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Stars between the sun and moon: one woman's life in North Korea and escape to freedom
By Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland. 2014
Born in the seventies in North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household - her parents worked in…
the factories, and the family scraped by on government rations of rice and what little food they could grow in their small garden. For the nation, it was the beginning of a chaotic period. The country would face a decade-long famine resulting in more than a million dead. In this bleak landscape Jang dedicates herself to helping her parents and siblings survive. Eventually, she risks everything to flee her home country forever, determined to start a new life. This is her story. c2014.Sequence
By A. F Moritz. 2015
In "Sequence", the reader accompanies the poet step after step through a haunting and mercurial world that shimmers like sun…
on sand. Alternating moments of spare clarity with deep narrative flashes, the poem wanders the borders of the self, pursuing the eternal moment through imagined landscapes and the lush world waiting outside the writer's window. This is poetry of intense observation, finely tuned to a pattern that is sustained with breaks and returns, alive with eros and a hunger for Breton's "convulsive beauty." 2015.Three political leaders, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln and John A. Macdonald presided over the reshaping of the North American continent…
during the fiery 1860s. All were Protestants; none came from a wealthy family. They personified an age of social and economic transformation, thrust to the top by the very forces that tore the continent apart. Davis tried to create a country by ripping the South out of the United States and establishing the Confederate States of America. Lincoln's crusade to save the Union honed the industrial-military power that would one day dominate the world. Macdonald led the drive to shepherd the diverse British North American provinces into a federal state that would secure the northern half of the continent and keep Canada out of American hands. The success or failure of the projects would have consequences not only for the long-term future of the continent but for the entire global order. 2016.As oil prices soar and suburbs continue to sprawl, Grescoe hits the commuter road in a global quest to understand…
and illuminate the challenges of the post-automobile age. Ultimately, Straphanger’s subject is the city, and it offers a global tour of alternatives to car-based living, told through encounters with bicycle commuters, subway engineers, idealistic mayors and disillusioned trolley campaigners. Along the way, Grescoe meets libertarian apologists for the automobile, urbanists who defend suburban sprawl, champions of buses, rapid transit and light rail, and planners fighting to liberate cities from the empire of the automobile. Winner of the Quebec Writer's Federation Prize, 2012. Includes violence and strong language. 2012.Steal away home: one woman's epic flight to freedom-- and her long road back to the South
By Karolyn Smardz Frost. 2017
Fifteen-year-old slave Cecelia Reynolds made her dangerous bid for freedom from the United States, across the Niagara River and into…
Canada. Escape meant that she would never see her mother or brother again. She would be cut off from the young mistress with whom she grew up, but who also owned her. Cecelia found a new life in Toronto’s vibrant African American expatriate community. Her rescuer became her husband, a courageous conductor on the Underground Railroad helping other freedom-seekers reach Canada. Widowed, she braved the Fugitive Slave Law to cross back into the United States, where she again found love, and followed her William into the battlefields of the Civil War. Finally, with a wounded husband and young children in tow, she returned to the Kentucky she had known as a child. But her home had changed: hooded Night Riders roamed the countryside with torches and nooses at the ready. When William disappeared, Cecelia relied on the support and affection of her former mistress - the Southern belle who had owned her as a child. Winner of the 2018 Speaker's Book Award. 2017.Smiley: a journey of love
By Joanne George. 2017
Smiley, a most remarkable Golden Retriever, was born without eyes. He was rescued from a puppy mill and has become…
a superb therapy dog, providing therapy to people all over the world through social media and television. This is his story. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Express Award. Winner of the 2019 Red Cedar Information Book Award. Winner of the 2019 Hackmatack Award for non-fiction. Grades 4-6. 2017. Smiley, the therapy dog -- Smiley and Joanne -- Smiley and Joanne's new family -- St. John Ambulance therapy dogs -- Smiley, the blind therapy dog -- Smiley, the celebrity -- Ways you can help.Stormy seas: stories of young boat refugees
By Mary Beth Leatherdale. 2017
The plight of refugees risking their lives at sea has, unfortunately, made the headlines all too often in the past…
few years. This book presents five true stories, from 1939 to today, about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the United States from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; and after losing his family, Mohamed abandons his village on the Ivory Coast in search of a new life. Grades 4-7. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Non-Fiction Honour Book Award. 2017.Secrets underground: North America's buried past
By Elizabeth MacLeod. 2014
Uncover the spine-tingling mysteries and eerie surprises that lurk right under your feet! History buff Elizabeth MacLeod takes readers deep…
below the earth's surface, and introduces them to a completely different world - sometimes terrifying, often baffling, and always fascinating. Grades 5-8. c2014.Selling sickness: how the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies are turning us all into patients
By Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels. 2006
In this hard-hitting indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, the authors show how drug companies are systematically using their dominating influence…
in the world of medical science to widen the very boundaries that define illness. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness, and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Reveals how expanding the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt national healthcare systems all over the world. 2006.Some great idea: good neighbourhoods, crazy politics and the invention of Toronto
