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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.Stormy weather: the life of Lena Horne
By James Gavin. 2009
Biography of African American singer/actress Lena Horne, born in 1917 Brooklyn, who first performed at Harlem's Cotton Club at age…
sixteen. Interprets Horne's multiracial family background in the pre-civil rights era as the reason for emotional conflicts in both her personal and professional lives. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. c2009.Pride: celebrating diversity & community
By Robin Stevenson. 2016
For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world, Pride is both protest and celebration. It's about embracing diversity.…
It's about fighting for freedom and equality. It's about history, and it's about the future. It's about all of us. Grades 4-7. 2016.My life on earth & elsewhere
By R. Murray Schafer. 2012
A memoir by the internationally-acclaimed Canadian composer, music educator and writer R. Murray Schafer, traces the author's life and growth…
as an artist from his earliest memories to the present. Scenes from his youth as an aspiring painter, a music student at the University of Toronto and a sailor on a Great Lakes freighter give way to memories of his several years of work and wandering in Europe, where he gained a deeper understanding of his vocation, and found, especially in Greece, the inspiration for much of the astonishing music he would create after his return to Canada. 2012.Lightfoot
By Nicholas Jennings. 2017
Takes us deep inside Gordon Lightfoot’s world, from his idyllic childhood in Orillia, the wild sixties, and his canoe trips…
into Canada’s North to his heady times atop the music world. Jennings explores the toll that success took on his personal life - including his troubled relationships, his battle with alcohol and his near-death experiences - and the extraordinary drive and tenacity that pulled him through it all. Rich in voices from fellow musicians, close friends, Lightfoot’s family and the singer’s own reminiscences, the biography tells the stories behind some of his best-known love songs, including “Beautiful” and “Song for a Winter’s Night,” as well as the infidelity and divorce that resulted in classics like “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind.” Bestseller. 2017.Behind the beautiful forevers: life, death and hope in a Mumbai slum
By Katherine Boo. 2012
Annawadi is a slum at the edge of Mumbai Airport, in the shadow of shining new luxury hotels. Its residents…
are garbage recyclers, construction workers and economic migrants, all of them living in the hope that a small part of India's booming future will eventually be theirs. But when a crime rocks the slum community and global recession and terrorism shocks the city, tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy begin to turn brutal. As Boo gets to know those who dwell at Mumbai's margins, she evokes an extraordinarily vivid and vigorous group of individuals flourishing against the odds amid the complications, corruptions and gross inequalities of the new India. Includes violence and strong language. 2012.Catch a wave: the rise, fall & redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
By Peter Ames Carlin. 2006
Using first-person interviews and unreleased recording-session transcriptions, former People magazine writer analyzes the life of Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson.…
Describes the Wilson brothers' emotional abuse at the hands of their father, Brian's descent into depression, and his comeback with the 2004 album Smile. Some strong language. 2006.Cigar box banjo: notes on music and life
By Paul Quarrington. 2010
Paul Quarrington had a favourite recording as a kid: a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, sets off…
for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way. As a grown-up writer and musician, Quarrington still loved the tale. And after he learned he had stage IV lung cancer, the story took on a whole new meaning for him. Cigar Box Banjo tracks a life lived in music and words. Some people with a terminal illness find mountains to climb; Quarrington decides to go out singing. 2010.All our sisters: stories of homeless women in Canada
By Susan Scott. 2007
Though they account for a small portion of the formal homeless statistics, there are many women living on insufficient funds,…
with violent partners, or in unacceptable dwellings that are often overlooked. Scott interviewed more than 60 women facing homelessness across Canada. She recounts their stories while highlighting the many underlying problems they face, including abuse, addiction, a paucity of affordable housing, and a lack of social services sensitive to women's needs. Explicit descriptions of sex, violence, and strong language. 2007.From this moment on
By Shania Twain. 2011
Forty-five-year-old Grammy-Award-winning Canadian singer Shania Twain details her impoverished childhood, her mother and stepfather’s tumultuous relationship and their accidental deaths…
when Shania was twenty-two, and the painful betrayal in her own first marriage two decades later. Discusses relishing her career, second marriage, and role as a mother. Strong language. Bestseller. 2011.Frontier justice: the global refugee crisis and what to do about it
