Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1 - 20 of 48 items
By Kim Spencer. 2022
By Geneviève Damas. 2013
" Si tu passes la rivière, si tu passes la rivière, a dit le père, tu ne remettras plus les…
pieds dans cette maison . Cest ainsi que commence la poignante histoire de François, jeune paysan naïf et ultra sensible en quête de vérité et de liberté. Prisonnier de son milieu familial rigide et fermé, il passe le plus clair de son temps à garder les cochons auxquels il parle et se confie. Avec ce premier roman, Geneviève Damas fait preuve dune maîtrise remarquable en dépeignant dune manière aussi juste un univers rempli dhumanité, de compassion et de silences... " -- 4e de couvBy Cathy LeBlanc, David Chapman. 2022
By Danielle Daniel. 2022
The middle-grade debut of star picture-book author and illustrator Danielle DanielAdventurous, trail-blazing Wolf lives in a northern mining town and…
spends her days exploring the mountains and wilderness with her three best friends Penny, Ann and Brandi. The girls’ secret refuge is their tree-house hideaway, Birchwood, Wolf’s favourite place on earth. When her beloved grandmother tells her that she is the great-granddaughter of a tree talker, Wolf knows that she is destined to protect the birch trees and wildlife that surround her.But Wolf’s mother doesn’t understand this connection at all. Not only is she reluctant to engage with their family’s Indigenous roots, she seems suspiciously on the wrong side of the environmental protection efforts in their hometown. To make matters worse, she’s just started dating an annoying new boyfriend named Roger, whose motives—and construction company—seem equally suspect.As summer arrives, so do bigger problems. Wolf and her friends discover orange plastic bands wrapped around the trees near their cherished hangout spot, and their once stable friendship seems on the verge of unravelling. Birchwood has given them so much—can they even stay together long enough to save this special place?With gorgeous yet understated language, Danielle Daniel beautifully captures an urgent and aching time in a young person’s life. To read this astonishing middle-grade debut is to have your heart broken and then tenderly mended.By Leslie Gentile. 2021
Winner of the 2021 City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize It’s the summer of 1978 and most people think Elvis…
Presley has been dead for a year. But not eleven-year-old Truly Bateman – because she knows Elvis is alive and well and living in the Eagle Shores Trailer Park. Maybe no one ever thought to look for him at on the Eagle Shores First Nation on Vancouver Island. It’s a busy summer for Truly. Though her mother is less of a mother than she ought to be, and spends her time drinking and smoking and working her way through new boyfriends, Truly is determined to raise as much money for herself as she can through her lemonade stand … and to prove that her cool new neighbour is the one and only King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. And when she can’t find motherly support in her own home, she finds sanctuary with Andy El, the Salish woman who runs the trailer park.By Michael Hutchinson. 2021
The National Assembly of Cree Peoples has gathered together in the Windy Lake First Nation, home to the Mighty Muskrats—cousins…
Chickadee, Atim, Otter, and Sam. But when the treaty bundle, the center of a four-day-long ceremony, is taken, the four mystery-solving cousins set out to catch those responsible and help protect Windy Lake’s reputation!What’s worse, prime suspect Pearl takes off to the city with her older brother and known troublemaker, Eddie. If they have the burgled bundle with them, the Mighty Muskrats fear it may be lost for good. With clues pointing in too many different directions, the cousins need to find and return the missing bundle before the assembly comes to an end. The history and knowledge passed down to each generation through the bundle is at stake.An Anishinaabe child and her grandmother explore the natural wonders of each season in this lyrical, bilingual story-poem. In this…
