Top Grade: High School selections, Spring 2015

A heart-wrenching tale of selfless love and the powerful desire to survive.

In an unnamed country, when little Kai is brought to the orphanage run by Bell, a fearsome Englishwoman whose dedication to her charges is unflinching, an older child, Pax, immediately takes him under his wing. It soon becomes apparent that Kai is a brilliant child, and given the right circumstances, could go on to achieve great things.

Penniless and living amidst political strife and constant uncertainty, the children a …

What do you do when someone you care about wants you to follow him to a really dark place? Do you pull away? Do you help plan the trip? Or do you put your own life on the line in the hope that love will coax your friend away from the precipice? When Mel meets Jeremy, she thinks she has finally found someone who understands her, someone who will listen to her, someone who cares. But Jeremy has secrets that torment him, and Mel isn’t sure she can save him from his demons. All she knows is that s …

Sleeper is the sequel to both Jungle Land, part of The Seven Prequels and Between Heaven and Earth, part of Seven (The Series).

DJ jets across the Atlantic to England to follow a series of obscure clues and symbols he hopes will reveal the truth about his grandfather. In London, he stays with Doris, the elderly woman he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with. Laid up with a broken ankle, Doris has her grandchild, Charlie, offer assistance. Charlie—short for Charlotte—is a beautiful model who is roman …

2015 Dewey Divas Pick
2016 Booklist Top Ten Multicultural Fiction List, Youth Spotlight

Cam is finally settling into his new life in Laos when tragedy strikes and he’s wrongfully accused of murder.

Eighteen-year-old Cam Scott is angry. He’s angry about his absent dad, he’s angry about being angry, and he’s angry that he has had to give up his Ottawa basketball team to follow his mom to her new job in Vientiane, Laos. However, Cam’s anger begins to melt under the Southeast Asian sun as he …

A hymn to a beloved lake, a praise poem in forty-five parts, a contemplation of landscape and memory

Lake of Two Mountains, Arleen Paré's second poetry collection, is a portrait of a lake, of a relationship to a lake, of a network of relationships around a lake. It maps, probes and applauds the riparian region of central Canadian geography that lies between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence Rivers. The poems portray this territory, its contested human presences and natural history: the 1990 Oka Cr …

Simple country handyman Cedric O’Toole relies on his organic vegetable garden to supplement his meager income, so he’s upset when vegetables begin disappearing. After several futile attempts to protect the garden, he stakes it out one night with his shotgun and spots a shadowy figure running into the woods. Cedric follows and finds a young boy living rough on his land. The boy has never been taught to read or write, and no one has reported him missing. No stranger to childhood neglect himsel …

Finalist, White Pine Award

Finalist, Chocolate Lily Award

Finalist, Stellar Award

New York Public Library Selection, Best Books for Teens

Fifteen-year-old Jim Hay believes that war is a glorious adventure and cannot wait for his turn to fight. But as his father boldly marches off to battle in August 1914, Jim must be content to record his thoughts and dreams in his journal.

All too quickly, however, Jim’s simple life begins to unravel. His father is killed in action, his mother suffers a bre …