National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the final months of World War II, ten-year-old Peggy shelters with her mother and baby brother in a London butcher's shop during an air raid. They survive, but their home and everything in it are lost, including Peggy’s most treasured possession, a biscuit tin of letters from her father. Their lives change dramatically and Peggy makes friends with a boy named Spud who has a passion for scavenging bombsites, leading to more than one surprising discovery.

Arlo thinks his mother is crazy for taking a job in a small town, far away from his old home and his good friends. And to make matters worse, the students at his new school are crazy, hockey crazy. Arlo has never laced up a pair of skates in his life, and he's not about to start. To avoid making a complete fool of himself in front of his classmates, Arlo joins a group of misfits called the Dumpster Dudes, who set him a series of wild initiation tests that unleash mayhem on the school.

The year is 1935 and Maggie Sullivan's world has fallen apart. Maggie has grown up in a close-knit mining community perched atop a mountain in British Columbia. But now her father has been killed in a mine explosion and she is being forced to leave the only home she has ever known. To make matters worse, she must also leave behind her best friend Lucky, the three-legged dog that was a special gift from Pa.

D'Arcy's dad is dead. She desperately wants it to have been an accident, but she is not sure. And when she learns the truth, things become even more difficult. Why would her father choose suicide? Why didn't she see the signs? Her father had always helped her get through everything in her life -- five minutes at a time. Can she do it alone? And then she meets Seth. When will things get back to normal? Learning to live without her father while her mother struggles with her own pain, D'Arcy finds an inner strength she wasn't aware of.

On her seventh birthday, Pauline rode across the lawns on her street followed by her best friend Henry, he on the blue wooden horse, she on the red. On the seventh lawn at the top of the street, she collapsed, becoming a sudden victim of the polio outbreak of the summer of 1954.Five years later, when In the Clear begins, she has survived, but paid a heavy price. A brace on her left leg allows her to walk, but she confines herself to her house, humiliated at the notion of being seen.

The city is cracking down on graffiti and guerilla art. Between that and cutbacks to the local art gallery it seems like nothing is safe. But Oswald, masquerading as a graffiti artist known as The Wiz, is fighting back, by painting elaborate murals in public places and planting art in the galleries, and then by taking on the mayor himself. As the fight escalates and the stakes become higher, Oswald gets in deeper than he meant to and needs to rely on his friends to get him out of his latest mess.

When the Edmonton Oil Kings discover Reuben Reuben has a hockey game as unforgettable as his name and his Inuit heritage, life changes in a hurry for him and his best friend Gear. A wealthy businessman sponsors a three-on-three pond-hockey tour across the western Arctic, and Reuben and Gear soon find out the tournament is not what they thought.

Dorf has always lived by his personal motto: If it’s worth doing, do it. If it’s not worth doing, do it anyway. But now he’s in a new city, and the terrain has changed. He’s no longer free to skateboard where he wishes, school is hard, and he has the reputation as a freak. With daring stunts he gains the grudging respect of local troublemakers, but he needs to tap into the more elusive kind of courage to effect real change in his life.

Amateur sleuths Trevor, Nick and Robyn have a mystery to solve. Their latest adventure involves the disappearance of valuable research on the use of carob beans to aid in cancer treatment. With a shady-looking grad student, a bitter activist and the employee of a medical research firm to deal with, the sleuths are faced with their greatest challenge yet.

It's the most talked about trophy in Howling -- The Wassabbee! And it goes to the winner of the annual fathers versus sons hockey game. This year the fathers are in trouble, so they've changed the rules. The game won't be played indoors. It's going to be held outside, at a weekend campout. In the middle of the winter! Johnny Maverick and his friends know the fathers are going to play a few tricks on them, so they decide to use all their genius to play the tricks first.