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Kids Litspace Lists
Browse the books in the All Lit Up Kids Litspace by category.
Browse by Category
Children's Poetry
Beloved children's poetry titles.Kids' Drama
Plays written for kids!Kids' Non-Fiction
A selection of kids' non-fiction titles.Middle Grade
A selection of middle grade fiction titles featured on ALU's Kids' Litspace.Picture Books
A selection of picture books featured on ALU's Kids' Litspace.YA Fiction
A list of YA fiction featured in All Lit Up's Kids' Litspace.
All Books in this Collection
A Bend in the Breeze
When eleven-year-old Pascale Chardon finds herself on a lifeboat drifting toward an uncharted island with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to get back to her family. The islanders, however, have a different objective.For many decades, the islanders have been anticipating the arrival of someone foretold only as the Long Awaited. The Long Awaited is said to have knowledge of the island’s future and will tell the islanders of their fate seventeen days after their arrival.At first Pascale is sure she’s not the Long Awaited, but when strange things begin to happen, she finds it impossible to be certain of anything. Could she be the Long Awaited after all? A Bend in the Breeze, award-winning author Valerie Sherrard’s 30th novel, is a delightful tale about the importance of love and compassion.
When Pascale Chardon finds herself on a lifeboat drifting toward an uncharted island with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to get back to her family. The islanders, however, have a different objective.
For many decades, the islanders have waited for someone foretold only as the Long Awaited. The Long Awaited is said to have knowledge of the islanders? fate. At first Pascale is sure she?s not the Long Awaited, but when strange happenings occur, she finds it impossible to be certain of anything. Could she be the Long Awaited after all?
A Wonderful Bigness
$12.99In this touching, often humorous remembrance, Diana Daly introduces young readers to her smart, funny, and caring great aunties and uncles?six remarkable people who lived with skeletal dysplasia at a time when the condition was not well understood. Daly intertwines older family stories with her own memories to create fond portraits of little people who embraced life with joy, faith, and wit. Daly focuses on ability, rather than disability, and and reminds readers that a family is always richer when a place can be made for all of its members. Based on the play ?If a Place Could Be Made,? which Daly co-wrote with Anne Troake and Louise Moyes, A Wonderful Bigness is a celebration of family, inclusion, and great heartedness. The book features artwork by NL-born multimedia artist and animator Bruce Alcock.
A Year with Minecraft1
$17.95In A Year with Minecraft, gaming journalist Thomas Arnroth brings you along for the ride in a gripping and entertaining story about how the shy and nerdy can become superstars in the age of video games. Go behind the scenes at the company responsible for this worldwide gaming phenomenon. Meet Markus “Notch” Persson, Jens Bergensten, Carl Manneh, and the rest of the team at Mojang.
With over 33 million units sold since 2011, Minecraft has also become a tool for education all the way from U.S. to Kuwait, while the United Nations uses it to change slums in the world’s poorest megacities. In just three years, Persson emerged from total obscurity to fame and incredible wealth, as he and his team at Mojang have changed the indie game scene and how the gaming industry works.
With a fresh, interesting and personal view on how Mojang works, this book is a smart read both for the fan, the gamer, and anyone who wants to understand the phenomenon of Minecraft and how it’s changing the world.
ABC MTL
$21.95Montreal spelled out in a mosaic of haiku, descriptive text and full-colour photographs. From A to Z, every letter introduces a different aspect of the city in all its diversity and fun.
Amik
$15.00The beaver is busy…
This delightful children’s picture book tells the story of amik, the beaver, who works on his dam throughout the day while nature and the activities of other animals carry on around him. At the end of a long day, amik returns to his den to be with his family.
Along with its beautiful cut-paper illustrations, Amik offers the chance for children to learn words and phrases in the Ojibwe language, as the text appears in both English and Anishinaabemowin. A fun, colourful and engaging book for children ages three through six.
Amphibian
$19.95Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region)
A Globe and Mail Top Five First Fiction Title of 2009
Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog’s food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he’s top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn’t know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can’t live together – after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it’s not like one of them just packshis bags and leaves the country.
