Fifteen-year-old James, a championship diver, finds himself torn between his dreams of Olympic glory, his love for his adoptive parents, and his desperate need to find his birth mother.
The Snake-Stone
Realistic Fiction
Realistic Fiction genre
Ways to Live Forever
1. My name is Sam. 2. I am eleven years old. 3. I collect stories and fantastic facts. 4. I have leukemia. 5. By the time you read this, I will probably be dead. Living through the final stages of leukemia, Sam collects stories, questions, lists, and pictures that create a profoundly moving portrait of how a boy lives when he knows his time is almost up.
Being Bindy
Eighth grade is torture–at least it is for Bindy!(1) Her best friend since kindergarten becomes her worst enemy.(2) She’s stuck taking yoga in sports ed, where she unleashes the Very Bad Thing that gets the whole school talking.(3) She suffers total humiliation when certain unmentionables are tossed around at assembly.What’s more, Bindy’s divorced parents are behaving badly.(1) Her laid-back father looks like he’s falling for–could it be?– none other than her ex-best friend’s mother. Which means that . . .(2) . . . Bindy’s worst enemy might just end up as her sister!(3) Her domineering mom always wants Bindy to do things her way.Enough is enough! To survive the drama in her life, Bindy must make some tough decisions in this funny, searching novel about being true to yourself.
Dancing Through The Snow
After four different foster placements, Min is back at Children’s Aid a week before Christmas. She has no family, no birthday, no idea of where she came from. Then Jess Hart, a former Children’s Aid doctor who sees past Min’s hardened shell, decides to take Min home for the holidays. Has Min found her place at last?
Fat Boy Saves World
Sixteen-year-old Susan Bennett faces a world of confusion between her difficult parents and overweight, non-speaking brother, but when her sibling finally speaks in order to confess that his plan is to save the world, Susan realizes that the time has come to confront her parents.
Letters From The Inside
When Tracey and Mandy first became pen pals, they never guessed that they would soon discover the darkest secrets of each other’s troubled lives.
Wild Orchid
Shortlisted for Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year Award 2007 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award nominee 2007 Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Willow Awards nominee Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice Starred Selection White Pine nominee, 2007 McNally Robinson announced that Wild Orchid was one of the top five best selling books in Saskatechewan in 2006. Taylor Jane Simon is 18 years old and spending the summer with her mother in Prince Albert National Park. The holiday has been planned so Taylor’s mother can spend time with her latest boyfriend, Danny, and work in the pizza restaurant near the park that Danny runs. Taylor would just as soon stay at home in Saskatoon, but because she suffers from an autistic condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, she can’t stay on her own. Taylor’s mother encourages her daughter to explore the park’s possibilities on her own. For Taylor, whose life experience has been seriously limited, this means facing the test of meeting new people who work in the park’s nature center – and facing it alone. Summer also holds out the possibility of finding her own boyfriend, though Taylor isn’t quite sure what that may involve. What she discovers will change her life forever. Written as an epistolary novel, Wild Orchid is frank but optimistic, literal yet innocent. A courageous wit attends Taylor’s gradual emergence as her own person, and the reader will find the exploration of Taylor’s mind a revealing and heartwarming encounter.
Markus and the Girls
Set in contemporary Norway, only two months into his first year of junior high school, Markus has already fallen in love with all of the girls in his class.
This book is a sequel to Markus and Diana (2006).
Flight to Freedom
In Flight to Freedom, Anna Veciana-Suarez brings us Yara, an eighth-grader who lives in a middle-class neighborhood of 1967 Havana, Cuba. Her parents, who do not share the political beliefs of the Communist party, finally are forces to flee Cuba with their children to Miami, Florida. There, Yara records in her diary the difficulties she encounters in a strange land with foreign customs. She must learn English and go to school with new children. Her parents also adjust to the new country differently, and Yara’s father grows frustrated with her mother when she becomes more independent.
The Singing Mountain
When sixteen-year-old Carlie learns that her older cousin Mitch is staying in Israel to study at an Orthodox yeshiva, she is upset and angry. Since she was orphaned years ago, Carlie and Mitch have lived together like brother and sister. In Israel Mitch finds fulfillment in studying the Torah, in his work as an artist, and in his new relationship with an Israeli girl.
In California, Carlie, her aunt Vivian and uncle Harry grow increasingly alarmed at Mitch’s defection. They fear he has been brainwashed. Aunt Vivian decides to take Carlie to Israel to lure Mitch back home. Once there, Carlie is awakened by Mitch’s new spirituality. After surviving a traumatic incident she realizes that she has a strength of her own. Finally, Carlie holds the key to the changing paths that each of them will take.