Books with author Sylvia Olsen

Vince lives in a small town—a town that is divided right down the middle by race. The unspoken rule has been there as long as Vince remembers and no one challenges it. But when Vince's friend Sherry starts seeing an Indigenous boy, Vince is outraged―until he notices Raedawn, a girl from the reserve. Trying to balance his community's prejudices with his shifting alliances, Vince is forced to take a stand, and see where his heart will lead him.

No Time to Say Goodbye is a fictional account of five children sent to aboriginal boarding school, based on the recollections of a number of Tsartlip First Nations people. These unforgettable children are taken by government agents from Tsartlip Day School to live at Kuper Island Residential School. The five are isolated on the small island and life becomes regimented by the strict school routine. They experience the pain of homesickness and confusion while trying to adjust to a world completely different from their own. Their lives are no longer organized by fishing, hunting and family, but by bells, line-ups and chores. In spite of the harsh realities of the residential school, the children find adventure in escape, challenge in competition, and camaraderie with their fellow students. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, always engrossing, No Time to Say Goodbye is a story that readers of all ages won't soon forget.

Vince lives in a small town, a town that is divided right down the middle. Indians on one side, Whites on the other. The unspoken rule has been there as long as Vince remembers and no one challenges it. But when Vince's friend Sherry starts seeing an Indian boy, Vince is outraged and determined to fight back -- until he notices Raedawn, a girl from the reserve. Trying to balance his community's prejudices with his shifting alliances, Vince is forced to take a stand, and see where his heart will lead him.

I never thought about being white. I didn't have to. I was transparent--no colour at all. I hung out, was a good enough student and no one paid any special attention to me at all. Then I became a white girl.Until she was fourteen, Josie was pretty ordinary. Then her Mom meets Martin, "a real ponytail Indian," and before long, Josie finds herself living on a reserve outside town, with a new stepfather, a new stepbrother, and a new name--"Blondie." In town, white was the ambient noise, the no-colour background. On the reserve, she's White, and most seem to see her only for her blond hair and blue eyes.Her mother's no help. She never leaves the house, gripped by her fear of the "wild Indians" beyond Martin's doorstep. But Josie can't afford to hide out forever. She has to go to school, and she has to get herself a life, one way or another. So bit by bit, she finds a way through the minefields. She makes a friend, Rose, with whom she tries to bridge the chasms between out and in, white and Indian, town and reserve. She finds a family in Martin, Luke, and Grandma.And bit by bit, the place itself, the reserve--the run-down houses, the way the people live in them and around them, the forest and the sea--finds its way into her, like nothing else ever has, or ever will.

Murphy and his three friends, Danny, Jeff and Albert, are making the transition from the tribal elementary school to the community middle school. They are all trying out for the middle school's soccer team, and they're pretty confident that The Formidable Four will all make the team. But once the tryouts begin, Albert, the tribal-school superstar, plays like a second stringer. Murphy's new friend, Molly, is determined to help the boys find out what's wrong with Albert, but when they discover the truth, they realize that Albert is playing a whole different game.

Murphy's mother has just moved him and their cat, Mousetrap, back to the reserve in Port Alberni. Although he belongs to the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, Murphy is sure that he won't fit in, and he worries about Mousetrap, who has always been an indoor cat. When a bunch of local boys drag him to their soccer practice, put him in goal and pelt him with balls, he believes that his worst fear has come true. However, he seems to be discovering a new talent at the same time. And perhaps he has misjudged. Being a light-skinned city boy thrust onto a reserve far from the city is not easy, but maybe Murphy has what it takes.

You are the same girl that came to school last year. They are the same kids. But nothing was the same and I knew it. I had become the girl with a baby. Jane has always been the good Williams. Her brothers might be high school dropouts and late-night rowdy partiers, but never Jane. Jane never drinks, smokes dope or misses a single day of school. She's in the drama club . . . smart and hot . . . one of the popular ones.Or she used to be. Now she's one of those: the teenage mothers packing diaper bags with their knapsacks, wheeling strollers into the high school daycare, tired and grumpy. Jane's only 14, younger than most of them, and she can feel the stares in the school halls. She can hear the whispers on her whitebread street, too: too bad, gone the way of her brothers, guess those Indians are all the same.Jane isn't what she used to be - but then, maybe she's more. When baby Destiny was being born, grandmother Tet told her she came from a long line of strong mothers, and Jane's discovering it's true. Because of baby Destiny, Jane dares to demand the best, not just of herself, but of her whole family. This Jane accepts the consequences of her decisions, good and bad, and pushes through prejudices the former Jane just tiptoed around. This Jane is a strong link in something bigger than herself. She's a girl with a baby, two feet on the ground, one hand in the warm grasp of Tet and her Indian past, and the other holding firmly to the future.The Stellar Award: the Teen Readers' Choice Award of BC

Award-winning writer Sylvia Olsen's sensitively drawn depiction of innocence lost and wisdom hard won, Counting on Hope tells the story of an English girl named Hope and a Lamalcha girl named Letia, whose lives are profoundly changed when their two cultures collide. The action is set against the backdrop of the confusing events surrounding the English colonization of British Columbia and an 1863 naval assault on Kuper Island. Alternating between free verse and prose, Counting on Hope follows the girls' individual story lines before, during and after their meeting. The novel captures the wonder and joy with which Hope and Letia develop their friendship and describes the tragic events, suspicion, fear and confusion that characterize so many early encounters between Europeans and the First Peoples. Ultimately a story of hope, the novel follows the two girls out of childhood, off their island paradise and into the complex realities of an adult world.

Things have changed since Raedawn and Vince started going out and the racial boundaries in town have slipped a bit. But when Dune, who never took sides, disappears, Raedawn is determined to find out where he has gone—or what happened to him. Fighting against ignorance and hate, they track Dune down and find he is in more trouble than they thought and that nothing is black and white.

The year is 1957, and Bobby lives on the Tsartlip First Nation reserve on Vancouver Island where his family has lived for generations and generations. He loves his weekend job at the nearby marina. He loves to play marbles with his friends. And he loves being able to give half his weekly earnings to his mother to eke out the grocery money, but he longs to enter the up-coming fishing derby. With the help of his uncle and Dan from the marina his wish just might come true.

Murphy's mother has just moved him and their cat, Mousetrap, back to the reserve in Port Alberni. Although he belongs to the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, Murphy is sure that he won't fit in, and he worries about Mousetrap, who has always been an indoor cat. When a bunch of local boys drag him to their soccer practice, put him in goal and pelt him with balls, he believes that his worst fear has come true. However, he seems to be discovering a new talent at the same time. And perhaps he has misjudged. Being a light-skinned city boy thrust onto a reserve far from the city is not easy, but maybe Murphy has what it takes.