Title search results
Showing 1 - 16 of 16 items
The great fire
By Jim Murphy. 1995
An account of the conflagration that levelled much of Chicago in 1871. Chronicles events from the fire's outbreak and rapid…
spread to its extinguishment by rain, as reported by survivors and in documents of the period. Examines the origins, circumstances, and official failures that contributed to the disaster. Grades 5-8. A 1996 Newbery Honor Book. c1995.Survivors!: true death-defying escapes
By Larry Verstraete. 2003
Think about your worst fears - being attacked by a wild animal, swept away by a killer storm, trapped in…
a wrecked car or a burning building. Here are 29 stories of real people who survived life-threatening situations. Each section includes Survival Tips that give readers essential information about what to do in dangerous circumstances. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2004 Silver Birch Award. Grades 4-7. Bestseller 2005. 2003.Interweaves an account of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America that carried a cargo of gold bullion and…
minted coins with the story of the shipwreck's discovery in 1988 by Tommy Thompson. Describes Thompson's feat of developing technology to locate and retrieve artifacts from a wooden-hulled ship in eight thousand feet of water. Winner of the 2000 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. 1998.Sand dance: by camel across Arabia's great southern desert
By Bruce Kirkby. 2000
In the winter of 1999, three Canadians and three Omani Bedu set out across Arabia's great southern desert in an…
attempt to authentically recreate the 1947 crossing by Sir Wilfred Thesiger. Here they share the adventures and misadventures they experienced while crossing the vast, desolate desert. Winner of the 2001 Torgi Talking Book of the Year Award.On board the Titanic: what it was like when the great liner sank (I was there book)
By Shelley Tanaka, Ken Marschall. 1996
The story of the Titanic, once the world's largest ocean liner, as told through the experiences of two of its…
survivors. Detailed explanations about the ship, passengers, and crew are interwoven with an account of its tragic sinking in 1912. Grades 4-7. Winner of the 1997 Silver Birch Award. c1996.At the edge: daring acts in desperate times
By Larry Verstraete. 2009
A young man in Nunavut fights off a polar bear to save his friend, a Canadian peacekeeper in the Congo…
risks his own life to save those of stranded tourists, and ordinary people show extraordinary character during the Halifax Explosion, the Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, the Tiananmen Square protests, and September 11, 2001. Over twenty true-life stories about life-threatening situations and the wrenching choices made by the people facing them. Winner of the 2010 Silver Birch Award for Non-fiction. Grades 5-8. Some descriptions of violence. 2009.Touch the dragon: a Thai journal
By Karen Connelly. 1992
Karen Connelly, 17 years old and bored with her life, was accepted by an exchange program which took her from…
Calgary to a small town in Thailand. She describes her assimilation into the Thai language and culture and her despair at leaving when the year came to an end. Winner of the 1993 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. 1992.The shining mountain: two men on Changabang's west wall
By Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker. 1984
Recounts the endurance and determination of two British mountain climbers in making a forty-day ascent up the treacherous west wall…
of Changabang Mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. 1984.The boat who wouldn't float
By Farley Mowat. 1969
An anthropologist on Mars: seven paradoxical tales
By Oliver W Sacks. 1995
Case histories of people with neurological disorders who reconstruct the world according to their needs. Comfortable with his forty-five years…
of blindness, one man is confused by the sudden restoration of his sight. An autistic zoology professor is at ease with animals but cannot bear human contact. Each tale portrays a patient with a condition such as Tourette's Syndrome, deafness, or amnesia. Bestseller. Winner of the 1997 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. 1995.Lifeboat 12: based on a true story
By Susan Hood. 2018
In 1940, a group of British children, their escorts, and some sailors struggle to survive in a lifeboat when the…
ship taking them to safety in Canada is torpedoed. For grades 4-7Fallen angels
By Walter Dean Myers. 1988
Ritchie Perry, a black youth from Harlem, enlists in the army. He is sent to Vietnam where he struggles to…
survive racist officers, pitched battles, guerrilla raids, and multiple wounds. Violence and strong language. For senior high and older readers. 1988A troubled peace (Under A War-Torn Sky #2)
By Laura Elliott. 2009
1945. World War II pilot Henry Forester from Under a War-Torn Sky (DB 68311), returns home to Virginia and struggles…
with nightmares. Henry ventures to France to find a boy who saved his life and is shocked at the lingering devastation. Some violence. For senior high readers. 2009Mutiny!
By Brad Strickland. 2002
In 1687 eleven-year-old Irish orphan Davy sails to Jamaica to live with his uncle, Dr. "Patch" Shea. They join a…
British frigate where Patch and his friend Lieutenant William Hunter help stage an aborted mutiny. Fleeing, the mutineers commandeer a sloop and masquerade as pirates. Precedes Guns of Tortuga (BR 15069). For grades 4-7. 2002A boy at war: a novel of Pearl Harbor
By Harry Mazer. 2001
December 7, 1941. Fourteen-year-old Adam lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father is stationed on a battleship. Adam and two…
of his classmates are fishing in a rowboat when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Although wounded, Adam is conscripted to help the survivors. For grades 6-9. 2001A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor
By Harry Mazer. 2001
They rowed hard, away from the battleships and the bombs. Water sprayed over them. The rowboat pitched one way and…
then the other. Then, before his eyes, the Arizona lifted up out of the water. That enormous battleship bounced up in the air like a rubber ball and split apart. Fire burst out of the ship. A geyser of water shot into the air and came crashing down. Adam was almost thrown out of the rowboat. He clung to the seat as it swung around. He saw blue skies and the glittering city. The boat swung back again, and he saw black clouds, and the Arizona, his father's ship, sinking beneath the water. -- from A Boy at War "He kept looking up, afraid the planes would come back. The sky was obscured by black smoke....It was all unreal: the battleships half sunk, the bullet holes in the boat, Davi and Martin in the water." December 7, 1941: On a quiet Sunday morning, while Adam and his friends are fishing near Honolulu, a surprise attack by Japanese bombers destroys the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Even as Adam struggles to survive the sudden chaos all around him, and as his friends endure the brunt of the attack, a greater concern hangs over his head: Adam's father, a navy lieutenant, was stationed on the USS Arizona when the bombs fell. During the subsequent days Adam -- not yet a man, but no longer a boy -- is caught up in the war as he desperately tries to make sense of what happened to his friends and to find news of his father. Harry Mazer, whose autobiographical novel, The Last Mission, brought the European side of World War II to vivid life, now turns to the Pacific theater and how the impact of war can alter young lives forever.