Ten-year-old Kenny (Kenji in Japanese) worships his older brother, Mickey (Mitsuo), a baseball hero whose outstanding performance on the Asahi baseball team has given him fame and popularity. Despite Kenny's suspected heart condition, he is determined to practice secretly with Mickey so he, too, can one day try out for the Asahi. But world events soon overtake life in this quiet community. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in 1941, everything for Kenny and his family spirals out of control: ...

Take a dash of colorful characters, a pinch of danger, and generous scoops of adventure and you have a terrific culinary mystery for young readers.Five cousins are looking forward to their annual vacation at their grandmother’s cottage. None of them knows that this may be their last such summer. A mining company has set its sights on the land and is determined to seize it. Grandma must produce the deed to prove that the property is really hers, but her memory is not what it used to...

A writer and educator reflects on the idealistic, tumultuous, and eye-opening time she spent as a back-to-the-land hippie homesteader in Kootenays in the 1970s.What compelled a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs of New York to spend a decade of her life as a hippie homesteader in the BC wilderness? Galena Bay Odyssey traces Ellen Schwartz’s journey from a born-and-raised urbanite who was terrified of the woods to a self-determined logger, cabin-builder, gar...

Brendan has it all—captain of the basketball team, good friends, a beautiful girlfriend and a loving family—until he is diagnosed with leukemia.Terrified and convinced that no one understands what he is going through, Brendan faces chemotherapy alone, until he meets Lark. She is also in treatment, although her condition is much worse, and yet she remains positive and hopeful. Brendan is torn between feeling sorry for himself and the love for life that Lark brings t...

It is 1947 and Yankee fever grips the Bronx. Nine-year-old Joey Sexton joins the neighborhood kids who flock to the park to team up and play. However, Joey is of mixed race and his skin is lighter than the other kids’. He is seldom picked.When Joey’s mother dies, he is sent to live with his mother’s estranged family. Joey is whisked away to Brooklyn. Though it’s just across town, it might as well be a different world. His grandfather, his aunt Frieda, and his ten-year-old cousin Ro...

Yossi Mendelsohn works hard to help his family survive after they flee Russia to find a better life in Montreal. He sells newspapers and carries bundles from the garment factory. Yossi longs to play "le hockey" with the French boys, but he has no skates. When his father falls ill and his sister and her fiancé organize a walkout at the factory, Yossi's dream of lacing on skates seems farther away than ever.

Jesse's project about his immigrant ancestors is due tomorrow and he hasn't started. In a last-ditch effort to find some information about his great-great grandfather, Yossi, Jesse rummages through the mess in the attic until he finds a little battered travel case, full of pictures, and something else—a Star of David. At first it looks plain and unimportant, but as he holds it in his hand, the star begins to glow. Jesse is in for the surprise, and adventure, of his life as he finds himself...

Vancouver, 1942. When best friends Esther and Michiko spot the beautiful Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret dolls—in vogue at the time—in the local toy store window, they long to get the dolls for their shared birthday. But when Esther receives the doll and Michiko doesn’t, their friendship starts to unravel.The story is set against the backdrop of an atmosphere of increasing hostility and racist attacks upon the Japanese community—culminating in the Internment.As the...

Whether it’s for health, humane, or taste reasons, many young people are vegetarians. This is the perfect book to help them be healthy ones. It provides a history of vegetarianism, advice on balancing one’s diet, yummy food ideas, and, best of all, ways to cope with sticky situations. How do you handle the inevitable trips to the local burger joint? How do you resist Grandma’s attempts to get you to try just a bit of her famous roast turkey? How do you respond to dire predictions that it’s...

Gwen lives for dancing. When she has the chance to take an intensive - and expensive - course far from home, she knows her parents will object. She also knows that she can usually convince her father to support her. She raises the subject when they're together skiing, but the discussion turns into an angry confrontation that is cut short by a sudden dreadful avalanche that almost kills her dad.The avalanche leaves terrible damage in its wake. Gwen is left wracked with guilt and inj...

Selected for inclusion in the Best Books for the Teen Age 2004 List by the New York Public Library.Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years, but its surge in popularity among young people is new. I Love Yoga is not a how-to book. It is the book for those who are already hooked, as well as for those who are just curious about this ancient activity.Ellen Schwartz – author of I’m a Vegetarian –presents the history of yoga, different sty...

Byzantine art has been an underappreciated field, often treated as an adjunct to the arts of the medieval West, if considered at all. In illustrating the richness and diversity of art in the Byzantine world, this handbook will help establish the subject as a distinct field worthy of serious inquiry. Essays consider Byzantine art as art made in the eastern Mediterranean world, including the Balkans, Russia, the Near East and north Africa, between the years 330 and 1453. Much of this art was...