BC Books for BC Schools 2018/19

The city of Terra Nova was founded on a lie: that the spirits who cross over from the spirit world are evil and must be captured for the safety of humanity.

But Molly Stout and her family have learned that the spirits are thinking, feeling beings, enslaved to enrich the wealthy, especially the spirit-harvesting company Haviland Industries and its founder, Charles Arkwright. With the help of her family and the aetheric spirits Ariel and Legerdemain, Molly has been fighting to free the spirits. But …

Winner (second prize), 2019 British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing

A revealing history of the ancient trail that served as a major transportation route between Washington and British Columbia and shaped the cultural and economic ties between the two jurisdictions.

Trails are the most enduring memorials of human occupation. Long before stone monuments were created, pathways throughout the world were being worn into hardness by human feet. Travellers along the stretch of …

In response to her brother's sudden death, Cornelia Hoogland explores the shift in gravity his dramatic absence creates. Set on the Salish Sea on Vancouver Island's east coast, Trailer Park Elegy reaches back two thousand years to the First Peoples, as well as to the brother whose delight was summers spent at Deep Bay.

Hoogland looks to her child-experiences of death, as well as to literature, chaos theory, dark matter, geological time and the effect of noise pollution on whales. She turns grie …

Just over fifty years ago, China’s Cultural Revolution began. The movement was intended to bring about a return to revolutionary Maoist beliefs and resulted in attacks on intellectuals and those believed to be counter-revolutionaries, capitalists and rightists; a large-scale purge in government posts; the appearance of a personality cult around Mao Zedong; and an estimated death count of between one and three million.

When Katherine Luo moved from Hong Kong to mainland China in 1955 to study dr …

A rollicking wartime adventure on the BC coast.

A lot has changed in the world since Sophie, Molly, Mark, Harriet, Leticia, and Posy’s last adventure in The Silver Lining. Now it’s 1940, and the Second World War is making life back home in the United Kingdom very dangerous indeed. Although our intrepid crew has seen their fair share of precarious situations, from being chased by pirates to making harrowing rescues in abandoned mine shafts, their parents decide to once again send them across …

"Looking back over thirty years of flying for Okanagan, I see the experience has given me an interesting life. I have never really considered flying as work. It is more a way of life, a way of life that nourishes a free spirit, something that not many jobs can give you. I just cannot imagine anything I would... rather have done or any company I would have rather worked for."

--Jim Reid, pilot

In 1945, following years as an instructor, Carl Agar was honourably discharged from the British and Comm …

It is not mere coincidence that two-thirds of the population of British Columbia occupies lands bordering its great inland sea, the Strait of Georgia, and connected waterways collectively known as the North Salish Sea. Averaging forty kilometres in width and stretching some three hundred kilometres from Vancouver and Victoria in the south to Powell River and Campbell River in the north, the North Salish Sea has long sheltered a bounty of habitable lands and rich maritime resources ideal for huma …

From renowned storyteller Richard Van Camp comes a lyrical lullaby for newborns.

Orca Book Publishers is pleased to offer this bilingual book (full text in both English and Plains Cree) in two accessible editions. The audiobook features alternate text descriptions of images, including the cover. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.