Books published by publisher Ronsdale Press

Thirteen-year-old Johnny Anders is something of a misfit, with no friends and a poor school record, but all this begins to change when he is awakened one night to find a soldier-ghost in his bedroom. Johnny is taken back to meet a series of unusual heroes in Canada's war history. These include Joan Bamford Fletcher, who commandeered Japanese soldiers to take hundreds of wounded civilians to safety through the jungles of Indonesia, and the much-decorated Raymond Collishaw, through whom Johnny learns that Canada played a role in the Russian Revolution. Even as he is making his discoveries, Johnny becomes close friends with Casey Collishaw, the great-granddaughter of Raymond Collishaw. Together the pair set about uncovering why it is that Johnny has been chosen to be a witness to Canadians at war.

When sixteen-year-old Sarah from Toronto learns that she is to spend the summer with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, she is convinced that it will be the most tedious summer ever. She gets off to a rough start when she meets Luke, the nephew of her grandmother’s friend, and one unfortunate event leads to another. Just when she thinks her summer cannot get much worse, she finds herself transported to Acadia in 1755.Here she meets Anne and learns much about the Acadian culture and history and the Acadians’ relations with the Mi’kmac people. She also experiences the warmth she has always wanted of a closely knit family. When Sarah realizes that the peace-loving Acadians are about to be torn from their homes and banished to distant shores, she is desperate to find a way to help them. Forced to abandon her pampered, stylish lifestyle, Sarah uncovers a strength and determination she did not know she possessed.Although Sarah has to come to terms with the fact that “you can’t change history,” she is willing to risk her life to do everything in her power to help her Acadian family, and finds a surprising ally in Luke. Winds of L’Acadie, a historical novel for readers ten and up, reveals a painful part of Canadian history through the relationship of two young women from different centuries.

In this fast-paced novel for readers ten and up, James Graham, a Canadian journalist, is kidnapped in a market in Buenaventura, Colombia, right in front of Marco, his thirteen-year-old son. When the kidnappers try to grab Marco, his father yells at him, “Run Marco, run!” Marco manages to escape, and seeing no possibility of help in Colombia, he stows away on a freighter headed to Vancouver where a good friend of his father is living and who may be able to help. During his search, Marco encounters what seem like insurmountable odds and learns that he must call upon his inner strength and nerve to keep going. “Valeroso; courage,” he keeps saying to himself as he evades drug dealers, security guards, the police and the authorities who would send him back to Colombia — straight into the arms of his father's kidnappers. Run Marco, Run is a riveting adventure about a plucky boy who will dare anything to save his father, and who learns that running away is sometimes the heroic thing to do.

This young reader novel about the Underground Railroad begins when Rebecca, a twelve-year-old slave in South Carolina, hears that Grower Brown plans to sell her father to another grower. Unwilling to accept the idea of slavery any longer, she shocks her parents by declaring that she will run away, with or without them. Despite their fear, they agree to go with her on the Underground Railroad to Canada. They are led by the famous Harriet Tubman, aka Moses, the tiny but fiercely courageous black woman whom Rebecca comes to love. On their journey north, Rebecca and her family rely on the bravery of freed blacks and learn to trust white abolitionists. A Canadian ornithologist, Alexander Ross, known as “the Birdman,” stumbles upon the family in Tennessee and helps them make their way north on the Mississippi River. The family hides in coffins, travels on a steamboat, and crosses Illinois in a blizzard by pumping hand carts on a rail line — finally crossing the border to a free life in Canada. Railroad of Courage offers young readers a fast-paced story of adventure. With the introduction of historical figures, the novel explores the injustice of slavery and the moral imagination of runaways and those who helped them to freedom.

This historical time-travel novel, for children ten and up, is the third volume in Cathy Beveridge's ongoing series on Canadian disasters. Once again we meet Jolene and her twin brother Michael, this time in an RV on the shores of the Great Lakes, where her father and grandfather are conducting research into the Great Storm of 1913. When Grandpa discovers a time crease that enables them to step back into 1913, Jolene embraces the opportunity but soon finds herself, along with her brother and a new friend, inadvertently on board ship in the midst of the Great Storm. With her brother injured, Jolene is forced to draw on all her resources to allow the threesome to survive. In the process, she discovers her inner strength and a new passion for life.

Twelve-year-old Jolene is determined to find independence from her brother, Michael, during a family trip to research the Halifax explosion of 1917 for her father's Museum of Disasters. When her grandfather finds a time crease into the past, Jolene discovers a new friend and the importance of family and loyalty in a world torn apart by World War I. Once Michael joins them, however, the past suddenly becomes much more complicated. He inadvertently threatens Jolene's friendship with a grieving family, and his careless comments spark speculation that they are spies. Together, the twins try to reconcile the honour and horrors of the Great War as they struggle with the knowledge that Halifax will soon be devastated by the collision in the harbour between the Mont Blanc, laden with explosives, and the Imo. When Michael attempts to change history, the twins are led to the brink of destruction. A compelling sequel to Shadows of Disaster.

