Books with author Sarah Stickney Ellis

A Prairie as Wide as the Sea is one of the Dear Canada series, which are historical novels, written in diary format, about fictional girls during different periods of Canadian history. This book is a perfect historical novel for young readers who aren't familiar with the series, but enjoy reading about life on the prairie. It is a solid, well-researched, and enjoyable book. Ivy Weatherall's is an 11 year old girl from London, whose life changed in the spring of 1926. It was the time her family decided to immigrate to Canada. She described her journey to Canada, and then her family's life on her uncle's farm on the Saskatchewan prairie. She described both the happy times in her new home, as well as the hardships of life on the prairie such as harsh winters and the hard work of building a life there. This book is an excellent read.

Lynn’s life is full — choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family — both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn’s own.Blossom’s family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (“Is it useful or lovely?”), living off the things “Citizens” throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family, and a friend.Classic Sarah Ellis, this novel is smart, rich, engaging and insightful.

In 1970 Vancouver, thirteen-year-old Charlotte and her best friend, Dawn, are keen to avoid the pitfalls of adolescence. Couldn’t they just skip teenhood altogether, along with its annoying behaviors – showing off just because you have a boyfriend, obsessing about marriage and a ring and matching dining-room furniture? Couldn’t one just learn about life from Jane Austen and spend the days eating breakfast at noon, watching “People in Conflict,” and thrift-store shopping for cool castoffs to tie-dye for the upcoming outdoor hippie music festival?But life becomes more complicated when the girls meet a Texan draft dodger who comes to live with Charlotte’s Quaker family. Tom Ed expands Charlotte’s horizons as they discuss everything from war to civil disobedience to women’s liberation. Grappling with exhilarating and disturbing new ideas, faced with a censorship challenge to her beloved English teacher and trying to decode the charismatic draft dodger himself, Charlotte finds it harder and harder to stick to her unteen philosophy, and to see eye to eye with Dawn.

Ivy Weatherall is just 11 years old when her family leaves England for the promised riches of Canada's expanding West. They've come to join her uncle for the available land, the lush harvests, and the opportunity for success. But in Milorie, Saskatchewan, their dreams crumble into dust when they reach Uncle Alf's small sod hut and discover that jobs are scarce, and that they can barely make ends meet.Ivy's relatives pack up and head back to England, but to Ivy, Canada is full of wonder and beginning to feel like home. There are challenges in her new life, but Ivy's feisty character and her sense of wonder for a prairie as wide as the sea make her adventure one that readers won't easily forget. Vetted by a historical expert, this book contains maps, period illustrations/documents, and an extensive historical note.

Lynn’s life is full — choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family — both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn’s own. Blossom’s family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (“Is it useful or lovely?”), living off the things “Citizens” throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family, and a friend. Classic Sarah Ellis, this novel is smart, rich, engaging and insightful.

Lynn’s life is full — choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family — both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn’s own. Blossom’s family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (“Is it useful or lovely?”), living off the things “Citizens” throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family and a friend. This novel is smart, rich, engaging and insightful.

An eleven-year-old orphan is reconnected to her mother's family, but her courage and strength are tested as she is put to work in a textile mill.Flora is a young, imaginative girl who has dreamt of having a family to call her own since her parents died from pleurisy when she was three. She dreams of family dinners. She dreams of friends. But mostly she dreams of leaving the orphanage. As the diary begins, Flora is still in an orphanage in Kingston, but her Auntie Janet has just married, and she and her husband James send for Flora to come and live with them in Almonte, Ontario. Once she arrives at her aunt's, Flora begins work in the Almonte Mill, even though she is underage - typical for many children of the era. She works from dawn to dusk, near huge and noisy machines, and she sees the effects of the mill on workers who have lost an arm or their hearing. Still, this life is better than going back to the orphanage. But when Uncle James loses several fingers at the weaving machine and can't work anymore, money is really tight, and it's up to Flora and her aunt to find a way out of the predicament.Through all her trials, Flora writes down her feelings in a journal, one she addresses to "Dear Papa and Mama", because it makes her feel close to the parents she lost when she was young. Days of Toil and Tears includes historical background giving readers the social context of young mill workers, and a map of the textile industry of Canada, as well as fascinating photographs from this era.

Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and the TD CCBC Canadian Children's Literature Award Kip is spending the summer with his grandmother and his five eccentric girl cousins, including Emily, who thinks she's a dog. Gran's house is about to be demolished, so anything goes, whether it's drawing maps on the walls or sawing off the knob at the bottom of the banister for a smoother ride. When Kip bashes through an old closet, he discovers the binder his late father kept as a teenager. He's bewildered by what he finds: puzzling lists, hair samples, old newspaper clippings and business cards -- all accompanying a confidential report written by a mysterious young operative who is carrying out a secret plan to infect teenagers with a cell-altering virus. This wonderful novel has all the Sarah Ellis hallmarks -- quirky characters, insight and wit -- underpinned by resonant themes of family, memory and the creative imagination.

Jessica knew that the family meeting Dad had called for that evening probably wouldn't be good news. Family meetings usually meant Mum talking a lot and then the whole family getting involved in some project that left everything in a mess until they gradually forgot about it. But at school that day, Jessica forgot about the meeting. A teacher announced a new class project: They were to choose partners, pick an animal to study and present a paper. Jessica's partner would be her best friend, Margaret. And so it was Margaret whom Jessica called with the tremendous news from the family meeting: Mum was pregnant. Margaret was nearly as excited as Jessica, and very quickly the two of them decided that instead of studying the duck-billed platypus for the school project, they would study babies. But all their reading, discussions and research did not prepare Jessica or her family for the drastic changes baby Lucie would bring to their lives.