FernFolio

His family’s recent move to a new city hasn’t been a happy one for Tristan Burberry.  It has meant a new house, a new school, and new friends.  Expect he has made any friends, unless you count Burt Lump, school bully and Tristan’s seat mate on the school bus, whose favourite words are, “I didn’t do it.”
Lured into moving with the promise of visits to the local zoo, Tristan soon discovers his parents are too busy settling into their new jobs to take him anywhere. In fact, they’re working late every day, and that includes Saturday and Sunday.  By the time they get home, Tristan has gone to bed, so the only time he sees them are the few minutes between the time they run downstairs for toast and coffee and when they run out the door on their way to work.
His older sister Bella lives to go to the mall with her new friends Sarah and Boink.  On weekends, when his parents aren’t at home, she’s expected to take him with her. Bella has made it clear that Tristan has to walk ten steps behind her and her friends, and not do anything that might embarrass them.  Other than pausing to microwave the odd frozen dinner for him or take the TV remote away so she can turn to her channel, she doesn’t have time for her younger brother.
Burt Lump, the school bully, isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but has a canny understanding of what’s really important.  Burt decides to deputize Blueberry, as he calls Tristan.  “You’re going to help me because if you don’t your going to get it.  Got it?”
Burt’s idea is that they’ll change all the school clocks to read three-thirty so the teachers will dismiss their students early.  Tristan’s assigned the job of stealing watches from those teachers who wear them so that they won’t be able to derail Burt’s plan.
Tristan tries to tell his parents that he’s having trouble with Burt Lump, but they only hear the words they want to.
“I’ve decided to become a bully,” Tristan said.
“Hmm,” his father said, still staring at the paper.  “Good luck, sport.”
“I’ll probably beat up a few kids this morning.  Take their lunch money.  Maybe throw their hats onto the school roof.”
“That’s great, dear,” his mother said, punching in another number on her phone.  “I knew you’d fit in.
So he starts to make stuff up, outrageous stuff, but it gets no more reaction than his very real problems.
“Why not steal the teacher’s car?  I’ll steal it and then drive to Mexico.”
“Love Mexico!” his mother said, checking for messages on her phone.
“Maybe get a job as a bandito.”
“Hmm,” his father said.
“Rob some trains.  Live the crazy life of El Bandito.”
“Gotta dash,” his mother and father said at the same time and they were suddenly gone.
Sitting behind a carefully repositioned trash can next to the sinks in the women’s washroom after having reached up and plucked his teacher’s wristwatch from the side of the sink while she washed her hands, Tristan realizes that Burt Lump isn’t the problem.  His parents and Bella aren’t the problem.  Time is his problem.  He either has too much of it or not enough.  Something explodes inside of him and he yells, I HATE TIME!  I WISH IT WAS DEAD!  I WANT IT TO END NOW.  RIGHT…. NOW!”

Walking by the school at that precise instant is a tall, stooped man whom you might mistaken for a handyman of some sort.  He is, in fact, the Time Keeper and he has been turning out time, those large hours for reading long books, the medium minutes for standing in front of the class not knowing the answer, and the short seconds when you wonder where the time has gone, since forever.
Lately, he has been hearing a lot of complaints about time, that there isn’t enough of it, or it drags on forever, and has wondered if anyone appreciates his work.  When he hears Tristan’s shout, he goes home to the barn where he keeps his time-making machine and turns it off.
At first, people notice a strange absence, like a feeling of lethargy or a silence after an accustomed noise.  Tristan’s teacher suddenly loses her focus and, when Burt points out that the clock says three-thirty, she dismisses the class.  On his way home, Tristan notices traffic jams, odd gaps in the regular bus service, and people looking a little dazed.
Rather than running out the door for work the next morning, his parents hover in the kitchen, uncertain whether they are late for work or very early.  Students don’t arrive for school, teachers are missing, and experts are admitting to TV analysts that they have no idea what’s happened to time.  The only thing those experts seem sure of it that time has only stopped for humans.  Animals seem unaffected by the crisis.
Worried that he has somehow caused the mess, Tristan decides to go out and bring back time.  He starts by going to the zoo by bus, hoping to learn something from the animals.  He finds nothing there that helps to explain the mystery, but Bella, who has returned home from the mall because the stores have forgotten to open, realizes that her brother is missing and sets out to find him.
By the time they find each other, the buses have stopped running altogether and Tristan and Bella are stranded at the zoo.  They start walking home but get lost, and take shelter for the night in a large barn.  It is not until the next morning that they realize that barn houses the biggest machine they’ve ever seen, the very machine the Time Keeper uses to make time.  When the Time Keeper’s assistant tells Tristan that his boss has quit, the boy knows he has to find and persuade him to start keeping time again.  Unfortunately, the Time Keeper has been kidnapped by the Time Bandits, a gang of thugs led by a nasty piece of work who calls himself the Thief of Time and who plans to sell time to those who can afford it.
Written by the wonderful Don Gillmor, author of such classic Canadian picture storybooks as Yuck, a Love Story, The Time Time Stopped is a tale about a boy whose frustration with parents who don’t have time to listen leads to the stopping of time itself, and his efforts to get it started again.  Told with Gillmor’s signature humour and sense of the absurd, this book also has some very wise things to say about time and humans’ attitudes towards it.  A splendid book for readers from Grade 4!
