National Network for Equitable Library Service

<p>Homelessness is not new to Vancouver. There have been homeless people in Vancouver since it was founded in 1886. As in other major North American cities, until the late '70s and early '80s homelessness in Vancouver followed the economic logic of boom and bust capitalism.</p><p>However, since the run-up to the World Exposition of 1986, that logic has no longer been the determining factor influencing the growing number of homeless in the city.

<p>New Edition as part City of Vancouver’s Legacy Book Project, with foreword by historian Daniel Francis</p> <p><i>Who Killed Janet Smith?</i> examines one of the most infamous and still unsolved murder cases in Canadian history: the 1924 murder of twenty-two-year-old Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith.

<p>Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)</p> <p>Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize</p> <p>Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015</p> <p><i>The Door Is Open</i> is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver’s downtown eastside.

<p>“Reading the Riot Act” is a phrase that has entered the popular lexicon, meaning the action taken by authority figures when they perceive that their “charges” are getting out of hand. The act itself is a seldom-used piece of legislation actually designed to prevent a riot from taking place. Supposedly, the mere mention of the Riot Act is enough to bring hardened miscreants bent on destruction to their collective senses. But if a riot has started, it’s already too late to read the Riot Act.

<p>Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)</p> <p>Winner, CNFC Readers' Choice Award for "Threshold"</p> <p>In this debut collection of personal essays, Silcott looks at the tangle of midlife, the long look back, the shorter look forward, and the moments right now that shimmer and rustle around her. Here is love, grief, uncertainty, longing, joy, desire, fury, and fear.

If discussing money is a difficult task for adults, it’s doubly so where kids are involved. Not only is the subject loaded with cryptic jargon (mortgages? Bull markets? Huh?), but it often fails to click with how a kid sees his or her world. Many preteens and young teens do not yet have a job, and even if they do, their responsibilities with their earnings are miles away from grown-up money issues. In other words, not only is money a little overwhelming and mysterious, it’s also seen as something they can't do anything about.

Starting from Scratch is a manifesto on food that will help kids relate to what they eat, whether on special occasions or every day, inspiring both budding chefs and budding food lovers in the process. Beginning with an exploration of taste and the way it works, author and food activist Sarah Elton explains how ingredients have been on the move for centuries, resulting in the unique and fusion flavors we love today.

You Are Stardust begins by introducing the idea that every tiny atom in our bodies came from a star that exploded long before we were born. From its opening pages, the book suggests that we are intimately connected to the natural world; it compares the way we learn to speak to the way baby birds learn to sing, and the growth of human bodies to the growth of forests. Award-winning author Elin Kelsey — along with a number of concerned parents and educators around the world — believes children are losing touch with nature.

The Last Train is the harrowing true story about young brothers Paul and Oscar Arato and their mother, Lenke, surviving the Nazi occupation during the final years of World War II.  Living in the town of Karcag, Hungary, the Aratos felt insulated from the war — even as it raged all around them.

Since discovering the Canadian Flyer, a magical time-traveling sled, in Emily’s attic, Matt and Emily have outrun dinosaurs in the Alberta badlands, evaded slave catchers on the Underground Railroad, and seen the last spike driven into the Canadian Pacific Railway. In Halifax Explodes!, Emily and Matt land on Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia — just as the Mont Blanc, a ship laden with explosives, explodes in the harbor!