Entries from December 2007

Friday, December 28th, 2007

Safe as Houses by Eric Walters

On the afternoon of Friday, October 15, 1954, thirteen year-old Lizzie Hardy walks the two McBride children home to their house on Raymore Drive and then prepares to baby-sit them until their parents return home from work. While Lizzie enjoys looking after six year-old Susie, she finds her older brother David a difficult kid [...]

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

Rise of the Golden Cobra by Henry T. Aubin

When traitors to the Two Lands kill his master, the Kushite spy Setka, and track him into the desert, fourteen year-old Nebi knows he must overcome the pain of his injuries, and get to Thebes. Charged by Setka to reveal to the Princess Amonirdis what they have learned about a plot by many Egyptian [...]

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

Directed by Kaspar Snit by Carl Fagan

In this sequel to the wonderful Kaspar Snit, Eleanor and her brother Solly, a.k.a. Googoo Man, learn that their parents have decided to take a holiday and leave them at home with a nanny. Annoyed that she cannot go with her parents to Tuscany, Eleanor is certain that Mrs. Leer, the nanny, is going [...]

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

Stolen Away by Christopher Dinsdale

Captured during a Viking raid on her Irish village, Kiera is taken to Iceland where she is auctioned off as a slave to Bjorn and his wife Dagmar. When they join a small group of Norse settlers looking for richer fishing and hunting grounds and fertile land in which to plant crops, Kiera finds [...]

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

Sarah’s Legacy by Valerie Sherrard

News that they have inherited a big old Victorian house in Mirimachi, New Brunswick, from a elderly great-aunt, Sarah Wentworth, whom neither has ever met comes as a surprise to Sarah Gilmore and her mother. For Maggie Gilmore, who has struggled for years to make ends meet on the salary and tips from her [...]

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

Darkwing by Kenneth Oppel

For Dusk and his colony, life in the giant sequoia, far from the politics and alliances of the beasts on the mainland, is peaceful and happy. As a young chiropter, Dusk’s only worries concern his furless sails and overcoming an almost irresistible urge to beat those sails and try to fly when, since the [...]

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

Blake Winters is not happy to find himself in Oxford, dragged there by his mother who is doing research in the ancient libraries its university colleges. He misses his father, who has remained in Canada, and worries that his parents’ separation will lead to divorce. Accompanied by his younger sister, Duck, Blake spends [...]

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Poems by Children in Grades 1, 2 and 3

Flowers
Pretty flowers
look good in the sun.
They are also gentle.
Flowers are nice too.
Beautiful flowers are sweet.
Flowers smell so sweet.
Pretty flowers are so neat.
They are good too.
I love FLOWERS!
by I and A Grade 3
AnWaIs3.mp3

FRIENDS ARE FRIENDS
Friends are nice and kind
nice to me and you
Good friends are
Generous friends play with me
Friends are graceful and kind
Friends like to [...]

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Where Soldiers Lie by John Wilson

For sixteen year-old Jack O’Hara, a new life in India is both an exotic and fascinating departure from his previous life in the wilderness of Canada West and a return to where his Irish father and Indian mother met and married, and where he was born. With his parents both dead of smallpox, Jack [...]

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence

In their house at the end of the road down in Hog’s Hollow, that year of 1965, the River family dreams. While Flo writes her epic of life in pre-Civil War America, she dreams of fame and fortune and of moving her family to a mansion in the South. Twelve year-old Beau builds [...]