FernFolio Editor

Cal lives with his family high up in the Appalachian Mountains and helps his Pap with ploughing and the sheep.  His younger sister, Lark, spends every spare minute with her nose in a book, something Cal can’t understand.  When a woman rides up the mountain with a passel of books, Cal watches resentfully as Pap offers her a poke of berries in exchange for some of them.  Both of them are surprised when the woman tells them that the books are free and she’ll come back in two weeks to swap them for more.  As that Book Woman makes her way through rain and cold and snow to deliver those books, Cal’s admiration for her grows as does his curiosity about books and reading.  Finally he asks his young sister to teach him what the words say and over the course of a winter learns to read and enjoy books.  In the spring, Mama offers the Book Woman the recipe for her berry pie, the only precious thing she possesses, “for all [her] trouble and for making two readers outta one,” and, wanting to give a gift of her own, Cal reads for her, something the Book Woman declares is “gift enough.”
Written by Heather Henson and illustrated by David Small, That Book Woman tells the story of the Kentucky pack horse librarians, who brought the joy of books and reading to people living in the Appalachian mountains from 1935 to 1943.  A wonderful book for readers from age 5!

FernFolio Editor

One evening a group of bats out swooping in the dark notices that one of the windows at the library has been left open.  It’s bat night at the library, and in they fly to lose themselves among the books and study food guides and discuss the best books they’ve ever read.  The small bats, who don’t know about books, play shadow games and fly wingtip to wingtip across the room and photocopy themselves until, exhausted from their play, they settle in to listen to a story.  One small bat, so young that he wears yellow water wings, imagines himself the hero of every thrilling adventure.  Suddenly the bats notice that the sky is growing pale and it is time to leave, but they hope the librarian will soon give them the chance again to share the world of books.
Written and illustrated by Brian Lies, Bats at the Library is the story of a colony of bats who delight in reading and whose favourite night out is one spent at the library.  Written in rhyming couplets and illustrated by Lies’ imaginative pictures, this charming and humorous book is certain to appeal to readers from age 5!
FernFolio Editor

Modo, young agent for the Permanent Association, has spent the winter at Safe House in London awaiting instructions from Mr. Socrates.  Left to his books and his studies, he begins to long for companionship.
Mrs. Finchley, his former governess and the closest thing to a mother the young man has ever known, arrives unannounced to prepare Modo for his next assignment.  He will visit Bedlam, a lunatic asylum, in the guise of a medical doctor, and interview Prisoner 376.  Modo possesses the ability to physically alter his face and body for hours at a time.  When not wearing the features of another, the young agent covers his face with a cloth mask for, in his natural form, Modo is hideously ugly.
The young agent finds the man, a certain Mr. King, lying shrouded under a sheet.  When Modo questions him, the man responds, “I have no face. I have no ears. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. No tongue. No brain. No thought. No me.”  He then utters words that might be a series of instructions or directions.  Those words have no meaning for Modo, but he will have reason to recall them later.
Meanwhile, Octavia Milkweed, also an agent of the Permanent Association, is observing the mourners at Dr. Livingstone’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.  She waits, as instructed, for Mr. Socrates’ operative to approach her.  That agent is an Australian who hands her a map before being suddenly attacked and killed by a mechanical falcon.  Aware that the mechanical bird signifies the presence of the infamous Clockwork Guild, Octavia tears a cross from the wall and defends herself against a second falcon attack.  She manages to escape from the Abbey and into a waiting cab.  Soon she has arrived at Victor House, home to Mr. Socrates.
His interview with Mr. King concluded, Modo reports his findings to Mr. Socrates as the two return to Victor House.  There he is secretly delighted to find Octavia, whom he has missed during the months since their last assignment together.  Introduced to Octavia in his guise as the doctor, Modo briefly manages to fool his fellow agent, but regrets Mr. Socrates’ deception when she reacts with evident anger and hurt.
With Mr. Socrates, Tharpa, Mr. Socrates’ Indian servant and Modo’s martial arts instructor, Mrs. Finchley and Octavia, Modo boards the RMS Rome bound for Sydney, Australia.  During the voyage he will be known as Anthony Reid, son to Robert Reid.  Modo takes quiet pleasure in calling Mr. Socrates Father, and in his renewed acting lessons with Mrs. Finchley.  He even enjoys watching Octavia from a distance while she flirts with young gentlemen passengers, though he regrets their estrangement.
Once they are aboard ship, Mr. Socrates informs Modo and Octavia and the others that Alexander King, whom Modo interviewed in Bedlam, was an adventurer who followed a stolen map, the same procured by Octavia in Westminster Abbey, in search of an ancient artifact, only to stumble back out of the Australian rainforest raving mad.  The Permanent Association believes that map leads to a temple built by ancient Egyptian explorers who enshrined in it the God Face which is able induce madness, and could be used as a powerful weapon, one it wishes to procure on behalf of the British government.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Socrates and his agents, they are being observed by an agent of the Clockwork Guild.  Something about the agent’s behaviour strikes Modo as odd, and he follows the man, almost losing his life to one of the Clockwork Guild’s poisoned mechanical falcons before Octavia comes to his rescue.  The Guild agent escapes with his falcons through a porthole into the sea.
Upon their arrival in Australia, Mr. Socrates introduces his fellow agents to Lizzie Tompsitt, part aboriginal and a skilled balloonist, who will sail them aboard a hot air balloon, christened the Prince Albert, to Queensland and the proported site of the ancient temple.
The Prince Albert is attacked by Miss Hakkandottir of the mechanical hand, one of the Clockwork Guild’s most infamous, and dangerous, agents, against whom Modo and Octavia have battled wits and narrowly won twice before.  From the Prometheus, her armoured balloon, Hakkandottir demands that Mr. Socrates prepare his vessel to be boarded by her soldiers, and, faced with overwhelming odds, the Permanent Association’s chief agent agrees.
Unable to contemplate the idea of surrender, Modo grabs one of the ropes attached to a Guild soldier’s grappling hook and, determined to safe his friends, swings himself aboard the Prometheus where does his best to wreak havoc before being attacked by Miss Hakkandottir and falling to his certain death in the rain forest below.