lyrical story-poem, written in Anishinaabemowin and English, a child and grandmother explore their surroundings, taking pleasure in the familiar sights that each new season brings. We accompany them through warm summer days full of wildflowers, bees and blueberries, then fall, when bears feast before hibernation and forest mushrooms are ripe for harvest. Winter mornings begin in darkness as deer, mice and other animals search for food, while spring brings green shoots poking through melting snow and the chirping of peepers. Brittany Luby and Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley have created a book inspired by childhood memories of time spent with Knowledge Keepers, observing and living in relationship with the natural world in the place they call home — the northern reaches of Anishinaabewaking, around the Great Lakes.By Charlene Bearhead, Wilson Bearhead, Chloe Bluebird Mustooch. 2020
Thundering drums, rattling hooves, clinking jingles—come along with Paul, Jeff, and Uncle Lenard to the powwow! Paul Wahasaypa—Siha Tooskin—has invited…
his friend, Jeff, to a powwow. It’s Jeff’s very first powwow, and is he ever nervous! What if he says or does the wrong thing? Grass dancers, Fancy Shawl dancers, Chicken dancers—what does it all mean? Follow along as Jeff learns all about the dances and their beautiful traditions. See you at the powwow!The Siha Tooskin Knows series uses vivid narratives and dazzling illustrations in contemporary settings to share stories about an 11-year-old Nakota boy.By Mindy Willett, Henry Beaver. 2019
Henry and Eileen Beaver and their family live in Fort Smith, on the Slave River between Lake Athabaska and Great…
Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. They have a mixed indigenous heritage of Nehiyaw or Cree and Dene Dedline or Chipewyan.Join the authors as they lead the children and parents through important cultural experiences, tell stories, and share their wisdom and truths with compassion. Learn the protocols for building a tipi, trapping a beaver, laying the grandfather stones for a fire, smudging, and harvesting salt from the Salt Plains in Wood Buffalo National Park. In Cree, tapwe means "it is so," or "the truth." In this, the ninth book in This Land Is Our Storybook series, Henry writes, "We can't tell you what to do with the truths we share in this book, but we hope that reading our story will help you get to know us a little better so that together we can make this nation a place we can all be proud of."By Anna Humphrey. 2018
Daniel Misumi has just moved to a new house. It's big and old and far away from his friends and…
his life before. AND it's haunted ... or is it? Megabat was just napping on a papaya one day when he was stuffed in a box and shipped halfway across the world. Now he's living in an old house far from home, feeling sorry for himself and accidentally scaring the people who live there. Daniel realizes it's not a ghost in his new house. It's a bat. And he can talk. And he's actually kind of cute. Megabat realizes that not every human wants to whack him with a broom. This one shares his smooshfruit. Add some buttermelon, juice boxes, a light saber and a common enemy and you've got a new friendship in the making! Winner of the 2020 Silver Birch Express Award. Grades 3-6. 2018.By Jonathan Auxier. 2018
Nineteenth-century England. After her father's disappearance Nan Sparrow, ten, works as a "climbing boy," aiding chimney sweeps, but when her…
most treasured possessions end up in a fireplace, she unwittingly creates a golem. Winner of the 2018 Governor General’s Award for Young People's Literature. Grades 4-7. 2018.By Kevin Sands. 2017
When Christopher Rowe's code-breaking uncovers the true target of an assassination attempt, he and his friends are ordered to Paris…
to investigate a centuries-old curse on the French throne. And when they learn an ancient treasure is promised to any assassin who succeeds, they realize the entire royal family is at stake—as well as their own lives. Grades 4-7. Winner of the 2018 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. 2017.By Dany Laferrière, Frédéric Normandin. 2006
Vieux Os aime jouer avec les fourmis. Passer laprès-midi sur le balcon avec sa grand-mère, Da. Regarder vivre les habitants…
de Petit-Goâve. Mais ce quil aime le plus, cest Vava dans sa robe jaune. Cela lui donne la fièvre, encore plus que la bicyclette rouge quil désire tant. Quand on a aimé Vava à dix ans, cela dure... toute une vie! -- 4e de couv.By Gordon Korman. 2017
Chase does not remember falling off the roof; in fact he does not remember anything about himself, and when he…
gets back to middle school he begins to learn who he was through the reactions of the other kids. Trouble is, he really is not sure he likes the Chase that is being revealed, but can he take the opportunity amnesia has provided and restart his life? Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Fiction Honour Book Award. 2017.By Alex Lyttle. 2017
