28.9.08

Dark Times



Dark Times is a collection of thirteen stories by Canadian authors.
The book was the result of a cross-Canada contest for the best short
stories about young people's experience of loss and grief, Dark Times
s a superb anthology about a topic that often remains hidden but is crucial
in the development of a child's sense of identity. The stories develop
highly contemporary situations: a First Nations boy mourns the death
of his mother; a boyfriend's death takes a girl through the five stages of grief;
a destitute family loses their home; a daughter loses a parent when her
mother
leaves; a fetal alcohol syndrome child is lost to his family when he
is sent to prison; a boy loses the brother he loves to mental illness; the death
of a small child challenges a girl's belief in God; and a young girl discovers
her father in an affair and confronts him with devastating results.


Although the stories sound depressing, they aren't. Most of them leave
the reader with the sense that things will get better, that the grieving will pass.

Editor Ann Walsh's story is about a a girl coping with the loss of her grandmother to Alzheimer's disease. This story has been used in many anthologies and reading texts.

Other authors include: Sarah Ellis, Lee Maracle, Alison Lohans, Diana Aspin,
Carolyn Pogue, Gina Rozon, Jessie Mae Keller, Libby Kennedy, Donna
R. Gamache, Patricia McCowan, Betty Jane Hegerat and Carrie Mac.

Published by Ronsdale Press, Vancouver

Winds Through Time


Preview this book
Winds Through Time; An Anthology of Canadian Historical Young Adult Fiction



ISBN13: 9780888783844
Publisher:
Dundurn Press

Description

For this young adult anthology, Ann Walsh has selected fifteen captivating stories written by well-kknown authors from across the country. Each contributor has penned a dramatic account of a real episode in Canadian history. From mine disasters to scarlet fever epidemics, from the Great War to the Gold Rush, these writers breathe life into the tales of our ancestors and tell stories only history could have imagined. Dedicated to the beloved W.O. Mitchell and bringing to life his words, these stories will give you pause to remember your own history and make you eager to seek out other works by these gifted Canadians.

Your Time, My time










ISBN13: 9780888782199

Publisher: Dundurn Press


Description

Moving with her mother from Vancouver to Wells, British Columbia, Elizabeth Connell longs for the excitement of the city and her father, brother, and friends left behind. While she is in the peaceful graveyard of nearby Barkerville she finds a small gold ring that has very special powers. By twisting the ring on her finger, Elizabeth is transported to the nineteenth century during the heyday of the gold rush. Caught between her present life with family and friends and a love in the past, Elizabeth learns more than history.


This past summer, 2009, friends gathered in Wells, BC., the setting of this book, to congratulate both book and author on being in print for twenty five years. I would post a photo if I knew how and if any of them had turned out well. It was very hot, so hot the icing was sliding off the cake.

The Ghost of Soda Creek


Price: $11.99
ISBN13: 9781550028300

Publisher: Dundurn Press

Description

Moving to Soda Creek, a former Gold Rush boomtown in the Cariboo region of interior British Columbia, Kelly Linden and her father try to begin their lives again after a tragic family accident.


27.9.08

By The Skin of His Teeth






This one is the third in the Moses.... trilogy and an excellent book. Or so I think. It also is based on a real life murder that happened during the gold rush in British Columbia during the late 1800s.

The year is 1870, the place Barkerville, British Columbia, where dreams glitter with gold. Racial tensions run high when a Chinese man is found stabbed to death on the steps outside his restaurant. The accused is a French Canadian named Henri Tremblay, and the main witness is a Chinese immigrant called Ah Ohn.

In By the Skin of His Teeth, seventeen-year-old Ted MacIntosh, whom author Ann Walsh showcased earlier in Moses, Me, and Murder and The Doctor’s Apprentice, befriends a young Chinese boy despite the intense prejudice seething in the frontier town. Ted suffers intimidation and violence at the hands of the cruel, arrogant Tremblay and his cronies, but with courage and conviction the young man stands up for what he believes and defends his Chinese friend. Tremblay and his crew, though, ultimately harass and scare the entire Chinese community into silence and altered testimony. At the trial Ted is outraged and fights to reveal the truth, and we are hurled toward a controversial conclusion as the jury delivers its verdict.

Shabash!



Price: $11.99
ISBN13: 9781550028294
Publisher:
Dundurn Press

Description


Shabash was nominated for Ontario's Silver Birch Award for its sensitive exploration of the cultural differences that unite and divide and the prejudices within, and against, minority communities. As a Sikh living in a small mill town in the interior of British Columbia, Rana knows he is "different"; in fact, he is the first Sikh in Dinway to join the hockey team. But what started as a whim becomes a determined struggle, and Rana persists, making the team, and meets Les, who becomes a new friend. But the jibes from his teammates and community members continue. Finally, just before the most important game of the season, an extraordinary event interrupts the lives of everyone in Dinway, and Rana explodes in anger, risking his membership and the respect he has earned over the hockey season.

Shabash! is often used in conjunction with a unit on racism. A teachers' guide is available through the publisher.


An 'Our Choice' award from the Canadian Children's Book Centre. Also nominated for the Silver Birch Award.


The Doctor's Apprentice






ISBN13: 9781550026337
Publisher:
Dundurn Press

Description

Ann Walsh‘s sequel to Moses, Me and Murder (Pacific Educational Press) continues the adventures of Ted, now 14. Still tormented by the ghost of murderer James Barry, Ted apprentices to the eccentric doctor J.B. Wilkinson, whose dependency on opium for his patients and for his own demons reveals a past intertwined with the life and death of an enigmatic woman named Sophia Cameron.

• Shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Prize for Canadian Children's Historical Literature and the B.C. Book Prizes (Sheila Egoff Award.)