In early June, 1964, the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls burns to the ground and its vulnerable residents are thrust out into the world. The orphans, who know no other home, find their lives changed in an instant. Arrangements are made for the youngest residents, but the seven oldest girls are sent on their way with little more than a clue or two to their past and the hope of learning about the families they have never known. On their own for the first time in their lives, they are a...

This anthology has bneen more than a year in the making. Within, you will find a broad assortment of works ranging from humour and fantasy to more serious subjects like unrequited love, end-of-life decisions and casualties of war. Some of the selections chosen for this book are often poignant reminders of life around us. Others will take you into fantasy worlds and time travel. There is sure to be something for every reading preference.The Bexhill Writers Group was formed in 1978 a...

The current mental health crisis is leaving rapidly increasing numbers of children and young people in need of urgent therapeutic support. Amid the pressures of an increasingly complex and uncertain world, the need for effective and accessible mental health interventions has never been greater.Advances in neuroscience, trauma research, and neurodivergence-informed practice show the unique power of art therapy to intervene successfully with a range of mental health issues including ...

Toni has always had nightmares about fire, and she also has burn scars but no idea how she got them. So when fire destroys the orphanage she has grown up in, she is ready to make her way to Toronto, where she hopes to discover the truth about the mother she believes hurt and then abandoned her. Toronto proves to be both daunting and exciting for Toni, whose charm and innocence attract attention—not always positive—wherever she goes. Buoyed by the music she hears at the folk club where she ...

Cady has always wanted to be a reporter, like her hero Nellie Bly, so after a fire burns down the orphanage she lives in, she’s ready to leave small-town Ontario and make her mark as a newspaperwoman.A crumbling newspaper clipping leads her to Orrenstown, Indiana, where her investigation into a long-ago murder earns her a hard lesson in race relations. Smart and determined, and more than a little headstrong, Cady pokes a stick into a wasp’s nest of lies, dirty poli...

Taking things in stride is not easy for Kizzy Ann, but with her border collie, Shag, stalwart at her side, she sets out to live a life as sweet as syrup on cornbread. In 1963, as Kizzy Ann prepares for her first year at an integrated school, she worries about the color of her skin, the scar running from the corner of her right eye to the tip of her smile, and whether anyone at the white school will like her. She writes letters to her new teacher in a clear, insistent voice, stating her tro...

A teenage girl's guide to handling life's problems, from how to be a better friend to dealing with parents and school.Be Who You Want to Be. Learn more about yourself and who you are and what makes you sad or made or happy. What do you like to do? What do you have to do? And how come some days are just so darned hard to get through? Sometimes it feels as if we just aren't smart enough to succeed, nice enough to be likes, or pretty enough for anything....

NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIESA Warning from the Publisher:Would you rather sprain your ankle, bruise your hip, and lose a toe to frostbite on the same day? Or would you rather have these accidents happen on three different days?This electronic collection of volumes seven through nine in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket is the e-equivalent of having three ghastly accidents right in a row. Contained here are such unpleasantries as kidn...

From the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Fish in a Tree!Carley uses humor and street smarts to keep her emotional walls high and thick. But the day she becomes a foster child, and moves in with the Murphys, she's blindsided. This loving, bustling family shows Carley the stable family life she never thought existed, and she feels like an alien in their cookie-cutter-perfect household. Despite her resistance, the Murphys eventually sh...

Harper Lee Morgan is an aspiring poet, which isn't surprising, seeing as how she's named after her mama's favorite writer, Harper Lee. And life is giving her a lot to write about just now. Daddy up and walked out, leaving them broke. Then Harper's family gets evicted.With Mama scrambling to find work, Harper has to skip school to care for her little brother, Hemingway. Their lives have been turned upside down, which Harper could just about handle—if it wasn't for the writing contest...

This novel for ages nine and up is the story of a resilient young girl who struggles as the daughter of an alcoholic father and an absentee mother. Left alone to fend for herself for days at a time, she is observed by a kind and compassionate saleswoman at the mall she retreats to every day after school to avoid going "home." The saleswoman gains her trust and takes action into her own hands by reporting the girl's situation to social services. She is placed in foster care, where she dream...

It's little sister vs. big in this fresh take on a classic struggle by a master storyteller.Everything ten year-old Sprig wants, her older sister Dakota already has. Everything Sprig does, Dakota does better. And anytime Sprig complains, Dakota just grins and calls her a baby. It's enough to make a kid wish her sister would disappear.But in a year when Sprig's father is away, her favorite neighbor is ill, and the class bully is acting almost like, well, a boyfriend, Sprig discovers that al...