FernFolio » Novels

Lunches with Lenin by Deborah Ellis

fernfolio — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:46:28 +0000

Matthew buys pot from Hammer, the high school football captain and local source for marijuana, though he knows he’s being overcharged and risks discovery by one of the sniffer dogs the school administration regularly bring in. Tahmina is proud of her expertise in harvesting opium from her father’s poppies, until disaster strikes and the local police move in and destroy the crop, leaving her father with few options to repay his debt to the local money lender. Fifteen-year old Brandon reacts with rage when he learns that all of his learning problems, and difficulties controlling his behaviour are consequences of his mother’s drinking when she was pregnant with him. Abandoned in Red Square, when he was a child of five, by his mother who said she was going to visit Lenin’s tomb, Valerin grows up in state institutions until, at sixteen, he is released to make his own way in the world, and is offered a chance at the Gates of Heaven, through an injection of heroin, by his only friend.
Deborah Ellis’ Lunch with Lenin is a collection of short stories that examine the human cost of illegal drugs and substance abuse through the eyes of teenagers in Russia, Afghanistan, Canada, the US, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Bolivia. Searing and tender and brutally honest, Ellis’ stories are nothing short of wonderful. A must-read for Intermediate students.
FernFolio Editor

The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter

fernfolio — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:18:18 +0000

From the time she was a little child, Amani Raheem knew she wanted to accompany her grandfather, Seedo, each day as he herded his flock of sheep up into the mountain meadows to graze. When she reaches the age of six, Seedo starts to teach her how a good shepherd tends to his, or her, sheep, and, as head of the family, decides that, rather than attending school in the village with her cousins, she will spend her days on Seedo’s Mountain, and study in the evenings at home.
Amani rapidly shows her grandfather, and the rest of her extended family, that she is a skilled and dedicated shepherd, and, when Seedo grows to frail to manage the family’s flock his crook is passed to her. The young girl communicates online with veterinarians, and works to improve her breeding stock, eager to use modern science and technology in a job that her family has pursued on Seedo’s Mountain for a thousand years.
However, politics and religion, and the Israeli occupation, which has long created problems in nearby Palestinian towns and villages, begin to create hardship and growing frustration for Amani’s family. From her vantage point high up the mountain above her family’s village, Amani can see the encroaching roads and settlements of Israeli settlers approach ever nearer. Then one day, while she is tending her flock, she sees markers indicating that a new settlement will be built right next to her family’s olive orchards. As the settlers’ road is pushed through their grape vines, and fences are put up on what has traditionally been her family’s land, Amani finds it increasingly difficult to follow her late grandfather’s advice and pray without anger in her heart.
A chance meeting up on the mountain with Jonathan, an American Jew whose father is leading the building of the new settlement, shows Amani that not all Jews believe that God has given them the right to seize land from Palestinian inhabitants. With the support of volunteers from Israeli and international peace movements, Amani and her family make a desperate bid to save their farm and preserve a centuries-old way of life.
Author Anne Laurel Carter has written a wonderful story in The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, one of courage and love, that serves to underscore the importance of tradition and family, as well as of acceptance and understanding of others. Well worth the read!
FernFolio Editor

Zoobreak by Gordon Korman

fernfolio — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:40:07 +0000

After she helped them successfully retrieve a priceless baseball card from the guy who swindled it from them, best friends Griffin Bing and Ben Slovak feel they have to help Savannah Drysdale track down her missing pet capuchin monkey. However a class trip to a floating zoo docked at a nearby nature preserve solves one mystery and poses another. Cleo, the missing monkey, is locked into a cage in the zoo and the zoo’s owner adamantly refuses to admit that the little creature might belong to Savannah, so that problem becomes how Griffith and his friends can rescue her before the floating zoo sails away.
Known as the Man With the Plan for his elaborate schemes, Griffin calls in all of the kids who worked on the baseball card heist, and begins work on operation Zoobreak. Along with Pitch Benson, who can climb any tree or fence, Melissa Dukakis, an electronic genius, and Logan Kellerman, aspiring actor, Griffin, Ben and Savannah reconnoitre the old boat that houses the zoo, check out the walls and fences surrounding the nature preserve, post miniature surveillance cameras, and chat up Klaus, the beefy security guard who lives on board. Armed with a plan that, he is certain, covers every possible contingency, Griffin and his team sneak in the zoo in the middle of the night, and then watch as everything goes hilariously wrong.
Savannah, who is Cedarville’s acknowledged authority on animals, becomes incensed when she realises just how bad the living conditions of the zoo’s exhibits really are, and insists that Griffin and his team remove not only Cleo, her monkey, but all of the other animals on display. The six kids have to find places to stash the forty rescued animals, and keep them safe, and hidden, until Savannah’s friend, Dr. Kathleen Alford, curator of the Long Island Zoo, returns from a trip to equatorial Africa. Unfortunately, their animal liberation project has made the news, and the police open an investigation. But, worse still, Mr. “Nasty” Nastase, the zoo’s owner, seems to be on their tail!
Written by Gordon Korman, Zoobreak is an clever, funny, and action-packed adventure about a group of grade-six misfits who know the importance of friendship. Sequel to Swindle, let’s hope there are more stories about Griffin and Bing, and their friends, ahead!
FernFolio Editor

