The Great Famine in Ireland was a catastrophe of immense proportions. Eviction, emigration and death from starvation were widespread. Landlords, eager to dispose of 'surplus' tenants, engaged in 'assisted passages', whereby tenants were given financial incentives to emigrate. The clearances of uneconomic tenants from the 85,000-acre Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow by Lord Fitzwilliam were the most organised in Ireland during and after the Famine years. From 1847 to 1856 Fitzwilliam remo...

A veteran of the foster care system, 10-year-old Jake "McMagic" is also a story-teller. As Jake settles into his new foster home on a family dairy farm, his story of traveling fish is cut short by hearing his new older brother is leaving, and his baby brother-adopted by another family years before-is in a hospital somewhere! Determined to find and rescue his little brother, Jake must decide: can he trust others to help, or should he again strike out on his own? Readers will cheer on Jake a...

Set against the backdrop of the 2008 Great Recession, this story follows twelve-year-old Anne. Watch as her world changes in an instant! After her father loses his job, she watches him slowly unravel, turning to alcohol in a desperate attempt to cope with the weight of providing for his family. With money tight and tension rising at home, Anne, a brave and resilient young girl, must sacrifice her summer plans and work in her grandfather's onion patch to help pay for her sister Libby's pres...

Too often, we think of school as a fixed-rail path we all have to follow: teachers teach, students learn, exams are taken, futures set. That's how it's been since the introduction of compulsory schooling in the 19th century.But parents, teachers and corporations around the world are now voicing their dissatisfaction with education systems that are no longer fit for purpose. Too many of our young people are not being adequately prepared for the unprecedented challenges they will fac...

Alice doesn’t like noise, smells or strangers. She does like rules. Lots of rules.Nobody at her new school knows she is autistic, and soon Alice finds herself in trouble because the rules here are different. When she meets Megan in detention, she doesn’t know what to make of her. Megan doesn’t smell, she’s not terribly noisy, and she’s not exactly a stranger. But is she a friend? Megan seems fearless to Alice; but also angry or maybe sad. Alice isn’t sure which. Wh...

A quirky collection of stories about teens in lust and in love. From the first stirrings of same-sex desire to paternity questions around a teen pregnancy, 101 Ways to Dance reflects the spectrum of teen sexuality from the sweet to the scary.

From the Newbery Award–winning author of Sarah, Plain and Tall comes a story about one brave girl who saves her family from losing everything. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls this lyrical tale “melodic, poetic, and enchanting.”Everyone in Lucy’s family sings. Opera. Rap. Lullabies. Everyone, except Lucy. Lucy can’t sing; her voice won’t come out.Just like singing, helping Aunt Frankie prepare for flooding season is a family tr...

Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and the TD CCBC Canadian Children's Literature AwardKip is spending the summer with his grandmother and his five eccentric girl cousins, including Emily, who thinks she's a dog. Gran's house is about to be demolished, so anything goes, whether it's drawing maps on the walls or sawing off the knob at the bottom of the banister for a smoother ride.When Kip bashes through an old closet, he discovers the...

Criterion, an aging horseshow champion, is sold and forgotten until Linda finds him in an overgrown pasture. Should his age keep him from the show ring, or is he the perfect horse to rescue her new friend?Honored with a third place in Children's Fiction/Nonfiction, 2001 Focus on Writers ContestFriends of the Sacramento Library, 1100 entries over all

Zach and Zoe are camping with their parents in a British Columbia forest when a girl at another campsite wanders off. It takes all of the twins' smarts and know-how to rescue the lost camper and get back to their campsite safely. From the fear of wild fires to the fear of wild bears, the twins are in for one wild, wet ride.

The first full-scale biography of Canada’s first prime minister in half a century by one of our best-known and most highly regarded political writers.The first volume of Richard Gwyn’s definitive biography of John A. Macdonald follows his life from his birth in Scotland in 1815 to his emigration with his family to Kingston, Ontario, to his days as a young, rising lawyer, to his tragedy-ridden first marriage, to the birth of his political ambitions, to his commitment to the all-but-...