A young girl growing up in Spanish Harlem in the 1940’s watches the secure world of her childhood years slowly erode away.
Nilda
Coming of age
On Rough Seas
At 14, Alec knows what he wants to be: a seaman. Instead of working at his family’s inn, he prefers roaming through the busy streets and docks of Dover. When the captain of the Britannia, one of the fishing vessels in the Channel, asks him to be a galley boy, he seizes the opportunity in spite of his father’s objections. On his first day at sea, he weathers a severe storm similar to the one that took the life of his cousin and best friend, Georgie, months earlier. Alec still feels guilty for having not been able to save Georgie. England is at war with Germany, and soon Alec is doing more than swabbing the deck and handling the ropes of the fishing vessel. He wonders why shadowy figures are disappearing into the tunnels under the old stone castle and who the special soldiers being billeted at the inn are. Then comes terrible news: hundreds of thousands of British forces are trapped on the beach at Dunkirk. All ships in the Channel, large and small, are ordered to undertake a massive evacuation. Alec’s transformation from galley boy to courageous seaman is a riveting journey in this dramatic debut novel.
Rex Zero, King of Nothing
In 1962 Ottawa, 11-year-old Rex Norton-Norton faces several confusing mysteries, including his father’s troubling secrets from World War II, the problems of a beautiful but unhappy woman named Natasha, what to do about his mean and vindictive teacher, and whether or not he should even be concerned about these things.
Letters from Rifka
In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family’s flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America.
Notes from the Teenage Underground
Seventeen-year-old Gem loves movies, her feminist mom, and Dodgy, her coworker in a video store (at least she thinks she loves Dodgy). When a school trip inspires Gem to make an underground film, her best friends Lo and Mira are quick to join the project, taking on the roles of producer and star. The film is intended to cement the girls’ friendship as well as their superiority over their sucker high school peers. But when the fragile balance of their friendship begins to falter, and intentions lead to betrayals big and small, it will take great movies, bad haiku, and a pantheon of great voices—from Dostoyevsky to Emerson to The Beatles—to help Gem find the meaning of love, friendship, and being true to herself.
Where We Once Belonged
The Samoan storytelling narratives tell Samoan’s culture and the experience of being a young woman coming of age in that culture.
The Princetta
Rebelling against the rigid constraints of her life as Princetta of Galnicia, fifteen-year-old Malva escapes with her maid Philomena and together they embark on a perilous and adventurous journey that will change the course of their lives forever.
Bat Mitzvah: A Jewish Girl’s Coming Of Age
A history and description of the bat mitzvah, the ceremony in which a Jewish girl marks her transition to adulthood.
The Center Of The World
As he works through his often difficult relationships with his single mother, distant twin sister, his first boyfriend and an odd assortment of friends, a teenage boy learns about the wounds and healing brought by love.