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Finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, fifteen-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle -- the squalid, makeshift migrant community in Calais. When an altercation at the soup kitchen ends up with him accidently stabbing a policeman, Abdul has to flee, and in desperation he takes a spot in a small boat heading to England.

In 1981, sixteen-year-old Sally McLean is in a car full of teenagers when it plunges through the ice to the bottom of Mistik Lake. Sally is the only survivor. Many years later, Sally's teenaged daughter, Odella, is left wondering whether the accident is to blame for her mother's life as a sad alcoholic who eventually abandons her family and flees to Iceland with another man. When Sally suddenly dies in an accident, Odella, her father and her two younger sisters are almost overwhelmed with grief and confusion, until three people provide help and healing in unexpected ways.

Massive climate change has caused a winter that will not thaw, and it seems that the forces of nature have turned on humanity itself. But in the sleepy British village of Pateley, one special girl may hold the key to the earth’s survival.Wyn, an orphan, has always known that she is different. Unable to feel the biting cold of wind and snow of Pateley’s endless winter, she does what she can to blend in.

Winner of the Ruth Schwartz Award Jeanne Chatel has always dreamed of adventure. So when the eighteen-year-old orphan is summoned to sail from France to the wilds of North America to become a king's daughter and marry a French settler, she doesn't hesitate. Her new husband is not the dashing military man she has dreamed of, but a trapper with two small children who lives in a small cabin in the woods.

When sixteen-year-old Gloria fails thirteen out of fifteen subjects on her final exams, her future looks bleak indeed. Her family's resources are meager so the entire family is thrilled when a distant relative, Christine, offers to move Gloria north to Kumasi to look after her toddler son. In exchange, after two years, Christine will pay for Gloria to go to school. Life in Kumasi is more grand than anything Gloria has ever experienced. She joins a youth band at church and Christine has even promised to teach her to read.

Rose and Michael are good students with bright futures. They are also in love. But when Rose gets pregnant, her behavior becomes increasingly strange as she pulls away from her best friend, and from Michael, while she struggles to cope with her predicament.Rose cannot admit that she is pregnant (“If I say it, it will come to be true.”). She moves from denial to ineptly trying to terminate her pregnancy, to believing that she has miscarried, while deep inside, she is on a mental and emotional downward spiral.

Winner of the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction The year is 1959, and fifteen-year-old Nipishish returns to his reserve in northern Quebec after being kicked out of residential school, where the principal tells him he's a good-for-nothing who, like all Indians, can look forward to a life of drunkenness, prison and despair. The reserve, however, offers nothing to Nipishish. He remembers little of his late mother and father. In fact, he seems to know less about himself than the people at the band office.

The MaestroBurl Crow hasn't had many breaks in his young life. His father is a manipulative lout with a dangerous temper; his mother, worn down by years of abuse, now resorts to her little helpers to get her through the days. Then he meets Nathaniel Orlando Gow, the Maestro, and in just one day, this eccentric genius changes Burl's life forever.The Boy in the Burning HouseTwo years after his father mysteriously disappeared, Jim Hawkins is coping -- barely. Underneath he's frozen in uncertainty and grief. Then Ruth Rose crashes into his life.

Sixteen-year-old Gray Fallon's life is looking pretty good. His easygoing parents -- a university science professor and silkscreen artist -- are happy for him to entertain his friends in his suburban basement. A part-time job at the Cineplex, the occasional beer or joint, a smart, funny best friend, a hot new girlfriend -- things couldn't really be any better. Then Gray's twelve-year-old science nerd sister, Maggie, is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Gray learns that the cancer may have environmental causes and sets out to uncover the cause and make Maggie better.

Isaac loves art class, drives an old pickup, argues with his father and hangs out with his best buddy, Hazel. But his life is anything but normal. His parents operate an illegal marijuana grow-op, Hazel is a bear that guards the property, and his family’s livelihood is a deep secret.It’s no time to fall in love with the daughter of a cop.Isaac’s girlfriend Sam is unpredictable, ambitious and needy.