By Edward Keenan. 2013
Since 2010, Toronto’s headlines have been consumed by the controversies surrounding its mayor at City Hall. The author suggests that…
these have obscured a bigger story: Toronto’s decade-long ascendance as a mature global city having an amorphous identity built on diversity and constant redefinition. 2013.Sit how you want
By Robin Richardson. 2018
Plane crashes and automobile mishaps are the backdrop for female narrators who grapple with terror, anxiety, and powerlessness: "When I…
say I'm fine I mean the sky has opened / like an old wound under scurvy." In their grim wit, sinister straight talk, and sometimes violent bawdiness, Richardson's poems work as counter-charms against the lingering trauma of abusive relationships, both familial and romantic. The book embodies a belief in poetry as an instrument of change, a tool for transforming pain into exuberant verbal energy: "It is the thrill of ruination / makes us innovate." Winner of the 2019 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. 2018.Straight from the Hart
By Bruce Hart. 2011
The first son of wrestling steps out from behind the shadows of Calgary’s fabled “Hart dungeon” to discuss his family…
and the cutthroat world of professional wrestling. Stories about growing up as Stu Hart’s son and the brother of wrestling legends Bret “Hitman” Hart and the late Owen Hart offer sometimes disturbing insights into this wrestling dynasty. 2011.Shania Twain: on my way
By Dallas Williams. 1997
At nine years old, Eugenie Clark developed an unexpected passion for sharks after a visit to the Battery Park Aquarium…
in New York City. At the time, sharks were seen as mindless killing machines, but Eugenie knew better and set out to prove it. Despite many obstacles in her path, Eugenie was able to study the creatures she loved so much. From her many discoveries to the shark-related myths she dispelled, Eugenie made wide scientific contributions that led to her being nicknamed Shark Lady. Winner of 2018 Forest of Reading The Blue Spruce Award. Grades K-3. 2017.Stalin's daughter: the extraordinary and tumultuous life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
By Rosemary Sullivan. 2015
Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin.…
Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy--the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father. As she gradually learned about the extent of her father's brutality after his death, in 1967 Svetlana shocked the world by defecting to the United States. But she could not escape her father's legacy; her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Winner of the 2015 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the 2016 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize. Bestseller. 2015.Straight up and personal: the world according to Grapes
By Don Cherry. 2014
Known for his opinions - and unabashed expression of them - Don Cherry has been causing debate for decades. Topics…
on "Coach's Corner" sometimes veer away from sports and on to other matters that are near and dear to Cherry's heart: the war in Afghanistan and politics, among others. Now Don shares his thoughts on a broader range of issues than he ever has before. He shares some of his personal experiences on and off the ice, and offers the lessons he's learned along the way. Bestseller. 2014.Stereoblind
By Emma Healey. 2018
In "Stereoblind", no single thing is ever perceived in just one way. Shot through with asymmetry and misconception, the prose…
poems in Emma Healey’s second collection describe a world that’s anxious and skewed, but still somehow familiar--where the past, present, and future overlap, facts are not always true, borders are not always solid, and events seem to write themselves into being. An on-again, off-again real estate sale nudges a quartet of millennial renters into an alternate universe of multiplying signs and wonders; an art show at Ontario Place may or may not be as strange and complex (or even as “real”) as described; the collusion of a hangover and a blizzard carry our narrator on a trancelike odyssey through Bed Bath & Beyond. Using a diverse range of subjects--from pharmaceutical research testing to Tinder--to form an inventory of ontological disturbance, Healey delves moments when the differences between things disappear, and life exceeds its limits. 2018.Stolen sisters: the story of two missing girls, their families, and how Canada has failed indigenous women
By Emmanuelle Walter. 2015
Since 1980, 1,200 Canadian aboriginal women have been murdered or have gone missing. This alarming figure reveals a national tragedy…
and the systemic failure of law enforcement and of all levels of government to address the issue. Journalist Emmanuelle Walter spent two years investigating this crisis and has crafted a moving representative account of the disappearance of two young women, Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, teenagers from western Quebec, who have been missing since September 2008. Via personal testimonies, interviews, press clippings and official documents, Walter pieces together the disappearance and loss of these two young lives, revealing these young women to us through the voices of family members and witnesses. 2015. Uniform title: Soeurs volées : enquête sur un féminicide au Canada.Stephen Harper
By John Ibbitson. 2015
Stephen Harper has made government smaller, justice tougher, and provinces more independent. Those who praise Harper point to the Conservatives'…
skillful economic management, the reformed immigration system, the uncompromising defence of Israel and Ukraine, and the fight against terrorism, while critics accuse the Harper government of being autocratic, secretive and cruel. Ibbitson explores Harper’s suburban youth, the forces that shaped his tempestuous relationship with Reform Leader Preston Manning, how Laureen Harper influences her husband, his devotion to his children--and his cats. Ibbitson explains how this shy, closed, introverted loner united a fractured conservative movement, defeated a Liberal hegemony, and set out to reshape the nation. Bestseller. Winner of the 2015 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. 2015.Stolen life: the journey of a Cree woman
By Yvonne Johnson, Rudy Wiebe. 1998
Rudy Wiebe collaborates with Yvonne Johnson, a great-great-granddaughter of Cree Chief Big Bear, to tell the story of her life.…
Born in Montana with a double-cleft palate, she experienced a life of physical and sexual abuse, and slid into alcoholism before participating in the murder for which she is now in prison. Strong language, descriptions of violence, descriptions of sexual violence. 1998.