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

fernfolio — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:07:50 +0000

What if you suddenly discovered that everything you’d been told about history, geography, science, yourself, was a lie? What if you learned that, in fact, there aren’t seven continents but ten, and that those three extra continents form what remains of the Free Kingdoms, where Oculators battle valiantly against the encroaching forces of evil, protected by the Knights of Crystallia? What if it was revealed to you that librarians control seven tenths of the world, and are doing their evil best to conquer the rest?
On his thirteenth birthday Alcatraz Smedry receives a package from his father containing his promised inheritance. This comes as a surprise to Alcatraz because he’s lived in foster homes for as long as he can remember, and the package is filled with sand. That same day, he manages to set his foster parents’ kitchen on fire, and they conclude, after eight months of trying, that they are not the right family for the accident-prone teen. When his case worker, the unpleasant Ms. Fletcher, shows up to scold him for his destructiveness and warn him that she’s running out of options for him, Alcatraz prepares himself for yet another move, but, when the foster care case worker shows up, he pulls a gun on the kid and tries to kill him. Fortunately, Alcatraz’ destructiveness seems to spread to the man’s gun, and it breaks, allowing the boy to escape right into the arms of a strange old man wearing odd-looking glasses and a tuxedo jacket who claims to be his grandfather. Caught between a killer and a crazy, Alcatraz decides to go with the old man, and ends up involved in a battle to save the Sands of Rashid from the librarians and their leader, the Dark Oculator.
Along with Grandpa Smedry, his cousin Sing, a rather confusing man, named Quentin, and Bastille, an unpleasant young knight charged with protecting his grandfather, Alcatraz infiltrates the city’s Central Library, a building whose innocent-looking exterior hides a massive and labyrinthine series of floors crowded with rooms filled with books and dinosaurs and special glasses. He discovers that the destructiveness that plagues him is actually a powerful Talent, one that he is going to have to learn to accurately use and fast, if he’s going to help his newly-found family prevent the Free Kingdoms from falling to the librarians and becoming part of the Hushlands. He also learns that he is an Oculator, one of the rare people who can use the pairs of glasses specially crafted as tools, and weapons, by both Free Kingdomers and librarians.
Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians is a rollicking adventure filled with surprises, one that is sure to captivate the imagination. Just as interesting are Alcatraz’ discoveries about himself, and his frequent asides about literature and the art of writing. To the end, the writer claims that the book is fact, not fiction, but, really, evil librarians plotting to take over the world? Fantasy, and nothing more!
FernFolio Editor

The Curse of the Evening Eye by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman

fernfolio — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:03:27 +0000

Molly and Adam Barnett are trying to break a century and a half-old curse to save their father’s life. Dad’s 35th birthday is only days away, and, if they cannot stop her, Lucinda, the ghost of a long-dead family servant, is going to scare him to death. Lucinda is still furious that, back in the middle of the 19th century, their great-, great-, great-grandfather fired her after accusing her of stealing some valuable jewellery. Ever since, her ghost has been killing off the men of the family on the eve of their 35th birthdays.
Tim Barnett, the children’s father, is a well-known documentary film maker, famous for his films debunking the myth that ghosts exists. Molly, and her younger brother, Adam, are proud of their father and of his award-winning movies. Too bad he’s completely wrong about the ghosts. They want to tell him about Lucinda, and her intention to kill him, but are afraid that the shock will accomplish exactly what they hope to avert. Fortunately, the children have help in the form of the ghost of their grandfather, who has recently turned up with an old family desk.
When their father flies off to California to present his newest film, The Proof that Ghosts Exist? Not! at a film festival, Molly and Adam, and their ghostly granddad, tag along, determined to keep dad safe while figuring out how to solve the problem of Lucinda, once and for all.
Strange men who look just like lost friends, chance encounters with the spirits of old miners, former teachers, and kindly neighbours, earthquakes, dust storms, and the wildest “technical effects” going keep the tension rising until the book’s concluding cliff-hanger!
The Curse of the Evening Eye, by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman, is the second book in The Ghosthunters series. Watch for The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant!
FernFolio Editor

