Bugz is caught between two worlds. In the real world, she's a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and life on the Rez. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massively multiplayer video game universe.
Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the Rez, after his online activity suggests he may be developing extremist sympathies. Meeting each other in real life, as well as in the virtual world, Bugz and Feng immediately relate to each other as outsiders and as avid gamers. And as their connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find that they have much in common in the real world, too: Both must decide what to do in the face of temptations and pitfalls, and both must grapple with the impacts of family challenges and community trauma.
We already know what climate change is and many of us understand the human causes. But what will climate change do to our world? Who will be affected (spoiler: all of us!) and how will our lives change in the future? Topics include sea levels, extreme weather, drought, animal and plant extinction, and human and animal migration. Drawing on real-life situations and stories, journalist Jeff Fleischer takes an informed, approachable look at how our world will likely change as a result of our actions, including suggestions on what we can still do to slow down these unprecedented effects.
With expert, accessible text and accompanying archival photographs, this complete atlas provides an invaluable work of reference for both the general reader and the serious student of World War I.
One of my biggest regrets is never meeting my great-grandfather. All I know about him is he fought in World War One, was shot in the calf somewhere on the Western Front and abandoned in woodland while injured. They left him there for four days, by which time the gangrenous leg needed removing.
Perhaps it’s this regret, but I’ve always loved books like this World War 1 Illustrated Atlas. I used to love the battlefield diagrams and trying to understand the order of movement.
When I received this book, I read the introduction and immediately went to the battles I knew from high school. The Somme. Passchendaele. Verdun. I devoured these pages and felt a new appreciation for their scale and cost. I wanted a little more of the human element, however. I realise this is a book of maps, but I’d have loved some stories about men who fought in the battles pictured or even to know the butcher’s bill.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest and most remote part of the world. It’s the world’s largest polar desert. Antarctica is a true wilderness.
Author Leilani Raashida Henry, daughter of George W. Gibbs, Jr., the first person of African descent to go to Antarctica, recounts her father’s expedition while educating readers on the incredible geography, biodiversity and history of the continent. Using diary entries from Gibbs' expedition, The Call of Antarctica takes readers on a journey to the rugged Antarctic landscape to learn its history, its present and the importance of protecting its future.
The photography and layout of this book are stunning, and the broad array of facts and stories—involving everything from penguins to the Northern Lights—is enough to entertain an armchair adventurer and science lover for days.
But what makes this tome on Antarctica really special are the interspersed diary entries from the first Black Antarctica explorer, George W. Gibbs. It puts you right there, on the ships, on the ice and in the bitter cold. The wonder, the challenges, the seafaring knowledge and yes, the racism, are a door to another era in Gibbs’ own words.
It’s hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t be drawn in by the photos, maps, sidebars, history and science, especially with that personal touch of Gibbs’ first-person observations tying it all together.
Can Aiden learn to stand his ground on his new home ice?
Meet Aiden Mallory. He’s trying to find his bearings while coping with the loss of his father — an NHL player who died in a car accident — and moving back to his dad’s hometown of Prairie Field, where he is STILL a big deal.
Aiden loves hockey, but his feelings about moving and his dad’s death cause him to struggle at tryouts. Then the minor hockey association announces a brand-new U13 tournament: the Luke Mallory Memorial. As Aiden tries to find his place on his new team, and among his new teammates, he will do anything he can to live up to his dad’s legacy. But what happens when Aiden’s determination to play well puts everything else at risk?
From Lorna Schultz Nicholson comes a powerful portrayal of a boy’s experiences with anxiety as it relates to sports and friendship and grief.
There are novels that include some ice hockey action, and then there are true ice-hockey novels with nonstop, satisfying hockey action, characters and storyline. Author Lorna Schultz Nicholson, a former hockey player and coach herself, serves up the latter.
Sixth-grader Aiden is not just reeling from having lost his hockey-legend father. He is struggling to adapt to a new town and team, put up with a bullying teammate and live up to his father’s reputation. This novel isn’t about how he plays so much as how he rises above these challenges by finding his inner coach and learning to generate positive energy.
Fred Aceves was born in New York to a Mexican father and Dominican mother. He spent most of his youth in Southern California and Tampa, Florida, where he grew up in a tough, working-class neighborhood filled with single moms. He attended five high schools and worked two jobs before eventually dropping out of school. He later earned his GED and traveled around the world. He has worked as a delivery driver, server, cook, car salesman, freelance editor and teacher of English as a second language. He is published by HarperCollins and currently lives in Mexico. The Closest I’ve Come was a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. The New David Espinoza is his second novel. Fred has lived in seven different countries and currently resides in Mexico. His online home is www.fredaceves.com.
