The story begins in spring, with the trees greening, but the talk is all of pumpkins. It's too soon to plant pumpkins, Grandpa says, because they need real heat. "And bees. Pumpkins need bees." For many young readers, this will be new -- and startling -- information. "We'll
Sammie Bell is sixteen years old and has just hustled her way into living in the basement of her friend Jill's house. Random House Canada, 2012 She has already been there for two weeks before Jill's mom even started asking questions, and, then, Sammie knows just what to
"She's a beauty all right," said Tom, taking in the giant lens, far taller than himself, atop the rotating pedestal: a palace of prisms like a beehive made from glass. It was the very heart of Janus, all light and clarity and silence." Janus is a small isolated island off
When readers meet Opal, the first of three narrators in J. Jill Robinson's More in Anger, she is stitching her wedding dress and veil. Thomas Allen & Son, 2012 "Every once in a while one of the ring's claws caught on the veil's netting, and Opal carefully released
The title of Grace O'Connell's debut novel is pulled from a poem by Helen Humphreys, "Blurring".* It's ironic that the closer you examine something, the harder it is to focus, and this is a truth which Maggie Pierce inhabits when Magnified World opens. She is reeling from her