The Odds Get Even by Natale Ghent

fernfolio — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:35:25 +0000

Boney, Itchy and Squeak are neighbours and best friends. All three boys are odd; Boney, whose parents disappeared when he was a baby, lives with his neurotic aunt and her long-suffering husband, Squeak, whose mother ran off to work in a travelling cabaret, views the world from behind World War I goggles fitted with lens made to someone else’s prescription, and Itchy contends with a father who’s an Elvis impersonator and a mother intent upon redecorating their house. Together, they built the club house in the tree behind their houses, have entered the yearly Invention Convention at their school, and weathered the attentions of the class bully, Larry Harry, and his henchmen, Jones and Jones.
Larry, aka the Fart King and Prisoner 95, seems determined to make the Odds’ lives unbearable. He and the Jones twins regularly throw eggs at the boys’ clubhouse, and ambush them on the street. Boney, Itchy and Squeaky are regularly assaulted by the bullies, especially during phys. ed. classes, which frequently end in one or other of the boys making a visit to the school nurse.
Since Larry has sabotaged their entries into the Invention Convention, the Odds have never won, even though Squeak is a scientific and engineering genius, but this year the friends are determined to win the grand prize of $500, and solve the bullying problem once and for all. Squeak thinks he’s figured out how to build an Apparator, a device that can detect the presence of ghosts, and, since the ruins of the Old Mill are rumoured to be haunted, the Odds decide that it would be the perfect place to test Squeak’s invention, and plan Larry Harry’s comeuppance.
Little to the friends know that their plans will put them afoul of the Old Mill’s current occupant, or that a chance encounter with a dog will land them in hot water and about four thousand sequins!
Written by Natale Ghent, author of No Small Thing, The Odds Get Even is an action-packed adventure about three boys, their bullies and….. a ghost?
FernFolio Editor

Haunted by Barbara Haworth-Attard

fernfolio — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:39:16 +0000

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 Gran, the body’s discovery begins a dark and difficult period. Her Gran, whose help during childbirth and whose teas and potions are asked for and consumed by neighbours too poor to call upon Dr. Hughes, the local physician, is called a witch by these same neighbours and, as the police investigation stalls, is accused of murder. Her long-time friend, Billy, suddenly announces he supposes he’ll marry her, before taking up with Vivien, a sly and unpredictable girl whose family has moved into the abandoned house next door. As she and her friend Clooey begin their final year at the school at Price’s Corners, Dee starts to dream of the two of them continuing onto the high school in the nearby town of Wallen, and of one day becoming a nurse, though she knows her Gran expects her to remain at home. She makes friends with Clarence, a young soldier who has returned from the trenches missing parts of his mind and memories.
Gifted, or cursed, with the Sight and able from her earliest childhood to see ghosts, Dee becomes aware of the presence of a dark shadow up on the mountain, a shadow that seems to creep ever closer to her home, one that starts to stalk her. Gradually, Dee becomes aware that a number of young girls have disappeared from the area around Price’s Corners and Wallen during recent years. Her Gift allows Dee to read the resting place of one girl, and to relive the death of one of another, and she begins to realise that she might be the only person able to uncover the identity of the monster killing these young girls. As the community’s mood turns ugly, and vigilantes threaten to take justice into their own hands, Dee must take a difficult stand against her Gran, her friends and neighbours, and risk her own safety, to find and stop a murderer before he can kill again.
Set in Ontario just after World War I, Haunted unfolds against the backdrop of small-town and small-minded fears and prejudice. Dee, whose give name is Defiance, is a strong and remarkable young girl whose steadfast belief in herself and her friends, in the face of ugly rumours and accusations, is a testament to friendship and courage. A tale that will haunt the reader…
FernFolio Editor

Not Suitable for Family Viewing by Vicki Grant

fernfolio — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:15:18 +0000

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 friendly with her only to meet Mimi and her celebrity friends, forgotten by her fun but irresponsible rock musician father, and ignored by her perpetually busy mother, Robin has everything that money can buy and nothing that she needs. She knows that the only person who loves her is Anita, her mother’s housekeeper, and the only person who listens to her is her senile grandfather. In recent years, the only contact Robin has had with her mother is by watching her on television.
When she finds a high school ring and photograph hidden inside a chair in her mother’s bedroom, Robin is perplexed. She recognises her mother’s face in the photograph, but cannot imagine when and why Mimi might have visited Port Minton, Nova Scotia, or why someone on their high school’s hockey team would have given Mimi his championship ring. Urged by Anita to get off the sofa and do something other than watch reruns of her mother’s show, and goaded by Selena, Anita’s teenaged daughter, Robin decides to go to Port Minton and find some answers.
When the bus driver drops her off at the side of the road in Port Minton, Robin discovers a fishing village that is largely abandoned, following the collapse of the fishery. A guy in a battered old van picks her up and offers to drive her to nearby Shelton, where there is a hostel, and Robin is strapped into her seat before she starts to question the wisdom of climbing into the vehicle of a tall, well-built stranger. She embarrasses herself by screaming and giving him a black eye, when he reaches across to let her out at the hostel, but Levi Nauss will help Robin by telling her about Port Minton, and introducing her to many of its former inhabitants. Too bad she can’t find the courage to tell him who she really is, or why she’s come to Nova Scotia with questions, especially when it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her.
Written by Vicki Grant, author of Quid Pro Quo, The Puppet Wrangler, and Pigboy, Not Suitable for Family Viewing tells the story of one teenaged girl’s journey in search of some insight into her emotionally absent mother, and about the friends, the self-acceptance and the mother she finds along the way. A terrific book for readers from grade 7 up!
FernFolio Editor