Jack is 14 going on 15. For the past seven years, he and his younger brother and sister, and his mother and father, have lived in a remote cabin on the Athabasca River west of Edmonton. It's the late 1930s, and the river is almost as wild and untamed as it was before humans began settling along the riverbanks.
The reason for the Whyte family living there has a good deal to do with Malcolm, Jack's father, and what we would call his PTSD after serving in World War One. He has never really recovered from the trauma of his experience in the trenches, and his solution has been to sweep his family into the wilderness and remain there, living off the land. But now Jack is of an age when he figures he has had enough of this life, particularly since his father is not the most understanding of parents.
Trouble is, as Jack makes his move to leave the family by canoeing away down the Athabasca, something goes wrong on the first day and he breaks his arm, and has to stay stranded, alone, unable to make any more progress. Malcolm comes after him, and somehow father and son begin to communicate in ways they never have. All of this is played out against the backdrop of a powerful river where nature is dominant and where a family manages their lives alone in the bush, with little or no reference to the world beyond.
There’s no question that the author of this novel knows about living, hunting and paddling in the Canadian wilderness, and there’s admirable authenticity in every scene of the book. It’s well paced and exciting, from the characters surviving overturned canoes in a flash flood to a narrow escape from wolves.
There’s also historical perspective, given that it takes place in the late 1930s, after the Depression drove the family to a remote location where they barely survive the day-to-day challenges. By the end, the shadow of World War II is already looming.
But even beyond the day-to-day trapping, hunting, fishing, firewood chopping and other grueling chores, the three children have to put up with an authoritarian father who suffers from shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of serving in the trenches and losing most of his fellow combat mates.
Jack feels it’s time to break loose from his hard life, which involves no social outlets and a father who rarely speaks, let alone shows love. Unfortunately, he’s barely down the river when he has an accident that requires a rescue – by his father. The family is reunited but changed, with a new goal of leaving the wilderness together.
The main problem with this novel is that Jack doesn’t seem like the dominant character after the first few chapters. The third-person point of view shifts continually from Jack to his father, and to a lesser extent his mother, younger brother and sister. It begins to feel like Jack is a prop for a story about his father, and yet one can’t help but care about each of the characters, applaud their changes and root for them through their difficulties. The writing is a little lackluster but still flows, and the hopeful ending is welcome. Again, anyone who loves wilderness survival tales will enjoy this, but only if their expectations are for a novel about a family that includes a 14-year-old boy, not one focused heavily on the boy himself.
“This book is a guide for every young person who believes in a better world for all.” ―Malala Yousafzai Adults are aware of their universal human rights of freedom and equality, but children often are ignorant of the rights they possess before reaching the age of majority. Enter Know Your Rights, written in partnership with Amnesty International, Angelina Jolie and Geraldine Van Bueren.
Know Your Rights details the rights promised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, starting with the history of child rights, and providing a clear description of the types of child rights, the young activists from around the world who fought to defend them, and how readers can stand up for their own rights.
“This is the perfect book for young people who care about the world and want to make a difference.” ―Greta Thunberg
This book is seriously ambitious, complex and far-reaching. It covers everything from the history of child rights to definitions, statistics and legal explanations of every manner of child discrimination. Chapter titles include “Steps to take if you are being physically or sexually abused” and “Become an activist.” Topics include torture, child soldiers, police beatings, indigenous and gay rights, the right to education and play, disability discrimination and so on.
Jack Heath is the pen-name of an award-winning Australian writer of fiction for children and adults. His thirty-six action-packed novels have been translated into several languages and optioned for film and television.
He is best known for the Danger, Truth App and Hangman series. He has been shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year Award, CBCA Notable Book Award, Nottinghamshire Brilliant Book Award, the Aurealis Sci-Fi Book of the Year, the National Year of Reading "Our Story" Collection, a Young Australians Best Book Award, a Kids Own Australian Literature Award and the Australian of the Year Award.
The Truth App and The Missing Passenger are set in the fictitious Australian town of Kelton. Age thirty-four, Heath lives in Canberra, Australia with his wife Venetia, whose jewelry-making studio shares a shed with his writing office. They have two children. http://jackheathwriter.com; twitter: jackheathwriter