National Network for Equitable Library Service

A teenager is dead after facing sexual assault and cyberbullying. Two friends go camping, and one reveals a secret. A conflict between two band students erupts into violence. A refugee celebrates the new year in Canada. A bereaved teen joins her school volleyball team. Five new plays from some of Canada's best playwrights reveal the passion, pain, humour, and hopes of young people in this exciting anthology for high schools. Included: Who Killed Snow White?

November 2, 1965. Norman Morrison drives to the Pentagon with his infant daughter, a jug of kerosene and a box of matches. With Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara looking on, the young Quaker carries out a final act of witness against the horrors of the Vietnam AWar. Thirty-six years later, in the wak eof 9/11, his daughter returns to confront the aging McNamara, the memory of her father, and the costly legacy of sacrifice.

Ayinom, a former soldier from Eritrea, has arrived in Canada without papers, and seeks refugee status. Seen through the eyes of the couple that take him in and the lawyer who represents him, the play lays bare some of the shortfalls of the refugee system as it exists in Canada today. Refuge combines verbatim text from CBC radio interviews with the fictional world of the characters to create a work with uncommon resonance and verisimilitude.

Controlled Damage explores the life of Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond and how her act of bravery in a Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946 started a ripple effect that is still felt today. An ordinary woman forced to be extraordinary by an unyielding and racist world, Desmond never gave up -- despite the personal cost to her and those who loved her. Andrea Scott's highly theatrical examination of Desmond and her legacy traces the impact that she had on our culture, but also casts light on the slow progress of the fight for social justice and civil rights in Canada.

This Christmas season, things have gone awry for the kohkoms of Kiwetinohk. Clare Bear is engaged to be married, Zula Merasty is moving off-reserve and Sihkos Sinclare is in jail. It all comes to fruition at Clare's stagette. Curtis Peeteetuce is Cree from the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation. Curtis is the playwright of the Rez Christmas story series.

Two very different couples meet after a critical mistake is made at a fertility clinic: a fertilized egg has been implanted into the wrong woman. Over the course of an awkward and absurd evening, they fight to determine the uncertain future of their IVF child.

One starry night the body of a young man, still strapped into his airplane seat, falls from the sky into the yard of Harold and Elsie's chicken farm. As the night unfolds, their mysterious guest effects a profound transformation in his hosts. Falling: a wake is a haunting and surprisingly funny play about love, loss, and the redemptive power of letting go.

Introduces us to four unforgettable people: Al, his ex-wife Donna, his new partner Christine and his troubled daughter Brooke, whose world has fallen apart after her parents' divorce. Brilliantly weaving past and present, the play illuminates the lives of these four characters as they come to terms with their own stories.

Jasmine bursts into the world unlike your typical newborn child and is anointed a "jail baby." Born in prison, raised by a mother who revolves in and out of the correctional system, tossed in and out of foster care, Jasmine is destined to become one of society's monsters. When she finds herself pregnant and facing her most serious charge yet, Jasmine is horrified at the thought of having her unborn child repeat her life of despair. Through a series of parodies, myths about incarcerated women are woven together with scenes from Jasmine's journey.

In the early fall of 1885, P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth toured southwestern Ontario, playing to sold-out crowds. On the bill, along with the snake charmer, the tightrope walkers, the contortionist, and the bearded lady, were 28 elephants, led by the world-renowned Jumbo. Between their stops in Guelph and London, the circus played the bustling railroad town of St. Thomas to standing ovations. But on that fateful night, as circus crews were packing up, an unscheduled freight train came hurtling down the track and ended the life of the most famous pachyderm in the world.