Only Modo doesn’t die.  Instead, he is found and pursued by warriors of the Rain People, who seem intent upon killing him until his mask falls off and they look upon his face.  To his shock, the warriors fall to their knees in reverence.  He meets Nulu, the young granddaughter of their chief, who gazes at his face and smiles, who takes his hand and leads him to her village where he is greeted like a god.  He eats with the Rain People, is touched by their care for one another, and moved to tears by their acceptance of his terrible physical deformities.
Aware that they would help to balance the odds, Modo briefly contemplates asking the Rain People’s warriors to accompany him to the site of the ancient temple but demurs after considering the cost to the tribe if they were to be killed.  Alone, he follows his compass through the rainforest toward the temple and, he hopes, a rendezvous with Mr. Socrates and the others.
Badly damaged by the Clockwork Guild’s attack, the Prince Albert plummets to the ground where the agents of the Permanent Association hides in the forest undergrowth.  Mr. Socrates, Tharpa, Lizzie and Octavia begin their journey toward the temple, hopeful that they will find Modo there.  After a difficult trek, Mr. Socrates’ party reaches their destination, only to find that Miss Hakkandottir has arrived before them and has blasted her way into the temple.
Though the site is patrolled by soldiers of the Clockwork Guild, Mr. Socrates announces to his agents that they will sneak into the temple at night however Modo arrives and suggests another plan.  Recalling the mad Mr. King’s ravings, he realizes that there must be a second hidden entrance to the temple.  As he stands watch during the night before their attempt to enter the temple, Octavia comes to ask Modo to show her his true face.  Though he dreads her reaction, the young man is weary of pretence and deception and removes his mask.  She is repulsed by her friend’s features but, seeing the fear in his eyes, steals herself not to recoil in horror.  Lizzie, come to speak to them both, also catches a glimpse of what lies beneath Modo’s mask.
The following day the agents make their way around to the other side of the mountain out of which the temple is carved, and soon find themselves negotiating a series of ancient and ingenious traps designed to impede unwary grave robbers, for tomb is what the temple is.  The agents finally reach the burial chamber where they find a gold-plated sarcophagus and a large statue of a seated Egyptian king.  What takes Modo’s breath away is the face that king wears; it is his own face.
Discovered by Miss Hakkandottir, Guild soldiers and the falconer with his mechanical falcons, Mr. Socrates orders Modo to climb the statue and remove the God Face.  Holding it aloft in front of him, Modo approaches the agents of the Clockwork Guild and watches, shocked, as, one after another, they turn and run in horror.  It seems  at first that the Permanent Association has secured the God Face but something occurs to take the ancient artifact from its agents, an event that leaves Mr. Socrates coldly furious, and Modo confused and sad.  The young agent returns to London uncertain about his future with the organization that has owned his allegiance since Mr. Socrates rescued him from a freak show when he was just a toddler.
Written by Arthur Slade, Empire of Ruins is the story of Modo, Octavia and Mr. Socrates’ quest to find a powerful artifact hidden in the rainforest of Queensland, Australia, by ancient Egyptian explorers, and their ongoing fight against the evil Clockwork Guild, who also hopes to procure the artifact.  It is also chronicles a new stage in Modo’s journey toward self-discovery and -acceptance.  Filled with mystery and excitement, heroism and pathos, this latest adventure in the Hunchback Assignments series will delight readers from Grade 4!
FernFolio Editor

Sixteen-year-old twins Victor and Konrad Frankenstein live a charmed life.  Eldest sons of wealthy, enlightened and doting parents, they reside in their family’s chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva.  Their father, one of four magistrates of the Swiss republic, nevertheless finds the time to educate his sons at home.  Together with their distant cousin, Elizabeth, rescued and adopted by the Frankenstein family, and their good friend and frequent visitor Henry Clerval, they study Greek, Latin, literature, science and politics under their father’s inspired tutelage.   They also take fencing lessons, write and act out plays, spend summer afternoons sailing on the lake, and roam the forests and hills around Geneva.  During rainy days, they explore the chateau’s many rooms secret passages.
The three discover a new secret passage off the library that leads to a staircase and a door with Enter Only with a Friend’s Welcome painted over it.  When Victor thrusts his hand through a small hole in the door, it is grabbed by a mechanical hand on the other side of the door, a hand that won’t let go.  As Victor struggles desperately to free himself, the terrible gouges in the door and the human bones they have found at the bottom of the staircase next to it.  After his brother unravels the riddle over the door, the three pass through the doorway and find a secret chamber filled with books on alchemy.  The trio is discovered there by Alphonse Frankenstein who informs them that the secret chamber is called the Biblioteka Obscura, or Dark Library, which had been created some 300 years earlier by a Frankenstein ancestor, an alchemist, who was obsessed by the turning base metals into gold.  When Victor expresses his wonderment, his father warns him, “This is not knowledge, this is the corruption of knowledge,” and asks that the three young people promise they will never visit the Dark Library again.
In the days after their discovery of the secret chamber, Konrad falls ill with a fever, one that lingers long after he ought to have been restored to good health.  Concerned, Victor studies his father’s books on the human body, hopeful that they will shed light on his brother’s illness.  As Konrad continues to weaken, Victor’s thoughts turn to the Dark Library.  He tells Henry and Elizabeth that they must pay another visit to the secret chamber to look for a possible cure in the books housed there.  What they find in an ancient book entitled the Occulta Philosophia are the instructions for an Elixir of Life.