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

fernfolio — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:13:12 +0000

With his father gone, it falls to eleven-year old Gregor to look after his two-year old sister, Boots, and keep an eye on their senile grandmother, since his mother works long hours to support the family. On a hot July afternoon Gregor grabs the laundry, and Boots, and heads for the laundry room to get a couple of loads started before his mother gets home but, while he’s busy filling the washing machine, Boots toddles after her ball and gets sucked into the heating vent in the wall. Horrified, Gregor jumps after her, and finds himself falling, falling into the Underland, a dangerous and exciting world hidden far below the earth’s surface.
Found by giant meter-high talking cockroaches, Gregor fears that he and Boots will be killed, but the little girl is thrilled with the “beeg bugs,” and soon appears to have them captivated. The roaches take the two children to Regalia, a beautiful underground city which is home to a group of humans whose ancestors followed their leader, Bartholomew of Sandwich, underground some four hundred years previously.
Though the Underlanders and their young Queen, Luxa, treat Gregor and Boots like important guests, and give them rooms in the castle, they make it clear that they expect the two to remain in the Underland. However Gregor is determined to get himself and Boots home, eager to leave the darkness behind and worried about their mother who has already weathered the disappearance of her husband. With Boots secure in a pack on his back, Gregor sneaks out of the castle through its water supply, but is caught and almost eaten by giant rats. They are rescued by the Queen’s guard, and taken back to city, where Gregor learns that the Queen’s advisors believe he is the warrior from the Overland whose actions may save the citizens of Regalia from the armies of the Rat King. Gregor tries to explain that he is no warrior, and that he lacks the skills and experience they need, but the Underlanders are determined that he will lead the quest that will determine the fate of every creature in the Underland.
Giant talking animals, rats, roaches, spiders and bats, humans grown accustomed to life in a world without sun, cryptic prophecies, a proud and difficult young queen, a sly traitor who plots to overthrow a throne, a fearless and loving two-year old, and an ordinary boy desperate to get his sister safely home; all of these help to make Suzanne Collins’ story a thrilling adventure. Gregor the Overlander is the first book of the Underland Chronicles.
FernFolio Editor

Greener Grass by Caroline Pignat

fernfolio — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:56:04 +0000

During Ireland’s Great Famine, in the 1840’s, the potato crops were struck with blight and turned to rotten mush in the fields. For poor tenant farmers, who for generations had planted potatoes as their only crop, the blight spelled disaster. Without food to fed their families, or a crop to sell for money to buy goods and pay their rent, Irish men left to look for jobs in England, but soon there was no jobs to be had, and people starved.
With her da off in England looking for work, Kit Byrne, fourteen, works long hours as a maid in the house of Lord Fraser, the English landowner, and helps her mother with little Annie, while her brother, Jack, helps old Lizzie, the village wise woman and healer, for an egg a day. Though times are difficult, her mam’s devote belief that God will provide and her abiding hope in the future, help Kit and her brother and sister in the face of growing adversity. Kit delights in her friendship with Millie, and enjoys stolen moments with Tom Lynch, son of the Frasers’ middleman.
But this winter, things turn harder, faster, than the winter before. Kit is fired along with many of the other household servants by Lynch as a cost cutting measure. Though she finds work helping Lizzie alongside Jack, she watches in growing alarm as no letter arrives from her father, and her mam and siblings get thinner.
In the year that follows, Kit watches as, unable to pay their rent, friends and neighbours are evicted from their houses by Lynch, others say good-bye before boarding ships to Canada, Australia and America, and other, too many others, die of starvation, overwork, fever, or grief.
Forced by bitter circumstance to become the head of her own family, Kit discovers in herself the determination to do anything it takes to ensure her loved ones’ safety and survival, even if it means imprisonment or death.
Written by Caroline Pignat, author of the wonderful Egghead, Greener Grass is a gripping account of one girl’s struggle to survive the Irish Potato Famines. Pignat’s story is rich in historic detail, yet simply and movingly told. Terrific!
FernFolio Editor