Mr. Christie's Book Award - 12 years & up includes Ranvan the Defender, Out of the Blue, Dream Carvers, Uncle Ronald, Silverwing (2007), Zack.
Zack Lane knows about his father's side of the family -- they are descendants of Romanian Jews -- but his black mother broke all ties with her family before Zack was born. Why she did so is the "Family Mystery."
Uprooted by his parents' move to the outskirts of a small town, Zack is friendless and at the lowest point in his life. He undertakes a research project into the life of Richard Pierpoint, former African slave, soldier in the War of 1812, and the pioneer farmer who cleared the land on which Zack's house now stands. Pierpoint's story inspires Zack to go to Mississippi to look for his maternal grandfather. What he discovers shakes the foundations of all he has believed in.
In the year 2368, humanity struggles to recuperate from a technocaust that has left a generation of orphans in its wake. Strict government regulations convince people that technology is dangerous; confusion and fear rule the earth.
Blay Raytee is a government work-camp orphan. Her future seems as bleak as that of the world around her. But when she is chosen for a special mission by a guardian of the environment named Marrella, Blay begins to discover that all may not be as it seems. The secrets she uncovers could hold the key both to the healing of the world and to her own past. What she learns may just empower her to join those who struggle to restore democracy -- and to discover at last who she really is.
Master storyteller Janet McNaughton vividly imagines an all-too-believable future where one child's brave search for the truth could restore a broken world.
Sadie tries hard to provide her sister with love and stability, but it's an uphill struggle. The girls at Bishop Spencer School for Girls are mean to Sadie, partly because she is a foreigner from Canada, and partly because she is smart and does well in her classes. And although she makes a new friend-Teddy, whom she met when her family stayed at the hotel his parents run-theirs is a different kind of friendship, one that Sadie finds difficult to navigate.
Sadie's world is rocked when her father stops writing to her and, more crucially, stops sending money to Mrs. Hatch. Terrified that something has happened to her father, and well aware she and Flora may be sent to an orphanage, Sadie quickly learns that everything depends on her.
With The Word for Home, award-winning author Joan Clark has created a moving novel about one girl's search for friendship, love and security, and the place her search leads her-a place called home.
Winner of the Mr. Christie's Book Award!
Shortlist for the 2004 Canadian Library Association Young Adult Canadian Book Award
Ontario Library Association's Golden Oak Award winner, 2005
This riveting story is about a fifteen-yearold boy who, as the story opens, realizes he has no idea who he is-beyond his first name-or what has led to his loss of memory. From the outset, he's on the run, a street kid thrust out on his own, living byhis wits and involved in a quest to find another lost teenager whose First Nations father is desperate for news of his son. In the process, he learns to survive and begins to get a sense of his strengths and character.