Unable to decipher the instructions, Victor travels into Geneva and seeks the help of one Julius Polidori, a former alchemist whose troubled past includes the miraculous cures and unexplained deaths.  Polidori, who has been confined to a wheelchair since being dragged from his bed by a mob and thrown from the city ramparts, lives behind his dark and half-empty shop with his pet lynx, Krake.  At first, Polidori is reluctant to aid Victor, cautioning him that he was tried and found guilty of alchemy, the practice of which is illegal in the Swiss Republic, but, when he sees the Occulta Philosophia and the ancient other texts the young man has brought, and learns that Victor’s brother is gravely ill, he agrees to lend his expertise.
In his secret subterranean workshop, one he accesses by means of an ingenious elevator, Polidori uses chemicals to separate pages fused together in a fire and render clear the words written on them.  Exultant that he has begun to unravel the secret to Agrippa’s elixir, Victor returns to the chateau and vows to Konrad that he will make him better.
A specialist, sent for by Alphonse Frankenstein, begins a careful study of Konrad’s blood, and then announces that the young man has an abnormality of the blood, one he proposes to treat it through a series of injections.  Meanwhile, Victor, Elizabeth and Henry plan a midnight visit to the Sturmwald, a forest in the hills above the chateau, to search for the first of three ingredients for the elixir.
They will have to climb one of the tallest trees in the forest to find a tree lichen at its summit.  The lichen can only been seen on the darkest nights when is exudes a pale glow.  Polidori gives Victor instructions to prepare a potion that will give them the vision of the wolf.  He and Elizabeth apply drops of the potion to their eyes as they reach the Stormwald and find that they can see in the dark.  The potion also seems to put them in touch with their instinctive natural reactions.  For the first time, Victor recognizes Elizabeth as a beautiful and desirable young woman.  The two climb the tree to its summit and must battle bearded vultures, whose nest they disturb, before they are rescued by Polidori’s lynx Krake and manage to descend safely to the ground where Henry waits.
Victor awakens the morning following their adventure in the Sturmvald to find Konrad sitting in his room drinking tea.  It seems that Murnau’s treatment has succeeded.  For a time, Victor abandons his quest for the Elixir of Life and rejoices in his brother’s return to health.
However his elation is tempered by the sudden realization that Konrad and Elizabeth love each other.  To his shame, Victor is overcome by feelings of jealousy and quiet resentment; why, if he and his twin are identical in every way, does Elizabeth prefer Konrad to him?  As he watches their interactions, the young man’s long-held feelings of inferiority preoccupy him.  Though he and Konrad are physically so alike that even their parents occasionally mistake one for the other, Victor knows that his brother is the better of the two.  He is a natural leader and inspires confidence in others.  He is unstintingly kind to and thoughtful of others.
Victor finds and steals a note left by Elizabeth for Konrad and keeps a midnight tryst with her in his brother’s place.  Pretending to be Konrad, he kisses Elizabeth.  Victor believes that he has successfully deceived Elizabeth but the following morning it becomes apparent to she has realized his duplicity.
While he struggles between love and jealousy, hope and fear, Victor continues his quest for the elixir.  He learns from Polidori that the second ingredient is the coelacanth, a great fish, long thought extinct, but which lives in the depths of Lake Geneva.  Following the alchemist’s advice, Victor seeks out the widow of the fisherman and cave explorer who had successfully caught the fish.  He purchases and uses the dead man’s map to navigate the caves and tunnels that plunge from the hills above the lake.
This time, Konrad insists on accompanying Elizabeth and his brother.  The three descend deep underground until they reach a subterranean lake where Victor and Konrad wage an epic battle against the prehistoric fish.  They win their battle, returning exhausted but triumphant to the surface hours after they were due to return to the chateau at Bellevue, but Victor bears wounds on his arm caused where the coelacanth attacked him.
Questioned closely by his father as Alphonse Frankenstein stitches up his wounds, Victor confesses that he has broken his promise not to visit the Dark Library and has worked to create the Elixir of Life.  Confined to the chateau, Victor, Konrad and Elizabeth debate whether to continue working on the elixir.  Swayed by Elizabeth’s arguments based on her Catholic faith, Konrad asks his brother to abandon his quest.
For a short time, Victor is able to put his obsession aside.  Instead he enjoys his time with Konrad and watches, and resents, his brother’s relationship with Elizabeth.  When Victor confronts Elizabeth with his feelings for her, and challenges her to admit that she feels something for him, Konrad intervenes, chiding his brother for toying with the young woman.  Furious, Victor reveals his feelings for Elizabeth.  The brothers are poised and ready to settle their argument with a duel when Konrad falls to the floor in a dead faint.
Faced with a renewed threat to his brother’s life and health, Victor returns to Polidori’s shop with Elizabeth and Henry, whose misgivings have been overcome by their fear for Konrad.  There they discover what the elixir’s third ingredient is, and Victor and Elizabeth engage in a heated discussion about how to best proceed.  This final ingredient will impose a difficult and permanent cost on one of them, but it is a cost that both argue they have the right to pay.
Henry, Elizabeth and Victor will have to fight off a vicious and unexpected attack that almost robs them of the elixir and their lives, before returning to the chateau and Konrad’s bedside.  Victor has to hold his brother up and pour the liquid into Konrad’s mouth, and then the three young people wait anxiously to discover the effect of the miracle cure for which they have laboured so hard.
Written by celebrated Canadian children’s author Kenneth Oppel, who recently won the Governor General’s prize for Children’s Literature for Half Brother, This Dark Endeavour is the story of young Victor Frankenstein, his twin brother’s life-threatening illness, and his desperate quest for a cure.  Brotherly love or an obsession for power, romantic love at times overcome by jealousy, hope and despair, Victor is a protagonist in whom is being waged the beginnings of an epic battle, one that will result inevitably in a creation of monstrous proportions.  Oppel’s book is a study in contrasts; good and evil, lofty principles and low deceptions, the summit of the tallest trees and subterranean lakes, cloudless summer afternoons and bolts of lightning and the pitch dark of secret rooms.  Told from Victor’s perspective, This Dark Endeavour is a brilliant and chilling and altogether captivating story.  Highly recommended for readers from Grade 7!
