Books published by publisher James Lorimer

All C.J. has ever wanted is to play basketball―one day pro basketball. Already in grade nine she's the captain of her high school team in Naskup, British Columbia. But her success comes at a price: her teammate Debi can't accept someone so young as captain, and is making C.J.'s life as difficult as possible. To make matters much worse, one morning she wakes up and is barely able to get out of bed. When her doctor tells her she has arthritis, she worries whether she deserves to be captain. Recognizing her new limitations, however, she comes to truly understand teamwork, and becomes the leader her coaches knew she could be.

On July 2, 1857, 14-year-old Peter Griffin and twenty-five other men climbed aboard the refitted yacht, FOX, and set sail for the frozen lands of the Arctic sea. Their mission? To find out, once and for all, what had really happened to Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men. Twelve years earlier, Sir John had sailed from England to complete the search for the Northwest passage through the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. Mysteriously, Franklin and his whole expedition had disappeared without a trace. And now Peter Griffin was going to the Arctic to help solve this mystery. In his journal, Peter makes his Arctic adventures come to life―the long, dark days cooped up on board the ship, the dangers ever present in the forbidding, icy landscape, the sadness he and his companions experience as they come closer to realizing the ultimate end of Franklin and his men. In Mystery in the Frozen Lands Martyn Godfrey has written an original and intriguing story. Drawing on historical writings, Godfrey tells a tale that is gripping, moving, and absolutely real.

Thirteen-year-old Cody is aching to get back onto the field. Last year he had a tumor removed from his leg. Though it’s a struggle, Cody tries out for the Lions and makes the team as a “super sub”—one of eleven players who jokingly named themselves that because they’re never allowed to play. Secretly, Cody is relieved, since he hasn’t told anyone on the team that he had cancer. But then there’s a shakeup in team management, and suddenly Cody and the super subs are the only players left. Cody has no choice now but to play, even if his leg does begin to hurt. At an end-of-season tournament it becomes clear that he and another player, Paulo, are close to being the perfect scoring duo. Without being aware of it, Cody has been holding himself back, striking with his left leg instead of his right. When he finally comes clean to his teammates about his disease and injury from the year before, they encourage him to trust his leg and his skill.

Gaylord Powless was playing lacrosse by the age of three. He descended from generations of legendary Mowhawk lacrosse players and possessed tremendous skill, but his native ancestry made him the target of brutal checking, hitting, and slashing. Wendy A. Lewis shares thecompelling story of how this champion learned to deal with his emotions while staying out of the penalty box.

Peter has done it! He's made it onto an AAA Bantam team and is now playing hockey in Edmonton. But this shy boy from the Northwest Territories is having a hard time adjusting to city life, his new school, and host family. The other kids laugh at his clothing, and Peter's new "sister" seems to have made it her mission to get him into trouble with her parents. Before long, Peter's problems follow him onto the ice. Against the Boards is a compelling story about the difficulties that can arise when you don't express yourself.

John Boileau and Dan Black tell the stories of some of the 30,000 underage youths -- some as young as fourteen -- who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the Second World War. This is the companion volume to the authors'' popular 2013 book Old Enough to Fight about boy soldiers in the First World War. Like their predecessors a generation before, these boys managed to enlist despite their youth. Most went on to face action overseas in what would become the deadliest military conflict in human history.They enlisted for a myriad of personal reasons -- ranging from the appeal of earning regular pay after the unemployment and poverty of the Depression to the desire to avenge the death of a brother or father killed overseas. Canada's boy soldiers, sailors and airmen saw themselves contributing to the war effort in a visible, meaningful way, even when that meant taking on very adult risks and dangers of combat.Meticulously researched and extensively illustrated with photographs, personal documents and specially commissioned maps, Too Young to Die provides a touching and fascinating perspective on the Canadian experience in the Second World War.Among the individuals whose stories are told:Ken Ewing, at age sixteen taken prisoner at Hong Kong and then a teenager in a Japanese prisoner of war campRalph Frayne, so determined to fight that he enlisted in the army, navy and Merchant Navy all before the age of seventeenRobert Boulanger, at age eighteen the youngest Canadian to die on the Dieppe beaches

When Toby Morton's sister asks him to play hopscotch, he asks if there's a video game version. He hates physical activity, and he especially hates gym class at his New Brunswick school. If the kids on his team in gym tease him for being overweight, he goes out of his way to make sure they lose. So when his new homeroom teacher, Mr. Walker, asks Toby to join the running team, Toby thinks he's crazy. But when his friend Amy suffers a dangerous attack of asthma, Toby is forced to look at exercise in a different light. Walker's Runners is a lively story for young people that introduces the joys of physical fitness, while highlighting the high costs of inactivity.

Cale's determined that this time he'll successfully ollie the set of seven stairs that marks initiation into the Seven Stair Crew, a group of older, junior-high skaters. But Cale soon finds that not all local skaters are welcoming to grommets (new skaters) like him. He has to find his voice, learn to stand up for himself and believe in his own ability to skate in order to find his rightful place in this youth subculture.

Rubin Carter was in and out of reformatories and prisons from the age of twelve. At twenty-four, he became a winning professional boxer and was turning his life around. But Carter was also very vocal about racism in the local New Jersey police force. In 1966, local policemen arrested Carter and a friend for a triple murder. The two were convicted and sent to jail for life. Carter spent nearly twenty years in jail, proclaiming his innocence. A teen from Brooklyn, Lesra Martin, heard Carter's story and believed he was innocent. He and a small group of Canadians contacted Carter and began working with Carter's lawyers in New York to get the boxer exonerated. In 1985, a judge released Carter, ruling that Carter's conviction had been based not on evidence, but on racism. Carter moved to Canada in 1985, where until his death in 2014 he worked helping others prove that they had been wrongfully convicted.

The most common mental health problem facing Canadian children today is anxiety. It’'s easy to dismiss the emotional, psychological, and physical effects of anxiety in children as being ''all in their heads'' -- but doing so can have a profoundly negative impact on a child'’s development: socially, academically, and emotionally.This accessible, illustrated book helps all kids understand anxiety better and offers practical ideas for coping. Filled with information, quizzes, definitions, and helpful hints, Deal With It: Anxiety helps young people identify and deal with the many different ways that anxiety is expressed, from phobias to panic attacks, in settings as diverse as home, the schoolyard, and the mall. It offers insight to everyone -- to the child experiencing anxiety, to someone who doubts the problem is real, and to a young person who witnesses another’'s problem.This book adds an important new topic to the Deal With It series'' approachable and non-threatening approach to different forms of conflict in the lives of young people.