To make it to-infinity worse, he’s worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn’t everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth’s mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White’s tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it’s the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.
“Carla Gunn’s prose crackleswith energy in this illuminating, heart-gripping novel. A hilarious, brilliant, loveable, exasperating child, Phin and his mesmerizing voice need listening to. The powerful, authentic narrator brings to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but Gunn’s an original, and draws us deeply into Phin’s many and varied worlds. A compassionate tale balancing light and dark, this is a must-read book.’ —Sheree Fitch, author of Kiss the Joy As It Flies
“I’m thrilled to promote Amphibian as our number one summer reading suggestion to customers of all ages, many of whom have returned to say how much they enjoyed it. It really has all the elements of a classic in the making. In nine-year-old Phineas Walsh, Carla Gunn has created a narrator that is perceptive, hilarious and frustrating, as he grapples with humanity’s seeming indifference to the rapid destruction of our animals and our planet. The issues are urgent, yet the author maintains a light tone throughout that isbreathtakingly delightful, heartfelt and ultimately hopeful. It’s fresh, timely and very hard to find fault with. I was thrilledto read it and shed light on this gem of a book that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle. It’s what independent bookselling is all about.” —Andrew Peck, Singing Pebble Books, Ottawa
Arrow through the Axes
$11.95Arrow through the Axes concludes the “Odyssey of a Slave” trilogy that began with the Red Maple-nominated Torn from Troy, retelling Homer’s Odyssey. The slave Alexi, now free of his Greek captors, infiltrates the Greek strongholds of the Bronze Age in search of his sister. In so doing he participates in the stories of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, as he seeks revenge for his father’s murder, and of Telemachus, son of Odysseus, who lands on Ithaca, the home island of Odysseus, just in time to witness the arrival of a mysterious stranger. As Alexi comes to understand the damage that the Trojan War has visited upon its victors, both he and the reader are forced to confront an unpleasant truth, while Alexi must decide where his allegiance really lies. Re-casting the Odyssey as a YA adventure, this trilogy brings ancient mythology to life in a way that traditional retellings cannot. We see what life would have been like for Bronze-Age warriors as Bowman interweaves adventure, ritual and historical detail into a realistic and compelling narrative. Readers who have experienced pop mythology, and now want to dive deeper, will find Arrow through the Axes especially satisfying, but all readers will enjoy this powerful excursion into the classic mythology that shaped western culture.
Awesome Wildlife Defenders
$15.95Awesome Wildlife Defenders, a junior novel, is the story of eleven-year-old Rebecca, who tries to cope with her panic attacks. Life becomes complicated when she is teamed up with Weird Cedar, on her endangered species project. Her friendship with Frieda is tested when Frieda has to work with Bossy Brianna, the class bully. When Brianna calls Rebecca and Cedar lovebirds, Rebecca is devastated. And, Rebecca and her mom are told their little rental home is being sold. While working on the project of the endangered northern spotted owl, Rebecca discovers that Cedar is kind and a talented artist who carries an enormous burden. When Cedar’s father is released from jail, Rebecca wonders what’s worse, a father who is in jail or not knowing who and where her father is? Cedar’s grandfather takes them to the Raptors to watch a flying demonstration. Rebecca feels the magic when the great horned owl lands on her arm. Is it possible that this unforgettable moment will help her cope with future panic attacks? While staying with his father, Cedar disappears. Rebecca is determined to find him. The endangered species project brings all students together when they sew and sell felt owlets. Will her class raise enough money to adopt twelve endangered species? Will Rebecca and Mom find a place to live or will she be forced to change schools and lose Frieda and her other friends forever?
Barefoot Helen and the Giants
$12.95Helen is a fine hand with a slingshot, and more than at home in the woods. After all, she was raised by bears. When she stumbles upon three evil giants, she hatches the perfect plan to rid the land of them. Well, almost perfect…
Bulleybummus, the fiercest giant, catches her and insists she help kidnap the princess Antoinette. Instead, Helen manages to save the sleeping princess and finish off the giant before heading quietly back home. No one knows who the giant killer is, but Antoinette is determined to find out and comes up with a plan of her own.
