Ghost Boy of MacKenzie House
Publisher: Acorn Press$11.95Ten-year-old Chloe Sutton arrives on Prince Edward Island from her home in Ontario after the tragic loss of her parents in a car accident. Her Aunt Laverne (Larry) is a doctor and her only relative able to take her in. Chloe isn’t sure what to make of her aunt’s big old house on the red cliff overlooking the Northumberland Strait, or the skinny, red-haired and heavily freckled boy who wants to be her friend. Her first night in her new home, Chloe is tormented by the loss of her mother and father and hides in the dark to speak to them. When she does, she unknowingly invites the attention of a ghostly boy who inhabits the oldest part of the farmstead. Terrified but intrigued by the encounter, Chloe decides to uncover his history, setting her off on a set of adventures. When she does finally find the ghost boy’s secret, she realizes he has been blaming himself for years for the death of his brother, much like she has been blaming herself for surviving her parents. With the wrong made right, Chloe is finally let go of her own grief and accepted her new life.
Headliner
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Franny Callaghan feels invisible. With a missing mother only seen occasionally who speaks to the family through the closed door of her bedroom or the ensuite bathroom and a father and younger sister, who travel most of the time, home long enough to wash their underwear and re-pack before heading to the next competition so her sister can be an Olympic speed skater, Franny feels alone most of the time.
Franny’s brother died a few years before and is only seen in the photos on the wall. Her family hasn’t spoken of him since the day of his big funeral and all the news coverage of the tragic accident that killed eight members of the Ridgewood High School Orchestra and one of his teachers. And Franny Callaghan remains… just the awkward middle kid in a family that used to look like everyone else’s.
What if Franny just took off to go see her brother’s favorite band on the anniversary of his death? Maybe that would be the jolt her family so badly needed.
Kira’s Crossing
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95Five years had passed since Kira discovered that she was a mermaid adopted by a fisherman and his wife. Her birth parents were merrow royalty who had been imprisoned by their enemies, the shape shifting Finfolk. The Finfolk had also taken over Merhaven, the hereditary undersea home of the West Atlantic merrows. Encouraged by merrow clans and supported by the local fishing community, Kira decided to join a Merhaven recovery mission. Also volunteering for the operation was Janus, a mysterious, handsome young merrow from the North Sea, as well as several Spegars, large merrows from across the Atlantic, who hunted with spears. In the chaos that followed the mission, Kira found herself on an unexpected journey that would take her across the continent and a fight for her own survival.
Kira’s Quest
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Now that Kira knows the secret of her past, she can’t help but want to know more about her underwater world.
Kira’s Secret
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Twelve-year-old Kira loves to swim. But her parents, who adopted her as a baby, have forbidden her to go near the sea where they live on the north Atlantic coast. Frustrated by their rules, Kira decides to rebel and jumps into the icy waters. She is shocked by what she learns about herself. With the help of her friend Cody, Kira begins the search for her original family. She soon discovers why her adoptive parents were afraid to let her go into the sea.
Rika’s Shepherd
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Rika is a happy, energetic girl in control of her life and her small flock of sheep and helping her father run their farm and household since her mother died six years earlier. The one thing that would make life even more perfect would be a Border collie pup she could train to herd the sheep. But her tidy life begins to unravel with the discovery of a deadly coyote attack on her flock.
With the help of a young veterinarian, and an eccentric breeder of guard dogs, Rika takes on more responsibilities. She encounters challenges which reveal that she has not coped well with the death of her mother, especially when her father and the veterinarian become romantically entangled. Rika is further demoralized when she fails to train a guard dog pup and must return him to the breeder. When the valuable and beloved older dog who guards her sheep is gravely injured because of her poor judgment, Rika slips into a depression.
When Rika starts to get better, she takes stock of her blessings, and begins to deal with the changes that are imposed on her. She makes amends with her future stepmother, and the injured dog, now recovered, is returned to her care.
Sewing Basket
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Dealing with a parent’s illness can be difficult at any age It is 1967 and twelve year old Ruth Iverson’s world pretty much revolves around her friends, a boy she likes, the Monkees and spending time with her Dad doing special stuff like watching the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. But she is soon to realize that her mom’s strange behaviour which has become an embarrassment, are symptoms of a disease that will affect the family’s life and possibly Ruth’s future. While she watches major events like the marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the birth of Priscilla Presley, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, Ruth faces some major life events of her own and struggles to come to terms with the changes they bring.
Sky Pony
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Elaine Breault Hammond, the author of the best-selling The Secret Under the Whirlpool, Under the Waterfall, and Explosion at Dawson Creek, has lived in six provinces as well as in the United States. She and her family lived on Prince Edward Island. Now she divides her time between PEI in the summertime and Kingston, Ontario, the rest of the year, where she is close to four of her seven grandchildren
Sky Pony in Iceland
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Siggi, Katie and their family are starting a new adventure! They are moving from Yukon Territory to Prince Edward Island to help their grandparents run their trail ride business.
Siggi is nervous about the move, but he has bigger things to worry about. Some of the older boys at school are picking on him, and he’s not sure how to get them to stop. He wishes he could just be like everyone else; instead, his Icelandic name makes him stand out.
Things get better for Siggi on the move to PEI, when he begins to learn some pretty cool things about his heritage. However, an unexpected magical trip to Iceland makes Siggi realize just how lucky he really is.
The Memory Chair
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Thirteen-year-old Betony has always hated going to her cranky great-grandmother’s house. It’s old and stuffy and boring and the woodstove in the kitchen is always burning too hot. But her Gram doesn’t have any other family living close by on the Kingston Peninsula, so Betony ends up being dragged along all the time.
She’d rather be pretty much anywhere…until one day Betony sits on her Gram’s favourite chair. She is suddenly transported into the past, and is experiencing her Gram’s life as if it were in her own memory. At first Betony is excited and curious, and begins to develop a close relationship with Gram, even learning to cook and quilt. But after she has experienced a few more of her great-grandmother’s memories, she realizes she is slowly uncovering a terrible, shameful family secret.
The Year Mrs. Montague Cried
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Susan White was born in New Brunswick and moved from one New Brunswick city to another. As a teenager her family moved to the Kingston Peninsula and she only left long enough to earn her BA and Bed at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Settling on the peninsula, she and her husband raised four children and ran small farm while she taught elementary school. Since retiring she is grateful to now have the time to work on her writing and the freedom to regularly visit her new granddaughter in Alberta.
Welcome to Camp Fill-in-the-Blank
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Page’s perfectly organized life turns upside down when her parents send her to Prince Edward Island to babysit her cousins Crusoe and Danger (those are their real names) for the summer. The only problem is that her cousins feel that they are too old to have a babysitter—they would rather be at summer camp. Page realizes the solution to the problem is to give her cousins exactly what they want: summer camp in their own backyard. Despite Page’s meticulous efforts to plan a different theme for each week of Camp Fill-in-the-Blank, she quickly learns that life with her cousins rarely goes according to plan.
What If ? – Springvale
Publisher: Acorn Press$9.95Students of Valerie Dockendorff’s grade 5/6 at Springvale Elementary, Halifax, have written and illustrated a book to address a variety of world issues in a positive manner. We wish to raise awareness about problems faced by kids all over the world by imagining what it would be like if the problems didn’t exist! All messages and illustrations depict positive images that send a message of hope and provide concrete ways for readers to take action to celebrate and improve our world….word by word.
