Children and YA Fiction

Road Signs That Say West

Sisters Hanna, Megan, and Claire have just waved off their parents at the airport in Halifax when Hanna announces her plan: while Mum and Dad are in Europe, the three of them are going on ... Read More »

June 5, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

The Way Back Home

By Allan Stratton

Zoe Bird’s world is cracking apart. The teenaged narrator of Allan Stratton’s latest YA novel lives in a small Ontario town where she struggles against the oppressive influence of her narrow-minded parents at home and ... Read More »

May 29, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

The Fashion Committee

By Susan Juby

Told in the alternating voices of its two main characters, The Fashion Committee is the story of a style-obsessed girl named Charlie Dean and John Thomas-Smith, a boy who’s extremely talented in metalwork but couldn’t ... Read More »

May 16, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Undiscovered Country

By Jennifer Gold

In Cat’s life, there is the time Before, and there is the time After. Before her mother died from breast cancer, Cat was a brainy high school student with early admission to Stanford University. After, ... Read More »

May 16, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Summer’s End

By Joel A. Sutherland

What could be worse than knowing it’s the last summer you’ll spend with your closest friends, as well as the last one before you get hit with the innocence-destroying horrors of high school? A lot, ... Read More »

May 8, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Laura Monster Crusher

By Wesley King

There’s a reason popular kids aren’t usually called upon to take up quests in middle-grade fantasy: all metaphor goes out the window. Where’s the satisfaction in seeing a well-liked, effortlessly capable 12-year-old take down evil ... Read More »

May 8, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Dingus

By Andrew Larsen

Life is changing for 11-year-old Henry, and not necessarily in ways he likes. He’s been okay with a baby brother arriving on the scene after 10 years of being an only child, okay with his ... Read More »

May 4, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Good Morning, Grumple

By Manon Gauthier (ill.); Victoria Allenby

Waking up in the morning can be a challenge, but less so if you have someone who knows just the right combination of tickles, songs, and kisses to get you up and out of bed. ... Read More »

April 24, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Bent Not Broken: Madeline and Justin (One-2-One series)

By Lorna Schultz Nicholson

Lorna Schultz nicholson’s third novel for Clockwise Press’s One-2-One series follows Madeline, a 14-year-old with a traumatic brain injury, and Justin, a high school senior still mourning his sister’s death, as they participate in their ... Read More »

April 24, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Phoebe Sounds It Out

By Denise Holmes (ill.); Julie Zwillich

Some kids’ books address thorny childhood issues by relocating the attendant angst to the animal world, or outer space, or lands of witchcraft and wizardry. Others, like Phoebe Sounds It Out, tackle problems head-on by ... Read More »

April 17, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

★ Town Is by the Sea

By Joanne Schwartz; Sydney Smith (ill.)

Town Is by the Sea introduces readers to the day-to-day reality of growing up in a mining town, as seen through the eyes of a young boy. The boy shares everything with readers, describing his ... Read More »

April 17, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

Maud: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery

By Melanie J. Fishbane

For those of us who grew up enthralled with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, details about Montgomery herself always seemed superfluous. Wasn’t Anne enough? A character vivid and realized, her life story so ... Read More »

April 3, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Kings of the Court

By Alison Hughes

Edmonton author Alison Hughes’s latest book for young readers (her back catalogue includes picture books and other middle-grade and YA titles) tells the story of the Gladiators, a junior-high basketball team whose bully of a ... Read More »

April 3, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Hannah and the Magic Eye

By Tyler Enfield

With his fast-paced new novel, Edmonton writer and photographer Tyler Enfield introduces young readers to the harrowing world of archaeological treasure hunts, Dan Brown–style, but with a thought-provoking and humanist twist. When 12-year-old Hannah Dubuisson ... Read More »

March 27, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Finding Jade (Daughters of Light, Book 1)

By Mary Jennifer Payne

Mary Jennifer Payne embarks on an ambitious and creative project with this first instalment in a series, and nearly accomplishes her aim. The year is 2030 and our protagonist, Jasmine (Jazz) Guzman, lives in Toronto. ... Read More »

March 20, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

The Lotterys Plus One

By Caroline Hadilaksono (ill.); Emma Donoghue

Nine-year-old Sumac Lottery is not at all pleased when her estranged grandfather arrives in Toronto from the Yukon for an undetermined amount of time. The old man just doesn’t appreciate or fit into Camelottery, the ... Read More »

March 6, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

The Valiant

By Lesley Livingston

Lesley Livingston is at it again. The popular author has built her career on stories that combine her love of historical and mythical settings with kick-ass female protagonists, and her newest creation is no exception. ... Read More »

March 6, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Exo

By Fonda Lee

Fonda Lee’s Exo takes place in a distant future, on a dramatically altered Earth that’s been colonized by an alien species, the Zhree. The war that led to the colonization ended a century ago and ... Read More »

March 1, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

★ The Goat

By Anne Fleming

Short-story author and poet Anne Fleming’s first run at children’s fiction is a quirky, riotous story that uses a preposterous conceit to deftly veil much deeper issues and themes. A story about a goat roaming ... Read More »

February 22, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Dominion

By Shane Arbuthnott

Molly Stout lives in a world that is either a polluted dystopian future with King George V on the British throne; the Victorian past with a steampunk twist and lots of rivets but no electronics; ... Read More »

February 21, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Saying Good-bye to London

By Julie Burtinshaw

It’s a classic story: Boy meets girl at a dance; boy and girl get hot and heavy for a while; boy and girl break up. In Julie Burtinshaw’s Saying Good-bye to London, the boy (Francis) ... Read More »

February 13, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

If This is Home

By Kristine Scarrow

Jayce has locked her heart up tight, only allowing room for her little sister and their overworked mom. When her mom is diagnosed with cancer, the tenuous balancing act that keeps their lives together is ... Read More »

February 9, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Keeping the Beat

By Jeff Norton; Marie Powell

Canadian Jeff Norton (now based in the U.K.) – author of the Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie books and the MetaWars series – joins forces with first-time author and entertainment-industry veteran Marie Powell on the novel ... Read More »

February 8, 2017 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Crushing It

By Joanne Levy

In a middle-grade twist on the classic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac’s clandestine wooing of the fair Roxane on behalf of the tongue-tied Christian, Joanne Levy, author of the very funny Small Medium at Large, ... Read More »