FernFolio Editor

Why would a complete stranger have left a house in Nova Scotia to his father?  This is the question that preoccupies thirteen-year-old Kevin Messenger when he learns of the unexpected inheritance.  While his father flies east to take a look at the place, and his mother and sister prepare for a summer in Nova Scotia, Kevin gets online and tries to figure out just exactly who Angus Seaton was, and how he might have been connected to James Messenger, who lives on the opposite coast in Victoria, B. C.
Kevin isn’t all that happy about spending the summer clear across the country from his best friend Zach and their daily swimming practices.  And the thought of all that ‘family time,’ especially with his rather difficult and demanding father, doesn’t thrill him either.  Jim Messenger, phys. ed. teacher, coach and former soccer champion, is determined that both Kevin and his older sister play soccer but, while Courtney clearly loves the game, Kevin has little aptitude and less interest.  It is a constant source of friction between the young teenager and his father.  Jim is also impatient of his son’s habit of acting before he thinks.  What with one thing and another, it seems to Kevin that his father never has anything positive to say to him.
The Messengers fly to Halifax and rent a car for the drive to Shearwater Point, on the Lighthouse Route.  It is a weathered two-storey gabled house on the beach with a veranda running its width.  Despite himself, Kevin likes the house and its proximity to the water, and looks forward to swimming every day in the Atlantic.  Assigned by his father to clean out the basement, Kevin comes across a beautiful hand-carved wooden box sealed behind a makeshift wall of wooden boards.  The box and an old sea chest in an upstairs bedroom are the only clues to the mystery that is Angus Seaton.
A chance meeting on the beach with a local boy named Jarrett leads Kevin to his grandmother, Mrs. Nickerson, who works at the public library.  Kevin has already heard rumours that Shearwater Point is haunted, but the older woman is able to tell him that, as far as she knows, no one has ever died in the house.  Instead, old Angus Seaton was reputed to see ghosts; at least, he went around arguing with someone who wasn’t there.  From Mrs. Nickerson, Kevin learns that, in April 1912 as a seventeen-year-old ordinary seaman aboard the Mackay-Bennett, Angus Seaton took part in the recovery of bodies from the Titanic.  Eventually he built Shearwater Point, and moved in with his wife and young son, Myles, but his increasingly erratic behaviour caused talk in the nearby village.  When he came across a young baby in a carriage outside a shop one day and tried to take the child, saying, “Michael! You’re Michael! I’ve been looking for you for years!” he was put into a psychiatric hospital and his wife left him, taking their son with her.
The name Michael has become familiar to Kevin.  He heard a young woman calling the name on beach one day, and since then her voice seems to come to him every time he stops to think or lies down to sleep.  At first she simply asks, “Where is Michael?” but the questions start to pile up over the next few weeks.
Where is Michael?
Does he weep for me in the deep?
Does he walk on land, searching for me?
How will he know me?
Has his body been taken by the sea?
What have you done, robber of the dead?
What has become of my precious boy?
Soon Kevin finds he cannot sleep or, if he does, he is awakened by nightmares of a young woman dressed in a long black coat who repeats the same questions over and over.  He tries asking his family if they are hearing anything strange, but realizes he is the only one haunted by the ghostly voice.  The teenager starts creeping out of the house late at night to run on the beach, or row his dory, or swim because it is only when he is physically active that the voice seems to abate.  More than once on his midnight outings, Kevin sees the young woman, and tries to tell he that he doesn’t know where Michael is.
Eventually, it gets so that Kevin has trouble distinguishing between his parents’ questions and comments, and the incessant questions of his ghost.  When it becomes clear that he is somewhat delusional, his parents decide that he needs to see a doctor.
Driven to distraction by the ghostly questions, Kevin hurls the carved wood box against his bedroom wall and finds something unexpected in its broken pieces, something that will help him solve three mysteries.   Who is the ghost that haunts him?  What happened to Michael, her darling boy?  And why did Angus Seaton leave Shearwater Point to Kevin’s father, James Messenger?
Written by Julie Lawson, Ghosts of the Titanic tells the gripping story of a young sailor who unintentionally pockets a small purse that falls from the pocket of one of the victims of the Titanic and is haunted for the rest of his life by her ghost, and the young teenager from Victoria who inherits that ghost and finally lays her to rest.  A deliciously haunting book for readers from Grade 5!
FernFolio Editor

Thirteen-year-old Milo Cruikshank has a lot to cope with right now.  He has just moved into a new house and started grade seven at a new school.  He’s fallen in love with a girl named Summer Goodman, who doesn’t know he exists, and is trying to act cool by following the advice of the voice in his head, the one that belongs to his alter ego, Dabney St. Claire.
Milo sees the new school year in a new school as a fresh start, of sorts, one where he can put behind him the disaster that was grade six and move on.  In grade six, he missed so much school he lost track of the days, and pretty much gave up on homework.  Grade five wasn’t much better.  Sure, he’s terrible at math, so terrible that Mr. Shivnesky wants him to come in twice a week for remedial help, and a complete klutz in gym, but otherwise he’s doing okay.
It’s when it comes to the whole social thing that Milo continues to struggle. Though Dabney St. Claire urges him to talk to his classmates, and especially Summer Goodman, he pretty much sticks to the lunchtime regulars at his table in the cafeteria.