Beginnings: Stories Of Canada’s Past
$12.95Ann Walsh has selected fourteen captivating stories written by accomplished authors from across Canada for this historical anthology. Each of the stories focuses on a “first-time” historical experience, such as the meeting between natives and Europeans at Fort St. James; the ship carrying filles du roi as brides for the settlers of New France; the first elections in which women in Canada were allowed to vote; the first gourmet meal cooked in a CPR rail camp for Cornelius Van Horne; a mine disaster in the Crowsnest Pass, with the subsequent introduction of safety lamps for the miners; and an account of the “Home Children” first sent to Canada during the nineteenth century, supposedly for a better life, but often to work in slave-labour conditions.
Blue Knight, The
$19.95“The Blue Knight” reveals problems in our society related to racism and bullying, which is an important topic that is currently at the forefront of many lives and is being discussed at great lengths around the world. The main character, a teenage boy named Owen, lives in a small village with his mother. He is chastised by everyone he encounters until the day he meets an unusual friend who lives in the mountains nearby. Both outcasts must gain each other’s trust and learn self-worth, mutual respect and tolerance. During their adventures, both friends learn to overcome the harshness of racism and hate while challenging others to do the same. This book will teach young readers how to find strategies and answers in their life that will help them to deal with these important issues productively and positively.
Broken Trail
$11.95Broken Trail is the story a thirteen-year-old white boy, the son of United Empire Loyalists, who has been captured and adopted by the Oneida people. Striving to find his vision oki that will guide him in his quest to become a warrior, Broken Trail disavows his white heritage – he considers himself Oneida. But everything changes when Broken Trail, alone in the woods on his vision quest, is mistakenly shot by a redcoat soldier.
Chaos in Halifax
$15.95“I wish I wasn’t a twin.” Twelve-year-old Jolene is determined to find independence from her brother, Michael, during a family trip to research the Halifax explosion of 1917 for her father’s Museum of Disasters. When her grandfather finds a time crease into the past, Jolene discovers a new friend and the importance of family and loyalty in a world torn apart by World War I. When Michael joins them, however, the past suddenly becomes much more complicated.
Charlie
$12.95The story of the 100,000 British children who came to Canada as child immigrants between 1870 and 1938 is not well known. Yet the descendants of these “Home Children” number over four million people in Canada today. The author is one of them. Charlie was her father.
Claws of the Panda
$24.95Claws of the Panda tells the story of Canada’s failure to construct a workable policy towards the People’s Republic of China. In particular the book tells of Ottawa’s failure to recognize and confront the efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate and influence Canadian politics, academia, and media, and to exert control over Canadians of Chinese heritage. Claws of the Panda gives a detailed description of the CCP’s campaign to embed agents of influence in Canadian business, politics, media and academia. The party’s aims are to be able to turn Canadian public policy to China’s advantage, to acquire useful technology and intellectual property, to influence Canada’s international diplomacy, and, most important, to be able to monitor and intimidate Chinese Canadians and others it considers dissidents. The book traces the evolution of the Canada-China relationship over nearly 150 years. It shows how Canadian leaders have constantly misjudged the reality and potential of the relationship while the CCP and its agents have benefited from Canadian naivete.
Cursed by the Sea God
$11.95The second volume in the trilogy that revisions Homer’s Odyssey is once again told from the viewpoint of Alexi, the young Trojan boy. Captured by Odysseus after the fall of Troy, Alexi is forced to accompany the Greeks on their sea journey home to Ithaca. Cursed by the Sea God contains many of the iconic adventures of the homeward journey, including the encounter with the keeper of the winds, the descent into Hades, the fateful visit to the cannibal Laestrygonians, the encounters with Circe the sorceress, the songs of the Sirens, and the deadly passage between the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Having earned his master’s respect in saving him from the Sirens, Alexi loses it all though mischance, and his own circumstances take a turn for the worse as he is given away to the most brutal soldier on the ship. It takes all of Alexi’s skill and determination just to stay alive.