In this, the final instalment of Jean Rae Baxter's best-selling young adult trilogy, eighteen-year-old Charlotte sails from Canada to Charleston in the beleaguered Thirteen Colonies to join her new husband Nick. During these final months of the American Revolution, she must muster all her wit and courage when she has to rescue Nick from being tortured as a spy in an alligator-infested South Carolina swamp. She must also find ways to bring freedom to a pair of teenage runaway slaves she has befriended. Freedom Bound delivers a frank and realistic picture of the slave system and a powerful account of what was at stake for both white and black Loyalists as they prepared to find a new home in the country that was soon to be Canada. Like The Way Lies North and Broken Trail, the two novels that preceded it, Freedom Bound contains a wealth of carefully researched historical details of one of the least known chapters of our history.

Fiction. Young Adult Novel. Two-and-a half millennia after it was created, Homer's Odyssey remains one of humanity's most memorable adventure stories. In this re-creation of Homer's classic as a young adult novel, we see the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy. Orphaned by the war and enslaved by Odysseus himself, Alexi has a very different view of the conquering heroes of legend. Despite a simmering anger towards his captors, Alexi gradually develops a grudging respect for them. As the Greeks fight off the angry Cicones, weather a storm that pushes them far beyond charted waters, and nearly succumb to the blandishments of the bewitching Lotus-eaters, he realizes that they are not the demons they were said to be, but people like himself.

What thirteen-year-old boy wants to travel on a hopeless quest to India with his grandmother? Not Ben Leeson, whose anger about his father’s recent death has led him to escape into the isolated world of computer games. India is the last place Ben ever thought of visiting and his grandmother is the last person he’d ever dreamed of travelling with, but the ticket is already bought and Ben finds himself in India on a search for Gran’s long lost pen pal, Shanti. In the midst of insufferable heat, strange food and the constant haggling of street beggars, Ben and Gran meet magicians and snake charmers and see bodies burning on funeral pyres. As they search for clues across the huge continent, Ben finds himself strangely compelled to follow the magnificent elephants and the elephant boy-god Ganesh. The challenges of the journey teach Ben that real life can be more exciting than any computer game and that by accepting the dark mysteries of India, he can come to terms with his father’s death. This adventure quest for children ten and up takes its place among the many captivating adult books about India, and is an invaluable resource for school curriculum studies on world religions.

In the second volume of her Hannah trilogy, summer has arrived, and fourteen-year-old Hannah Anderson is excited about spending it with Max (who has been giving her stomach butterflies lately). But things are happening in Cowichan Bay that Hannah can’t explain. When a mysterious accident leads her to a nest of starving eaglets, she meets Izzy Tate, a young Metis girl staying in the village for the summer. Why is Izzy so angry all the time, and is it just a coincidence that she is the spitting image of Yisella, the Cowichan girl Hannah met the summer she was twelve? But Hannah has more questions. Why is Jack, her supernatural raven friend, bringing her unusual “gifts” in the middle of the night? Is it all connected to a ring of poachers and marijuana smugglers who have apparently moved into the valley. The eaglets are in danger and so are the Roosevelt elk. And what’s with the Orca 1, the “supposedly” abandoned tuna boat anchored out in the bay? After Hannah and Max make a grisly discovery in the woods, they know they must take action. When Izzy agrees to join them on a midnight kayak trip, the three discover the poachers on the Orca 1, and they are soon in a fight for their own lives and the lives of the animals being hunted for their parts.

Tragic Links is award-winning author Cathy Beveridge's fourth young adult novel focusing on Canadian disasters. This time Jolene and her family find themselves in Quebec where Jolene's father is conducting research for his Museum of Disasters. When Jolene finds a time crease, she discovers Montreal in the 1920s. “Back there at the church,” Jolene said, “I was hiding. ” But Stephan, the handsome boy who lives next door to her Grandma Rose in Montreal, knows otherwise. And so Jolene divulges their family secret — the ability to time travel through time creases. After a narrow escape in Montreal in 1927, Jolene travels to Quebec City with her family and Stephan. When Stephan disappears, Jolene, Michael and Grandpa go back to 1907 and watch horrified as the Quebec Bridge collapses. With a new understanding of family and friends, Jolene returns to Montreal where she completes her family tree, learning in the process how tragically linked to the past she really is.

In I’ll Be Home Soon, Luanne Armstrong takes the reader on a tension-filled ride as Regan, a young girl living in the inner city, searches for her mother who has mysteriously disappeared. Homeless but by no means hapless, Regan is on her own much of the time but also receives help from a wide diversity of people: a young homeless boy like herself, her kung fu teacher, a university researcher, her grandmother, and a group of people who survive as bottle pickers. On the street, she must learn who it is she can truly trust, and it is not always those whom she (and the reader) might expect. Through her search for her mother, and in her connections with the people who truly help and care for her, Regan discovers her own inner strength and independence. In this fast-paced and sensitive story, Armstrong draws us into the shadowy and difficult side of inner-city life to show us both the dark and the compassionate sides of the people who survive in its midst.