He’s glad that he’s made a friend in Marshall Hickler because Marshall loves the same video games he does, is always up for a bike ride past Summer’s house, even though he figures Milo’s dreaming.  Milo also likes Marshall because he never asks him anything that might make him feel bad.
Milo’s not so thrilled about Hillary Alpert, the girl who lives next door, and persists in sending him notes written on purple stationary and inviting him over to her house.  He ignores her when he can, and doesn’t respond when her questions get too personal.  Milo’s sister says Hillary’s got a crush on him, and that he’s going to have to talk to her if he doesn’t feel the same, but for a boy whose super power, if he had one, would be invisibility, it’s not an easy conversation to have.
He’s avoiding altogether the weird old lady who lives in the house opposite his own.  Though she waves and smiles and says hello, he ignores her.  When he finds himself sitting at her kitchen table with Marshall drinking hot chocolate and eating chocolate chip cookies, he discovers that pretty much all Sylvia Poole talks about is her dead husband, Paul.
Things are worse at home.  His older sister is completely wrapped up in her own life.  She sleeps in late whenever she can, and spends every waking minute at home either plugged into her MP3 player or on the phone with her friends.  Their real dad has disappeared, replaced, Milo thinks, by a pod person who looks just like him.  When asked, “How are you?,” this pod person always replies, “Fantastic!” before turning back to an unending series of crossword puzzles or TV programs.  This pod person drives Milo to school and always asks the same five meaningless questions to which the kid responds with the same five non-answers.  Once upon a time, Milo’s television watching was closely supervised but now his dad doesn’t care what he watches or how much or when. Meals are eaten in silence, laundry and housecleaning happen only when they can no longer be put off, the Cruikshanks are not so much as family as they are a collection of three people living under one roof.
The problem is related to the Fog that settled over them over two years before, a Fog that Milo cannot, will not, remember.  That Fog was his mother’s illness and death from brain cancer.  Milo’s trying to follow his dad’s advice about “get[ting] on the same page with the whole Life Changes thing,” but finds that thoughts of his mom keep intruding.  The least little thing will have him recalling the way she used to sing with the radio or wear silly aprons or bake cookies from scratch, but when something triggers a memory from the Fog, Milo finds himself breaking down at the most awkward and embarrassing of times.
It’s all the more difficult because, following her funeral, Milo’s dad collected all of his mom’s stuff and gave it away, including the dishes she liked best, and the pots and pans she used to cook with, and all of her silly aprons.  He also took down all the family photos and put them away.  As Milo’s sister put it, “He [cleaned] the house of mom.  He [made] her disappear.”
First with Hillary, and then with Sylvia, and finally Marshall, Milo starts to talk about his mom and admitting to himself just how much he misses her.  It is Sylvia who tells him that, with her gone, he’s become lost.  When, at last, Milo realizes that he cannot cope any longer with her absence and goes in search of his mother, he discovers that his father and sister need to find her just as much as he does, and that, in bringing the memory of his mom back home, he has found not just her but his family.
Written and illustrated by Alan Silberberg, Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze is a funny and sad book about a kid dealing with his mom’s death from cancer.  With his insecurities and self-deprecating humour, Milo is the kind of kid you can’t help but warm up to.  You’ll also take a shine to Marshall and Hillary who prove themselves to be the kinds of friends who stick by you, no matter how tough the going might get.  Silberberg does a wonderful job of capturing the thoughts and impressions of this thirteen-year-old boy as he navigates through his grade-seven year, and punctuates the first-person narrative with some amusing and at-times very clever and pointed graphic text.  A terrific book for readers from Grade 4!
FernFolio Editor

When Ailish O’Connor, thirteen, awakens to find her father unconscious and lying in a pool of his own blood, she blames herself for not having tried harder to tell him that Rufus Dalton, the man he’d brought home to their caravan, was trouble.  After all, what is the use being fey, having second sight, if you don’t use it to protect the people you love?  And now da’s little golden horse, the one he bought from a Russian soldier fleeing the czar, is gone and with it their hopes of a new life in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.
As Ailish runs to get help for her father, she recalls him talking with Dalton the previous night about the Great Eastern, the iron steam and sailing ship due to set sail from Foilhummerum Bay to lay the first transatlantic cable from Ireland to Newfoundland, and realizes their thief will be aboard.  Leaving her father in the care of a neighbour, she heads for the dock, planning to intercept Dalton and reclaim the golden horse.  From a sailor readying a load for the ship, she learns that Dalton has already boarded the ship.  Determined not to lose her family’s treasure, Ailish climbs into a crate filled with machinery which is then ferried aboard the Great Eastern.  She will find Dalton, retrieve her property, and return to shore with the ferry.  Unfortunately, she falls asleep in her crate and, by the time she awakens, the ship has put to sea.
Hidden in her crate, Ailish watches and listens as Rufus Dalton threatens Paddy Whalen, the sailor with whom she spoke on the dock.  Dalton has heard that Whalen has put £80 in the ship’s safe, his family’s life savings with which they intend to start over in Canada, and tells him that, if he doesn’t hand it over, he’ll brand Paddy a Fenian bent on sabotaging the transatlantic cable and he’ll go to the Captain with a newspaper photo showing him at a Fenian meeting.
Ailish manages to climb out of the crate when the coast is clear, but is at a loss for what to do.  She panics at the sound of crew members approaching, but is saved from discovery by a young boy, David Jones, who works as a bash boy on the Great Eastern.  A bash boy, Davy explains, holds the bolts as the riveter drives them in.  In the distance, Ailish can here the ringing sound of Charlie, the riveter, at work keeping the ship watertight.
