The latest addition to the bestselling Dear Canada series takes readers directly into the historic struggle between the French and English for control of the area. Angelique watches as families are torn apart and forced to settle far away from one another, and worries about her brother who is fighting for the Acadian cause. Will her family stay together during this dramatic time or will they be wrenched apart forever?
Through the diary of 10-year-old Victoria Cope, we learn about the arrival of ragged Mary Anna, one of the thousands of impoverished British children who were sent to Canada at the beginning of the century. Mary Anna joins the Cope family as a servant and is treated well, but she has to cope with the initial apprehension of the family members and the loss of her brother, Jasper, who was placed with another family. Victoria vows to help Mary Anna find her brother, so they can be a family once again.
The first Dear Canada featuring a First Nations diarist, The Death of My Country is set at a pivotal point in Canada's history -- the war between Britain and France for control of New France. Geneviève Aubuchon is born into an Abenaki tribe but is orphaned when another tribe destroys her village. She and her brother are taken to a convent in Québec.While Geneviève gradually adapts to her new life with the sisters, her older brother runs away to rejoin the Abenaki. Geneviève fears for his life when he joins the First Nations allies who are helping defend Québec against the British siege of the city and the attack on the Plains of Abraham. Author Maxine Trottier frequently participates in historical re-enactments. Her hobby has provided her with an opportunity to research and experience this key time in Canada's history.
Twelve original holiday stories from the top children's writers in the country! What an incredible gift book for Dear Canada fans! The twelve stories in this treasury are set around Christmas time and feature the young girls from a dozen previous Dear Canada books. Readers will be thrilled to reconnect with their favourites and get a glimpse of each character's life a year or so after the events in the actual diary are over. Anyone new to the Dear Canada series will be introduced to characters so compelling, they'll want to read more.
"I can hardly bear to look at Fanny. She is grey and her breath rasps and gurgles and wheezes. She has lost pounds. Her face is all hollow and a dark colour. A bluish grey. That is one of the symptoms of this Flu, Aunt told us. Nobody is saying the word, but we all know. So many have died, but not my Fan. I will not leave her no matter what anyone says." Fee uses her diary to record all of her fears when the Spanish Flu rages through Toronto. It comforts her when she almost loses her twin sister -- and when it actually takes their older sister Jemma.
In the summer of 1812, as rumours of a looming war become a reality, Susanna, her mother and sister are surviving as best they can while the men are fighting. As news of various battles reaches them, Susanna becomes even more concerned for the safety and well-being of her beloved brother and father. She is also torn between the loyalties of her best friend and her mother -- both Americans living in Upper Canada -- and her father's and brother's allegiance to General Brock and the King. But the night of the Battle of Queenston Heights, Susanna's main concern is for survival.
Tok, the most nimble-winged of the young ravens, is banished for a crime he did not commit, and the only way he can restore his honor and his father's name is to perform a brave and daring deed to benefit all ravenkind.
Still reeling from the death of her mother, Harriet sets out on a dangerous journey -- disguised as a boy, since no "petticoats" are allowed on the trip -- determined to find her missing father in the gold fields of British Columbia's Cariboo. The journey itself is incredibly difficult, and Harriet still has to find her father before the winter snows close down the entire Williams Creek area. Will she be able to find him, or will her journey be for nothing?
For Tamara Chalabi, Iraq is more than a country of war and controversy; it is a place of poignant memory. For much of the twentieth century, the Chalabis were among the most influential families in Iraq. In the 1920s they were at the forefront of their country's awakening to modernity, and they played an integral part in the establishment of its monarchy. As courtiers, politicians, businessmen, rebels, merchants, and scholars, the Chalabis enjoyed vast privilege until the end of the 1950s, when they were forced to flee to the land of exile, myth, and imagination, where their beloved homeland took on the quality of a phantom country. In between came rebellions, foreign interventions, and the transformative development of oil wealth. But in 2003, after a lifetime of exile, Tamara arrived in Baghdad just ten days after the city's fall, in the company of her father, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading opposition figure against the Saddam regime. Late for Tea at the Deer Palace chronicles a daughter's return to a homeland she'd known only through stories and her own imagination. As she investigates four generations of her family's history, Tamara offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern family life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. The story is populated by an array of unforgettable characters, among them Tamara's great-grandfather Abdul Hussein Chalabi, who as a member of the Ottoman parliament witnessed the end of the empire in Baghdad and the birth of the modern Iraqi state at the hands of the British; her grandfather Abdul Hadi Chalabi, who became one of the wealthiest men in Iraq and had strong ties with the British during World War II; and her grandmother Bibi, a grande dame who presided over Iraq's social and political life during Baghdad's 1920s and '30s heyday as the Paris of the Middle East. At once intimate and magisterial, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace vividly captures the rich, overlooked history of a country that has been uprooted by war and a family that has persevered by never forgetting its dreams or its past.
With more than 200,000 books in print, Dear Canada has fast become the historical fiction series for young girls. It has been two long years since Eliza's beloved older brother, Hugo, went away to war. Caught up in his enthusiasm, she couldn't understand her parent's less-than enthusiastic reaction. Now that her other brother Jack has also enlisted, she yearns for the safe return of both brothers. If only she had a friend that she could talk to about her feelings....
