.

  His father nodded. “It takes discipline to eat slowly when we are fasting all day long. But then, many people in this world go hungry every day. And they don’t have an iftar dinner. We are lucky, Badir. Remember that.”

  Badir took the nickel out of his pocket. He explained how he and Anis had seen the giant rat and that it was really a beaver.

  “This is the national symbol of Canada?” said his father, looking at the beaver on the coin. “I wonder why.”

  Before Badir went to bed, he sat at the computer to write an email to his teacher.

  Deer Mr. George,

  This is Badir. You told me to tell you if I saw rat again and I did. But it is not rat. It is a beaver who eats at night. Just like my family at Ramadan. Now you can beleeve me.

  Good nite.

  Chapter

  FIVE

  Very early the next morning, before the sun had climbed into the sky, Badir’s family got up to make suhoor, the breakfast meal for Ramadan. On the table they placed eggs, cheese, fruit, pita bread and fattoush, a salad made of vegetables.

  Badir’s family ate well. Their suhoor would be the last food they would enjoy before iftar, the evening meal, many hours later. After breakfast Badir and Anis went to mosque with their father to recite their dawn prayers. Afterward, Anis walked Badir to school through streets busy with morning traffic.

  At school, Mr. George smiled when he saw Badir. “Would you like to tell the class about your news?” he asked.

  Badir nodded and cleared his throat. “I did not see a rat in the park. Instead, I saw a beaver. Which is also on this coin.”

  He held his nickel up
for the class to see. “My beaver lives in a lodge, and he eats at night, just like my family during Ramadan.”

  Badir looked over at Nate.

  “And he is this big,” said Badir, spreading his hands out. “I did not exaggerate.”

  “Thank you, Badir,” said Mr. George. “I’m surprised to hear there’s a beaver in Hinge Park, right in the middle of the city! But then again, beavers lived in our streams and ponds before there were even cities.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Nate.

  “They were hunted almost into extinction,” said Mr. George.

  “Why would anyone hunt a beaver?” Marlene asked.

  “For their pelts,” explained Mr. George. “Hundreds of years ago, Europeans wanted to wear coats and hats made from beaver fur. The underfur is very soft and waterproof. So beavers were hunted until there weren’t very many left.”

  “That’s a lot of fur hats!” Badir exclaimed.

  “Yes!” Mr. George said, laughing. “But as the fur trade grew, so did Canada. Our early woodsmen canoed and portaged farther and farther inland to find more beavers. So the fur trade helped create our country. That’s why the beaver is our national symbol.”

  “Will anyone try to hunt my beaver in the park?” Badir was worried.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mr. George. “The city doesn’t allow hunting.”

  Badir thought of the beaver in his pond in the middle of the city. Did he have enough food to eat? Was he safe inside his lodge? Badir knew what it was like to make a new home in a strange place.

  “Don’t worry about your beaver,” said Mr. George. “Beavers are smart. They build lodges, cut down trees and create canals and dams, and they eat all kinds of bark and plants. Your city beaver knows how to look after himself.”

  “What if he’s lonely?” asked Badir.