Davy helps Ailish avoid being caught by Dalton, or any other of the crew, by suggesting that she pass herself off as a cabin boy.  He provides her with clothes and a knife to cut off her long hair.  He tells her that she can safely use one of the first-class cabins to sleep in, since the ship is carrying no passengers.  Ailish tells him why she has smuggled herself aboard.  Soon she is creeping up to the deck to learn something about the laying of the cable, and observe Dalton, so she can plan her next moves.
When she reaches the deck, Ailin discovers that Rufus Dalton is cable crew chief, and wields a lot of power aboard the Great Eastern.  He runs into her and then threatens to toss her into the ocean if she doesn’t stay out of his way.  She is rescued by Paddy, who remarks that he hasn’t seen her before.  Ailin tells him she’s a new cabin boy, and Paddy kindly offers to keep an eye out for her, advising that she stick close to him, as a gong sounds and men begin to run onto the deck from every hatchway.
Ailin learns from Paddy that the gong sounds when transmissions stop, indicating something is wrong with the cable that is being laid.  It then has to be hauled back onto the ship so that the break can be located and repaired.  After hours of hauling and testing, the problem is found.  The break has been caused by a 2-inch spike thrust through the cable.  Dalton loses no time in pointing to Whalen, as the only Irishman aboard, as the culprit.  Fortunately, Captain Anderson isn’t quick to leap to judgement.
On the deck of the Great Eastern, Ailin finds a menagerie of animals, including chickens and sheep.  Nervous of Dalton, she slips inside their pen and starts to shovel manure.  She forms a bond with a ewe, whom she named Dimples, and starts to spend a lot of time with the wooly creature as she spies on Dalton.
The girl tries following Dalton to locate his cabin, but is foiled time and again.  More than once, the crew chief proves that he enjoys intimidating anyone weaker than himself, and Ailish, as the smallest aboard, becomes a favourite target.  It is only Paddy Whalen’s vigilance that prevents the girl’s disappearance at sea.
When she manages to knock over Captain Anderson, Ailish is taken to the captain’s office and it soon becomes clear that she is a stowaway.  Fortunately, she has proven herself helpful on board, and so the Captain agrees not to lock her away in the brig, putting her, instead, under the direct orders of Rufus Dalton.  The scoundrel loses no time in making her life as miserable as possible, but Ailish is more worried for Paddy Whalen than she is for herself.
With Davy’s help, she locates Dalton’s cabin and sneaks inside while he is on the deck, only to discover that he has hidden the golden horse somewhere else on the ship.    As the Great Eastern nears the coast of Newfoundland, she begins to fear that she will never recover her family’s treasure.
The crew chief continues to stir up trouble for Paddy at every turn, and, when Ailish speaks up for him, she is accused of being his accomplice.  When evidence turns up that the cable has once again been sabotaged, Dalton is quick to point fingers, but Captain Anderson continues to call for calm, stating that a man is innocent until proven guilty.  However both Paddy and Ailish know that one more instance of sabotage and the crew, stirred up by Dalton, is sure to lynch him.  Desperate to save Paddy as well as her family’s hopes for the future, she comes up with a daring plan to expose Rufus Dalton for the thief and extortionist he is, but has to convince Davy and Paddy to go along with it.
Written by Jacqueline Guest, Ghost Messages tells the story of a young girl who stows away aboard the Great Eastern, the ship charged with laying the first transatlantic cable linking Europe with North America, determined to find her family’s treasure which has been stolen by one of its crew members, and finds herself along for a voyage besieged by threats, intimidation, and rumours of sabotage by members of the Fenian brotherhood.  A thrilling book for readers from Grade 5!
FernFolio Editor

Fifteen-year-old Alexi and Melantha, his nineteen-year-old sister, awaken on the morning following a day of wild celebrations to mark the departure of the Greeks’ black-sailed ships after ten years of war.  Along with their fellow Trojans, Alexi and Meli danced and ate and drank late into the night, overjoyed at end of a decade-long siege that has kept them captives within their city walls and made orphans of the young siblings.
The two have endured three years of poverty since their physician father’s death.  Forced to sell everything they owned to support themselves in a city close to starvations, Alexi and Meli live in a storage room above a bakery on the wrong side of town with nothing but a small table, a stool, a battered tripod and pot, and the worn clothes on their back.
With the end of the Trojan War, perhaps things will improve for Alexi and his sister but the boy will remember, later, that Cassandra, King Priam’s mad daughter, ran through the celebrating crowds shouting of Priam’s city, in flames and dying.  He will also recall that she grabbed him out of the throngs and, fixing her mad eyes upon him, urged him to, “Live.  Accept [his] father’s gift.”
One that morning after their celebrations, it is the sound of shouting and doors being broken down that will rouse the two in their small room.  Looking out of their small window, Meli sees men in armour breaking down the doors of Pylacon’s smithy, and recognizes them as Greek soldiers.  Shocked, Alexi cannot understand how the Greeks got with the walls that have repelled them for ten years of war; those walls are as high as an oak and wide enough for two chariots to race along the top.  Perhaps he will never discover that the gates to Troy were opened for them by Greek soldiers hidden inside a great wooden horse.
Alexi and his sister huddle behind their tattered blanket and almost escape detection when two soldiers burst into their room but the door is ripped from its leather hinges and lands on Alexi’s toes, causing him to gasp in pain.  In a desperate bid to save her brother, Meli steps forward, begging the soldiers not to hurt her.  When one of them throws the girl over his shoulder, she stabs him in the thigh with her dagger and is flung down the stairs where she lands in a lifeless heap.
Horrified by what has happened to his sister, Alexi cries out, drawing the attention of the soldiers, and, grabbing his sister’s knife from the floor, he stabs her captor in the neck, killing him.  Determined to honour Meli’s sacrifice by saving himself from capture, the boy climbs out the window to the roof and scrambles across a beam that spans the street.  From there he clambers down to street level and throws off the soldiers who hunt him by hiding in a sewage culvert.  When he creeps out of the sewers the following day, it is to the sight of neighbours lying in pools of blood.