"My name is Calvin Sinclair, I'm eleven years old and I have a confession...I killed my brother". It's the summer…
before grade 6 and Calvin Sinclair is bored to tears. He's recently moved from a big city to a small town and there's nothing to do. It's hot, he has no friends and the only kid around is his six-year-old brother Sammy who can barely throw a basketball as high as the hoop. So Cal occupies his time by getting his brother to do almost anything: from chasing wasps to tromping through rose bushes. And Sammy is all too eager-- as long as it means getting a "Level" and moving one step closer to his brother's Eagle status. But when Cal meets Aleta Alvarado, a new girl who shares his love for Goosebumps books and adventure, Sammy is pushed aside. Cal feels guilty but not guilty enough to change. At least not until things at home start falling apart and he's left wondering whether Sammy will ever complete his own journey. Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Fiction Award. 2017.By Jennifer Dance, Allister Thompson. 2016
Hawk, a First Nations teen from northern Alberta, is a cross-country runner. But when Hawk discovers he has leukemia, his…
identity as a star athlete is stripped away, along with his muscles and energy. When he finds an osprey, “a fish hawk,” mired in a pond of toxic residue from the oil sands industry, he sees his life-or-death struggle echoed by the young bird. Slipping in and out of consciousness, Hawk has visions of the osprey and other animals that shared his childhood home: woodland caribou, wolves, and wood buffalo. They are all helpless and vulnerable, their forest and muskeg habitat vanishing. Hawk sees in these tragedies parallels with his own fragile life, and wants to forge a new identity - one that involves standing up for the voiceless creatures that share his world. But he needs to survive long enough to do it. For junior and senior high readers. 2016.By Monique Smith. 2016
The sun on your face. The smell of warm bannock baking in the oven. Holding the hand of someone you…
love. What fills your heart with happiness? This beautiful board book, with illustrations from celebrated artist Julie Flett, serves as a reminder for little ones and adults alike to reflect on and cherish the moments in life that bring us joy. Winner of the 2017 Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize. Grades K-3. 2016.By Andrée Poulin, Brigitte Waisberg. 2016
On his fifth birthday, Thomas’s mother left, and he hasn’t seen her since. The last thing he remembers is her…
making a delicious dish of poutine for his birthday, into which she stuck five green candles for him to blow out. On the day of this twelfth birthday, Thomas comes up with the idea of setting a Guinness world record for the biggest poutine in the world. Maybe then, his mother will come back and his emotionally distant father will pay attention to him. As he puts together all the pieces of his “Phenomenal Poutine Project,” Thomas not only learns why his mother disappeared, but he also comes to realize that Elie, the one person whose help he rejected, turns out to be his most devoted friend. Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2017 Silver Birch Express Award. 2016. Uniform title: La plus grosse poutine du monde.By Kathy Kacer, Jenny Kay Dupuis. 2016
Based on the life of Jenny Kay Dupuis' own grandmother, a young First Nations girl who was sent to a…
residential school. When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from despite the efforts of the nuns to force her to do otherwise. Grades 3-6. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Express Honour Book Award. Winner of the 2018 Hackmatack Award for non-fiction. Winner of the 2018 Red Cedar Information Book Award. 2016.By Susan Currie. 2016
When Cass's estranged grandmother unexpectedly leaves her house and savings to Cass and her mom, it is just the thing…
they need to change their lives. Cass is being bullied at school, and her mom just lost her job—again—so they pack up and move in. Cass finds an intriguing and powerful mask in her new room, and she is inexplicably drawn to it. A strange relationship grows between Cass and the mask; it sings her songs, shows her visions of past traumas and encourages her to be brave when facing bullies. The mask eventually leads her to discover her own Cayuga heritage and leads her into the arms of a community that's been waiting for them. Winner of the Second Story Press Aboriginal Writing Contest. Grades 3-6. 2016.