According to Professor Angus, Estaban was found one day outside of the Sleep Lab: a young boy lost and abandoned. Angus and his son Tristan quickly welcome him into their family and their field of work, which is exploring nightmares and allowing patients a good and safe night’s sleep. But in Esteban’s nightmares of late, he wakes up in his old house, reunited with his parents as if they were never separated. To wake up and actually return to his real life, Esteban must travel into the woods and face his own fears. Can The Nightmare Brigade help one of their own awaken from his own nightmares?
Political tensions are heightening on the streets of Stepney, and as Oswald Mosley comes to power, brother and sister Mikey and Elsie begin to see friendships torn apart. Award-winning author Tanya Landman explores the rise of antisemitic fascism in 1930s London in this gripping new story.
Life has always been tough on the streets of Stepney, where Mikey and Elsie are growing up in a vermin-infested slum nicknamed “Paradise.”
But the rise of antisemitic fascist Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts in the 1930s stirs up trouble between families who have lived closely together for years, and Elsie sees friendships torn apart.
When Elsie and Mikey attend a Mosley rally, intending to heckle and cause trouble, they soon see how dangerous the situation has become. But out in the streets the fascists find that people will stand and fight against them and against hatred in what becomes the dramatic Battle of Cable Street.
Trapped in a life she didn’t choose, Rook struggles to find meaning in her appointed role as an apprentice Keeper of ArHK. Even though her mam soothes her with legends of the Outside and her da assures her there are many interesting facts to discover in the Archives, Rook sees only endless years of tracking useless information. Then one day Rook discovers historic footage of the Chosen Ones arriving in ArHK, and she begins to realize her mam’s legends are more than bedtime stories. That’s when Rook begins her perilous and heartbreaking search for the limitless sky.
Gage is also trapped. Living on the frontier line with his family, his is a life of endless moving and constant danger. As he works with the other Scouts, Gage searches for the Ship of Knowledge to help his society regain the wonders of the long distant past, when machines transported people across the land, illnesses could be cured and human structures rose high into the sky.
Why did they build it so high?
People have been constructing tall buildings for thousands of years, for many different reasons. Castle walls kept people safe. Utility towers transmit TV and cell-phone signals. Observatories give people a bird’s-eye view of the world. Beautiful buildings stand out in the crowd. Skyscrapers provide housing for a lot of people. There are some good reasons for building up, and a few bad ones as well.
With a growing global population, we will need more and more space to live, learn and work in. But what does that mean for the health of the planet? Can we do it sustainably?
Tall buildings may be part of the answer. From the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower, Why Humans Build Up asks why and how we build higher and higher, and what that means for the planet.
Thirteen-year-old Dale Melnyk finds himself stuck in an iron lung, desperately fighting for breath — and wishing he could die. It is the worst outbreak of polio in the history of Winnipeg, and Dale is one of the many young victims being treated in the early 1950s.
Second Chances follows Dale's slow and often agonizing struggle to regain his life, first of all to breathe on his own and then to regain the use of his limbs. Will he ever be able to play hockey again, he wonders? Dale comes to realize that he is doing better than a number of the other patients including Charlene, a young Métis girl confined to a wheelchair but always trying to help their fellow patients.
When Dale discovers his younger brother Brent is also in the polio ward because their father rejected the school program vaccine, a confrontation with his father becomes inevitable. Brent is not getting better and will be dealing with paralysis indefinitely.
When Dale finally emerges from his recovery he must reassess what is most important in life — a life that has been changed forever.