Orphaned Heidi lives with her gruff but caring grandfather on the side of Swiss mountain, where she befriends young Peter the goat-herd. She leads an idyllic life, until she is forced to leave the mountain she has always known to go and live with a sickly girl in the city. Will Heidi ever see her grandfather again? A classic tale of a young girl's coming-of-age, of friendship, and familial love, Heidi has inspired countless dramatic versions, both on TV and in film, including Shirley Temple's fa...
Ten-year-old Cassie lives with her working-class family in 1919 Winnipeg. The Great War and Spanish Influenza have taken their toll, and workers in the city are frustrated with low wages and long hours. When they orchestrate a general strike, Cassie - bright, determined and very bored at school - desperately wants to help. She begins volunteering for the strike committee as a papergirl, distributing the strike bulletin at Portage and Main, and from her corner, she sees the strike take shape. Thr...
Ben and Charity Muldoon are 15-year-old twins who find themselves in the midst of politically charged events in the Saskatchewan River Valley in 1885. One day, as Ben is walking through a ravine, he encounters a Cree boy named Red Eagle, who quickly becomes his friend after a hair-raising rescue. Ben eventually discovers that a confrontation between the North-West Mounted Police and the Natives, led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, is imminent. As events unfold, Ben and Red Eagle witness the s...
Broken Trail, a white boy adopted by the Oneida First Nation and brought up to be a warrior, has seen much injustice done to his adoptive people and even more suffered by the Black slaves who spend their lives in bondage. The year is 1793, the year in which a new law is passed to gradually end slavery in Upper Canada. The new law is not perfect; it will leave hundreds still in slavery for the rest of their lives. But it is enough to make many slave owners afraid that their investment in slaves w...
A historical middle-grade novel following a plucky thirteen-year-old hired girl in rural 1919 Nova Scotia, exploring grief and love, poverty and privilege, and family in all its forms, from the award-winning author of The Cammie Turple series. Lark Harnish, plucky and chatty and full of hope, is starting a new life. It's 1919 in rural Nova Scotia and at just thirteen years old, she has to leave her mother and siblings to go work at the McMasters house. Her father has died and her family despera...
"It is 1932. Polly, almost ten, and her older sister, Maud, travel by train and boat from Winnipeg to an island between Vancouver and Victoria. There they will live with their grandmother, who will be their guardian. Maud will go to boarding school in Victoria, while Polly will live with her grandmother and attend the small school on the island. Their grandmother and other family members welcome the girls warmly; new-school jitters give way to new friendships and even a new puppy; and slowly Pol...
Shortlisted for the 2005 Young Adult Canadian Book Award Susanna's Quill is a work of historical fiction based on the life of Susanna Moodie, writer and pioneer, by award-winning author Julie Johnston. The story takes us into Susanna’s genteel English childhood, through her humorous teenage attempts at writing, growing to her burgeoning independence, marriage to Dunbar Moodie, and their decision to emigrate from England. To the Moodies, Canada was the answer to their prayers. They would have th...
Margaret Thompson offers a powerfully moving and historically accurate account of life in Fort St. James, in northern British Columbia, in the 1820s. Through the character of Peter, a young boy who is orphaned at the Fort, Thompson presents a vivid picture of the difficult life for both the fur traders and the Natives in what was then called the "Siberia" of the fur trade. Lonely and unsure of himself, Peter finds himself an eyewitness to a murder which threatens to destroy the good relations be...
Pisim Finds Her Miskanow (The Six Seasons of the Asiniskow Ithiniwak)
by William Dumas
Siuluk is a very strong man. He’s so strong that people tell him he must be the last of the Tuniit, friendly giants who once lived in the North. Just like those giants, Siuluk is so strong that he can carry an entire walrus over his shoulder.But not everyone believes that Siuluk is strong. One day, when a group of men tease Siuluk about his size, he has to find a way to prove his strength once and for all—but how?Based on traditional stories from the Chesterfield Inlet area of the Kivalliq regio...
When a young boy and his mother and sister come to a refugee camp to escape the war in Afghanistan, he finds some comfort in the beauty of the carpets he is learning to weave.
The Red Sash is the story of a young Metis boy who lives near the fur trading post of Fort William, on Lake Superior, nearly 200 years ago. The Red Sash is the story of a young Metis boy who lives near the fur trading post of Fort William, on Lake Superior, nearly 200 years ago. His father spends the long winter months as a guide, leading voyageurs into the northwest to trade with the Indigenous Peoples for furs. Now it is Rendezvous, when the voyageurs paddle back to Fort William with their pac...
Thirteen - year - old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends, and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. Naturally, she spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which just happens to border her backyard. And that backyard just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past: there's the dead United Empire Loyalist! The dead escaped slave who made her way north via the Underground Railroad! The dead quintuplet! Soon, Octobe...
With Daddy away fighting in the Second World War, Hattie, Junior and Momma have had to move to the city so Momma can take a factory job. Money is tight, and this year a Christmas tree is a luxury the family cannot afford. But Junior finds an abandoned plant in the hallway, and in his eyes, it holds the promise of Christmas magic. If he can only convince Hattie, maybe they can have a tree after all! Marilyn Helmer's tender story and Dianne Eastman's richly detailed photocollage art bring this Ch...
When Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables, with its shower of apple blossoms and fields of buttercups, she hopes it will be the place she can call home. It's everything she's ever dreamed of! So when Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert tell her they were expecting a boy orphan -- someone strong enough to help around their farm -- Anne despairs. Is it her flaming red hair they don't like? Or her matching temper? Or her nonstop chatter? If only they'd give her a chance to mend her ways. But spunky Anne h...
If This Is Freedom continues the story of struggle for Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. In the black settlement of Birchtown, times are especially hard for the former slaves. They face the difficulties of a hardscrabble existence and continued discrimination from their white counterparts. Like many desperate Birchtowners, Sarah Redmond has signed an indenture agreement, a work contract meant to protect her rights and ensure a living wage. Sarah’s employers,...
Crazy for Gold (Canadian Flyer Adventures (Hardcover), #3)
by Frieda Wishinsky
When the War of 1812 breaks out between the British in Canada and the United States, eighteen-year-old Billy Green is an expert woodsman with romantic ideas of combat. Struggling with his father's ideals and with his attraction to Sarah, the daughterof an American sympathizer, Billy soon finds himself faced with a series of fateful decisions.Then on June 5, 1813, he spots the massive American forces camped in the tiny hamlet of Stoney Creek. Against all odds, the young man rides three hours in t...