National Network for Equitable Library Service

Mealworms are small creatures that live in dark secret places. Jeremy is a bit like that when he leaves his home in rural Nova Scotia and moves to Toronto with his mother. Lots of things keep him from enjoying his new life, but the worst is his science partner, Aaron, who is more annoying than sand in a bathing suit. Jeremy is also burdened by the secret he carries about the motorcycle accident that injured him and killed his father. Although Jeremy is haunted by his past, he starts to feel at home in Toronto when he realizes he has some skills he can share with his classmates.

Charlotte and her brother, Jacob, are thrilled to head off on an adventure in their grandpa's boat, The Seawind. As they set sail for Pirate Island, they look forward to a day of beachcombing, playing pirates and storytelling. There are plenty of great treasures to be found, but Charlotte, who can be very bossy, is having trouble sharing with Jacob. When Charlotte accidentally loses one of Jacob's best finds, a piece of driftwood that looks just like a pirate's cutlass, it's the final straw. Feeling horrible for upsetting her brother, Charlotte is determined to set things right.

In trouble at home and at school, Chris is struggling to do the right thing. When he finds a wallet on the street, he tries to return it to its owner. However, as circumstances slowly start unraveling and his whole life appears headed down the drain, Chris realizes that the person who owns the wallet looks a lot like him and has a life he would do almost anything for. What if he switched identities? What if he became someone else?

When Junior Canadian Rangers, Colly and Jaz, visit Colly's uncle on Canada's Arctic coast, they are quick to discover something is amiss. Someone has been hunting gyrfalcons, the official bird of the Northwest Territories. Could it be poachers? During a pretend emergency, Colly and Jaz put two and five together and end up in a terrifying race for their lives!

Meet Justine McKeen, the Queen of Green. She talks a little too much, bosses a little too much and tells the truth, just not all at once. She's trying to save the planet, one person at a time, and when she decides to get something done, it's a lot of fun. In Justine McKeen, Eat Your Beets, the fourth book in the Justine McKeen series, Justine has another brilliant idea to help the planet. When she learns a stray cat and her kittens are living off the food in their school Dumpster, Justine sets out to reduce waste and help save animals in need.

The year is 1957, and Bobby lives on the Tsartlip First Nation reserve on Vancouver Island where his family has lived for generations and generations. He loves his weekend job at the nearby marina. He loves to play marbles with his friends. And he loves being able to give half his weekly earnings to his mother to eke out the grocery money, but he longs to enter the up-coming fishing derby. With the help of his uncle and Dan from the marina his wish just might come true.

Jake, Tommy and Lexie are on a ski trip. In an attempt to squeeze one last run in for the day, the kids head out on their own to ski down Easy Street. But Lexie and Jake convince Tommy to try Wildcat Run instead. Wildcat Run presents the young skiers with more than they expect, including a cougar sighting. When Lexie has a bad fall, the kids are left stranded on the hill in the fading daylight. Will they be rescued or will they have to spend the night alone on the mountain with a cougar?

Jaz lives in the small northern community of Destiny and is a new member of the Junior Canadian Rangers. Her divorced parents argue a lot, and Jaz hopes if she wins a dog-mushing derby, they will be so proud of her they will stop arguing. But the derby would be a lot more fun if she wasn't paired with Colly, an older boy who is a more experienced JCR. On the derby trail all Jaz's newfound skills, her will to survive and her ability to get along with Colly, are put to a life-and-death test.

Maddy doesn't find it easy adjusting to grade nine. The friendships and loyalties she took for granted in middle school are being challenged, and there's so much more competition on her track team now. When Maddy stumbles across a friend being bullied behind the school after a track practice, she suspects something nasty is going on. So when Coach announces one of the team members has been robbed, she realizes the two incidents must be connected. Everyone on the track and field team is under suspicion. How can the team function with so much uneasiness among its members?

Justine McKeen is back, and she’s on a deadline. With only days left before Earth Day, Justine enlists the help of her classmates to count flower buds, frogs, spiders and ants in their natural habitat as part of an environmental science project. But there’s a species right in her own classroom that she’ll have to tackle first: a class bully. Savannah Blue, aka the Queen of Mean, criticizes Justine’s secondhand clothes and calls being green a waste of time. Their teacher, Mrs. Howie, gives the girls a new assignment for Earth Day.