Addison Addley has to come up with a 3-minute speech for his Grade 5 public speaking contest. He’s thought of a really great idea for his speech, Things That Aren’t Really There, and both his mom and his best friend Sam, who’s brilliant, have been busy coming up with lots of good example for him, [...]
For twelve year-old Tobin McCaully, seventh grade begins pretty much as every other grade, even though he’s now attending a middle school. He’s still saddled with the reputations of his hell-raising older brothers and sister, he’s still the butt of Cody Peters’ jokes, and he’s still trying to lay low enough to fly under [...]
Struggling to care for his severely depressed mother, whose illness has meant their downward slide into extreme poverty, Owen must also cope with the whispers and knowing looks of people in the village. “Like father like son. He’ll go the same way,” the neighbours say, not very comforting or supportive when those same neighbours state [...]
Nine year-old Murphy Jones has lived in the same apartment with his mother, Lisa, and his cat, Mousetrap, for as long as he can remember. Though his mom worries that he doesn’t spend enough time with other boys his age, and her job doesn’t pay well enough for many trips to restaurants or the [...]
Ten year-old Eddie lives with his mother and grandparents in Haida Gwaii, known by non-Natives as the Queen Charlotte Islands, along the coast of British Columbia. With his best friend, Jake, Eddie hikes up to Spirit Lake, where they have built a raft, helps Jake’s mother gather berries and plants to make traditional medicines, [...]
Fourteen year-old Gerry Copeland has mixed feelings about spending six months of every year living in a camp on the African veldt while his scientist parents study baboons. He misses his friends, going to the movies, watching television, indoor plumbing. Returning from a supply run to Arusha, where they have stocked up on [...]
Daniel is not looking forward to the class trip to a heritage farm. Small, skinny, and bucktoothed with coke-bottle glasses, he has enough problems as the bookish class runt without the added hassles of a day around pigs. Daniel’s last name is Hogg, and the class bully, Shane Coolen, has already taken great [...]
Twelve year-old Stephen Majok lives with his sixteen year-old sister, Naomi, and their mother in a small village in southern Sudan. Though civil war rages around them, the villagers are more preoccupied with looking for the first clouds that will herald the rainy season, desperately needed after three years of drought. The village’s [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