By Andy Lamey. 2011
An exploration of the world-wide refugee crisis, through such stories as the Yale law students who sued the U.S. government…
on behalf of a group of refugees imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay; a refugee family's journey from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to contemporary Australia via the world's most dangerous ocean crossing; and the case of Ahmed Ressam, the so-called Millennium bomber who filed a refugee claim in Canada before attempting to blow up the Los Angeles airport. Offers an original solution to the international asylum crisis, one which draws upon Canada's unique approach to asylum-seekers. c2011.Glenn Gould (Extraordinary Canadians)
By Mark Kingwell. 2009
The author regards Glenn Gould as an innovative thinker whose ideas about music governed his life. But those ideas were…
contradictory, mischievous, deliberately provocative. Just as Gould played twenty-one “takes” to record the opening aria in his famed 1955 Goldberg Variations, Kingwell offers twenty-one takes on Gould’s life, each offering a different interpretation of the man. 2012, c2009.Can your smartphone change the world? (PopActivism)
By Erinne Paisley. 2017
"Can Your Smartphone Change the World?" is a twenty-first-century guide for anyone who has access to a smartphone. This how-to…
manual looks at specific ways you can create social change through the tap of a screen. Filled with examples of successful hashtag campaigns, viral videos and new socially conscious apps, the book provides practical advice for using your smartphone as a tool for social justice. For junior and senior high readers. 2017.Be the one: six true stories of teens overcoming hardship with hope
By Byron Pitts. 2017
Emmy Award-winning ABC News chief national correspondent and Nightline co-anchor, Byron Pitts shares the heartbreaking and inspiring stories of six…
young people who overcame impossible circumstances - abuse, bullying, war, drug addiction, mental illness and violence - with extraordinary perseverance. None of these should be realities for anyone, much less a young person. But for some it is the only reality they have ever known. In these dark circumstances, six teens needed someone to "be the one" for them--the hero to help them back into the light. For Tania, Mason, Pappy, Michaela, Ryan, and Tyton, that hero was themselves. For junior and senior high readers. 2017.A romance on three legs: Glenn Gould's obsessive quest for the perfect piano
By Katie Hafner. 2008
This account of the compulsive search for a highly responsive concert piano by Canadian Glenn Gould combines the parallel histories…
of one of the most controversial and brilliant pianists of the last century and the instrument on which he played. Presents a biography of Gould, who was known for his quirks, and a history of the German-bred Steinway piano company. It also features the interaction between Gould and Charles Verne Edquist, his nearly blind piano tuner. 2008.Buffy Sainte-Marie: the authorized biography
By Andrea Warner. 2018
Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this, Sainte-Marie’s first and…
only authorized biography, music critic Andrea Warner draws from more than sixty hours of exclusive interviews to offer a powerful, intimate look at the life of the beloved artist and everything that she has accomplished in her seventy-seven years (and counting). Bestseller. 2018.Born to run
By Bruce Springsteen. 2016
Bruce Springsteen describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination,…
leading up to the moment he refers to as "The Big Bang": seeing Elvis Presley's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song "Born to Run" reveals more than we previously realized. Bestseller. 2016.Waging heavy peace: a hippie dream
By Neil Young. 2012
Singer-songwriter Young (born 1945) chronicles his career, including stints with rock bands Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, and Crosby, Stills, Nash,…
and Young. Provides vignettes of his family life and discusses people he has worked with in the music industry. Some strong language. Bestseller. 2012.Hillbilly elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis
By J. D. Vance. 2016
Shares the story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan…
that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle class life and the collective demons of the past. Bestseller. 2016.Stick to your vision: how to get past the hurdles & haters to get where you want to be
By Maestro Fresh-Wes, Tamara Hendricks-Williams. 2010
Wes "Maestro" Williams has had to overcome many challenges in his life - some come from within, whether it's a…
fear of failure or low self-esteem, and some come from your circumstances. Wes shows you how to define your vision, how to achieve it, and what to do once you're there. He offers useful tips and advice, as well as inspirational stories and quotes, and exercises that will keep you moving towards your own vision. For junior and senior high readers. Some descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2011, c2010.