Gift suggestions for everyone on your holiday shopping list

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Stuck for ideas of what you should be putting under the tree this Christmas? Why not consider a book or CD? For the music lover on your list, why not pick up Hometown, the latest CD from Burnt Project 1.

Recipient of the Galaxie Rising Stars Award at this year's Canadian Aboriginal Music Award, this band is definitely one to watch and, more importantly, listen to. Hometown is the follow up to The Avenue, Burnt's very successful first full-length album, which garnered the band much attention, with its energetic mix of genres and influences-jazz, blues, rock, folk and Indigenous.

The members that make up Burnt each bring their own culture and style to the group. The band's music is categorized as world beat, and lives up to that label by taking sounds and instruments from all corners of the globe and incorporating them into their music.

Hometown is available on the Sunshine Records label. For information, go to www.sunshinerecords.com.

If you have a young reader in the family and you want to start him or her off with a quality author, then there is no better writer than Thomas King. In Coyote's New Suit, King's second children's book, Coyote brags about his toasty brown suit, but his confidence that it is the finest fur in the forest is shaken by Raven. Coyote "borrows" a bathing bear's impressive skin, then makes off with Porcupine's sporty model. He then gives the hides of Racoon, Beaver and Moose a try. Soon the forest is in an uproar. When all the animals have nothing to wear, it is left to Raven to sort matters out. Coyote's New Suit is a wise and witty tale about the consequences of wanting more than you need.

For the adult reader try Finding My Talk by Agnes Grant.Included in this book about triumph over the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual abuses suffered in residential schools is Mi'kmaq poet Rita Joe's account of how she overcame obstacles to become a strong and independent member of society. The women's stories in Finding My Talk speak of the resilience of the human spirit and will serve to inspire others. Agnes Grant is the author of No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada, and Our Bit of Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature.