When the bones of a young girl are found on the mountain, buried under the tree where she used to play, and four years after many believed that she had run away with her lover, shock and grief soon turn to suspicion.
For fourteen-year Dee Vale, an illegitimate child living her with her stern and unemotional [...]
It’s hard to be the overweight and socially awkward daughter of a media superstar. Living in the shadow of her mother, Mimi, whose talk show, You, You and Mimi, is watched by hundreds of millions of people all over the world, seventeen-year old Robin Schwartz struggles with apathy and depression. Burned by classmates who became [...]
The school’s three book clubs have wound up for the summer. After a year full of reading and discussion, shared lunches and case loads of Oreo cookies, playing with Photo Story to create book trailers, two electronic conferences and a wiki, and one abortive author visit, student readers are heading out of the school library [...]
In the spring of 1939, a nine-year old girl named Liesel Meminger comes to live with Rosa and Hans Hubermann in their tiny house in Himmel Street, in Molching, a small town near Munich. Having recently survived the death of her younger brother, and separation from her sickly mother, Liesel is angry, defensive, and driven [...]
Escalating hostilities between Tories, loyal to the British Crown, and Whigs, who demand independence for Britain’s Thirteen American Colonies, have exacted a heavy price on fifteen-year old Charlotte Hooper. Her three older brothers have all ‘accepted the King’s shilling,’ and two have been killed in fighting. The third is missing and feared dead. She has [...]
Last week, I held information meetings for three Book Clubs, the Boys’ Book Club, for boys in Grade 4, 5 and 6, the Girls’ Book Club, for girls in Grades 4, 5 and 6, and the Intermediate Book Club, for students in Grades 7 and 8.
The boys met at lunch on Monday. There was [...]
Fourteen year-old Dana is a runaway, living on the streets of Toronto. Begging for spare change to buy coffee and a doughnut, and protecting her rapidly dwindling possessions from thieves is a far cry from her comfortable life in the suburbs, but she cannot go home.
Fortunately, Dana is adopted into a street family. [...]
The Intermediate Book Club has decided to read Deborah Ellis’ Sacred Leaf, sequel to I am a Taxi (see my review). While we await the arrival of our books, book club members have spent a very enjoyable couple of lunch hours talking about books and debating the relative merits of one author over another.
Today [...]