Mischance propels Alexi into the arms of some Greek soldiers and, although he runs, he is soon captured by one who is eager to cut his throat.  He responds with a retort that earns hatred of the soldier, a brutish bully whose name is Ury, as well as the notice of the soldier’s commander, for Alexi has spoken in Greek.  Questioned, he admits that his grandmother was Greek and lies that he is only twelve years old.
The Greek commander decides that the boy might prove useful, and so Alexi becomes a slave.  Under Ury’s orders, he helps to haul carts of looted treasure from Troy down to the Greek ships that line the shore, the same ships that had sailed away only days before, and begins to learn the hardships and simmering resentment of slavery.  He watches as the Greeks slaughter and eat Trojan livestock, and meets other Trojans enslaved to Lopex, the Greek commander.  It is only when soldiers come to Ury to tell the Greek of his brother’s death, does Alexi realize that this piece of work is brother to the man he killed.  He doesn’t need to hear Ury’s vow to find his brother’s killer and make him beg for death to know that he has made a dangerous enemy in the brute.
Alexi and his fellow slaves endure the casual brutality of the Greeks, and are worn thin and exhausted by a never-ending list of tasks, and too little food or rest.  When the Greeks set sail, some three days after their rout of Troy, Alexi learns that his new master, Lopex, plans to use him as ship boy, the messenger who hops from bench to bench over rowers’ oars from the bow, where his master sits, to the stern, where the steersmen ply their poles.
Alexi and his fellow slaves observe as Lopex and his men plan and carry out a raid on a nearby town, only to narrowly avoid snatching defeat out of the hands of victory when the Greek soldiers decide to celebrate their prowess rather than stowing their spoils and setting sail as their commander orders.  Only Lopex’ inspired leadership saves the black-sailed ships and their crews.  Though he continues to view the Greeks as enemies and bitterly resents his enslavement, Alexi finds himself admiring his master’s wily and inspiring leadership.  Nevertheless, it comes as a shock to discover that Lopex is the Greek’s nickname; he is, in fact, the famous Odysseus.
Lopex recognizes Alexi’s skill as a healer and puts him to work caring for the wounded.  He also sees in the young boy a humanity that supersedes his natural resentment.  Soon Alexi is accompanying small parties of Greek soldiers on their explorations.  With them he will visit the Island of the Lotus Eaters, and come under the powerful spell of the narcotic.  He will cower in abject horror as a Cyclops traps and eats  hapless Greek soldiers after trapping them in his cave home, before stumbling upon the perfect ruse to escape the one-eyed giant.  As the months pass and the adventures multiply, Alexi will discover that, though he has lost his family and his home and his people, he may have gained a new father of sorts.
Written by Patrick Bowman, Torn from Troy is the exciting story of a young boy’s experiences following the sack of Troy and his enslavement to Odysseus, the Greek hero whose fantastical ten-year voyage home from the Trojan War was chronicled in Homer’s Odyssey.  Filled with historical detail, and the stuff of myths and legend, and certain to be the first of a series, Torn from Troy is bound to delight readers from Grade 6.
FernFolio Editor

Ti-Jean is a favourite character in French Canadian legends and fairy tales.  In When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew, Jan Andrews retells three classic stories about this young Everyman known more for his honest hard work and kindness toward others than his cleverness or ambition.
In Ti-Jean and the Princess of Tomboso, Ti-Jean and his two older brothers each left gift by their dying father.  While the eldest receives a magic purse, and the second a magic horn, Ti-Jean is given a magic belt, one that will transport him anywhere he wishes to go.  The young man wants to see the Princess of Tomboso, and asks the belt to take him to her.  Unfortunately, when she meets him and learns of the magic belt, the princess decides that she must have it, and rapidly tricks it out of Ti-Jean’s hands.  In an effort to reclaim his belt, the young man loses both of the brothers’ gifts to the greedy and scheming princess before two unusual fruit trees that grow near each other present him with the means to take back their father’s gifts.
In Ti-Jean the Marble Player, the young man is an accomplished marble player who rarely loses so when he is challenged to game by a mysterious little man named Bonnet Rouge and learns that, if he wins he will be granted a wish, Ti-Jean is eager to play.  He wins a field full of cows and then one full of horses.  Despite his father’s warnings, agrees to a third game, and this time he loses to Bonnet Rouge who decrees that he must travel to the little man’s house within a year and a day or his life will be forfeit.  Ti-Jean gains the help of three elderly women and then a beautiful princess but nearly loses his life before finally escaping the consequences of his ill-considered bets.
How Ti-Jean Became a Fiddler tells the story of how, when his older brothers decide to vie for the hand of a wealthy seigneur’s daughter, their mother urges Ti-Jean to follow them for she fears that they will run into difficulty.  While the older brothers ride on fine horses, dress in expensive clothes and sleep each night in inns along the route, Ti-Jean rides a not-so-good horse and must barter his labour for a meal and a bed.  Since he has spent his life helping his mother both in the fields and garden and around the house, he proves invaluable to those he offers to work for, and is rewarded for his service with magic gifts that come in useful when his older brothers fail to win the seigneur’s daughter and, instead, get tossed into his prison.
Written by the incomparable Jan Andrews, author of such classics as The Very Last First Time, and wonderfully illustrated by Dusan Petricic, When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew: Tales of Ti-Jean is a trio of delightful and beautifully-told stories about a young man who distinguishes himself by the kinds of traits to which everyone of us ought to aspire.  A lovely book for readers of all ages!
FernFolio Editor