Juvenile fiction

  • Growing Up Ivy

    Creator

    Leavey, Peggy Dymond

    Abstract

    Commended for the 2011 Best Books for Kids and Teens Living in grim Depression-era Toronto with her actress mother, Frannie, Ivy Chalmers has never met her father. In 1931, Frannie sends twelve-year-old Ivy to stay with her paternal grandmother in Larkin, Ontario, while she seeks stardom in New York City. When Ivy’s father, Alva, arrives unexpectedly in Larkin, he turns out not to be the Prince Charming she imagined, but an illiterate peddler.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Wild Spirits

    Creator

    Jordan, Rosa

    Abstract

    Eleven-year-old Danny Ryan and 19-year-old Wendy Marshall think their friendship is only about looking after two baby raccoons that Danny has rescued. But when a bank holdup upsets Wendy so much that she can hardly stand to be around people, she leaves her job as a teller, retreats to a farm, and surrounds herself with injured and orphaned wildlife.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Under Emily's Sky

    Creator

    Alma, Ann

    Abstract

    During a camping trip, 11-year-old Lee finds herself on a rough trail in a Vancouver Island forest. Halfway to an abandoned homestead, Lee trips and is knocked unconscious. She awakens in a world unfamiliar -- all the usual landmarks have disappeared and the terrain is unpopulated except for a strange trailer and a herd of dogs. Lee investigates only to find an ornery woman at an easel who says she's Emily Carr, and a family from the Depression-torn Prairies illegally logging the island's mighty cedars.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Reading the Bones A Peggy Henderson Adventure

    Creator

    McMurchy-Barber, Gina

    Abstract

    Due to circumstances beyond her control, 12-year-old Peggy Henderson has to move to the quiet town of Crescent Beach, British Columbia, to live with her aunt and uncle. Without a father and separated from her mother, who's looking for work, Peggy feels her unhappiness increasing until the day she and her uncle start digging a pond in the backyard and she realizes the rock she's been trying to pry from the ground is really a human skull. Peggy eventually learns that her home and the entire seaside town were built on top of a 5000-year-old Coast Salish fishing village.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Mystery at Shildii Rock

    Creator

    Feagan, Robert

    Abstract

    Short-listed for the 2009 Golden Eagle Book Award To the Gwich’in First Nation, Shildii Rock near Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories is a place of deep mythological significance.When 12-year-old Robin Harris, the son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, spots someone on the rock staring at him, he just knows something is wrong. Robin and his friend Wayne Reindeer, a Gwichin youth, set out to discover what’s going on and to gain the respect of their fathers. But Robin is notorious for his overactive imagination and has a hard time getting anyone to believe him.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Murder Fit for a King

    Creator

    McCloskey, Larry

    Abstract

    Dani and Caitlin, two 12-year-old Ottawa girls, have a talent for meeting ghosts. Fresh from their adventures with the spirit of fabled Canadian painter Tom Thomson, the girls find themselves in Quebec, across the river from the capital city of Canada, touring the Kingsmere estate of longdead prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. While there the friends run into someone famous for seeing ghosts himself the old prime minister, or at least his phantom! King, affectionately known as Rex, presents the sleuthing duo with a series of problems.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Escape Adventures of a Loyalist Family

    Creator

    Fryer, Mary Beacock

    Abstract

    Plots, shots, flight, pursuit — all are part of this story from the exciting chapter in America's history when thousands of Loyalists fled to Canada to evade the vengeance of the American Revolutionaries. Twelve-year-old Ned Seaman tells this lively tale of his family's perilous journey. Escape may be fiction, but Martha and Caleb Seaman and their children actually existed.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • A Deadly Distance

    Creator

    Down, Heather

    Abstract

    "Startled, Mishbee gasped, frozen with horror. She was staring down the barrel of a musket and was familiar with the sound those weapons made. The young girl knew muskets meant death." At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Newfoundland, the Beothuks, a First Nations people, have been decimated by disease, and their numbers dwindle further as they are hunted and persecuted relentlessly by European settlers. Young Mishbee, her older sister Oobata, and Oobata’s baby struggle courageously on Exploits Island against tuberculosis, misunderstanding, and prejudice.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Laughing Wolf

    Creator

    Maes, Nicholas

    Abstract

    Short-listed for the 2010 Saskatchewan Young Reader’s Choice Award - Snow Willow and for the 2010 Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award It is the year 2213. Fifteen-year-old Felix Taylor is the last person on Earth who can speak and read Latin. In a world where technology has defeated war, crime, poverty, and famine, and time travel exists as a distinct possibility, Felix’s language skills and knowledge seem out of place and irrelevant. But are they? A mysterious plague has broken out. Scientists can’t stop its advance, and humanity is suddenly poised on the brink of eradication.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified
  • Howl The Wild Place Adventure Series

    Creator

    Hood-Caddy, Karen

    Abstract

    After saving her dog, Robin begins rescuing wild animals and she’s soon running an illegal animal shelter. Short-listed for the 2012 CLA Book of the Year for Children Award and for the 2012 IODE Violet Downey Book Award Twelve-year-old Robin will never get over her mother’s death. Nor will she forgive her father for moving the family to a small town to live with a weird grandmother. At her new school Robin is laughingly called "Green Girl" and is taunted relentlessly because of an award she received. She decides not to care about anyone or anything.

    Publisher (Source)

    Toronto

    Dundurn

    Not specified