Books published by publisher Sonoma Press

Over 100 tips and hints and a clear practical step by step guide to finding your first job and building on it to achieve an amazing career. A step-by-step guide for 16-24-year-olds on how to choose the right career, get your first job, excel within that job and progress quickly. This book will give you the confidence and techniques to find the job of your dreams, regardless of your qualifications or background. Over 100 tips and hints in a clear practical step-by-step guide to finding your first job, building on it and achieving an amazing career.

Neekah's great-grandma, Mumma, knit all her life. Her Grandma Dorothy knits, her mom knits, and all her aunties knit. Even some of Neekah's uncles knit. And Neekah wants to knit too. Every year she asks her mom if she can learn, and every year she hears, 'Be patient. Your hands aren't quite big enough yet.' At last Neekah is ready to learn, her head and heart bursting with the colourful patterns and designs she will create with the wool. She sits down with her mom, holding the wooden needles Grandpa Carl has made for her and the wool from Auntie Joni's wool shop. But knitting a toque for Grandma Dorothy is not as easy as she had imagined. From award-winning author Sylvia Olsen comes a lyrical celebration of the tradition of Cowichan knitting among the Coast Salish peoples. With Sheena Lott's exquisite watercolours, the joy of creating something with your hands glows on every page. Families will love to share this cozy, loving story that carries the clicking of knitting needles down through the generations to a young girl holding her first set of needles.

In this No. 1 Best Selling property book, Property Millionaire Simon Zutshi will show you how you can build a £1million property portfolio and a £50,000 income in just 12 months, by revealing some of the secrets behind his Property Mastermind Programme. No matter where you live, there are motivated sellers in your area who will sell their property to you for well below the true market value. This means that you can build a substantial property portfolio using none of your own money. Not only can you gain equity for free but you can also get paid to do it. Simon will show you how to find these motivated sellers, how to deal with them and structure an ethical Win/Win deal. The book is designed to open your mind, stimulate your thinking and make you aware of some of the current possibilities available in property investing.

When baby Ribbon arrives, visitors to Japan's Awaji Island Monkey Center wonder how she is going to manage with no hands and with small, twisted feet. How will she hold on to her mother? How will she walk? How will she climb in the trees? How will she interact with the other monkeys? And how will she someday look after her own baby? But everyone is in for a surprise. This monkey is determined to do things her own way…Ribbon's way. This story is not just about disabilities and the inspiring ways individuals meet those challenges. It is also, fundamentally, a story about being different and about rising above the limitations of others' expectations. As with her first book, The Littlest Monkey, primatologist Sarah Turner's heartwarming story is abundantly illustrated with her superb photographs. The back of the book also features facts about Japanese macaques (snow monkeys) and about Ribbon and the disabilities present in this unique primate population. A delightful addition is a "find the critter" collage of animals and insects from Ribbon's forest world.

Hope and her family travel from England to their new home on an island off the coast of British Columbia in the 1860s. Hope thinks that she has arrived in paradise. She is right … until whiskey traders arrive.Letia and her family are Lamalcha people who winter on Kuper Island and move to Wallace Island in the summer. The problem is that Letia's summer camp is on the island that the Crown has deeded to Hope's family. When the two girls meet, against the wishes of their mothers, their stories intersect.Set against the backdrop of the confusing events surrounding the English colonization of British Columbia, and an 1863 naval assault on Kuper Island, Counting on Hope tells the story of two girls whose lives are profoundly changed when their two cultures collide.Alternating between free verse and prose, Sylvia Olsen follows the girl's individual storylines before, during and after their meeting. She captures the wonder and joy with which Hope and Letia develop their friendship. She also 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, this sensitively drawn depiction of innocence lost and wisdom hard won follows Hope and Letia out of childhood, off their island paradise and into the complex realities of an adult world.Awards and NominationsCity of Victoria Bolen Children's Literature Prize (Winner) - 2010Chocolate Lily Award (Nominee) - 2010Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize (Nominee) - 2010

It’s 1915, and the Great War is raging in Europe. What does that have to do with Port Arthur, Ontario? Heaps, thinks John Mäki. Sure, he’s a prankster and likes to have fun. But he’s also a hardworking newsboy with a secret dream to be a reporter. So he keeps his eyes peeled, waiting for the big story. His older sister, Saara, has her own concerns, like her goal of becoming a teacher and people not speaking to her just because she befriends a German girl! She scoffs at John’s suspicions of German spies and blown-up bridges...surely not in northwestern Ontario. Yet John knows that all of Canada’s grain headed for hungry soldiers in Europe comes through Port Arthur first. A saboteur could do plenty of damage―to the city, the country and even the Mäki family! Sabotage is the final book in a trilogy about a Finnish family in what was to become Thunder Bay, Ontario. The first two books are Second Watch and Saara’s Passage. Sabotage, told by both Saara and John, takes us into a real-life world of espionage, sabotage and paranoia.

During the U.S. Prohibition of the 1920s, an illegal, one-way trade arose—in alcohol. Canadian brews flowed south, and American dollars flowed north, creating fortunes that can still be seen in Canadian society today. Central to this trade were the rum-runners, their loaded boats speeding through dark waters, dodging pirates and the U.S. Coast Guard to bring their illegal cargo to thirsty Americans.In Chasing the Moon, Penny Chamberlain drops young, courageous Kit feet-first into this dangerous world. With her mother in a tuberculosis sanatorium, Kit must spend the summer with her estranged father, whose mysterious nighttime activities and free-spending habits arouse her suspicions. Then a strange carnival boy enters the picture. He has an eerie way with a tarot deck that shakes Kit to the core. Still, something about him engages Kit, and, together, they embark on a headlong journey that will carry them from the dark waters south of Victoria to the "blind pigs" of Seattle. On the way, Kit will discover depths of insight she did not know she possessed, and will win for herself one of her dearest wishes. Awards and Nominations:Chocolate Lily Award Our Choice AwardRed Cedar Book Award

Just Ask UsA Conversation with First Nations Teenage MomsTeen moms are nothing new. For as long as anyone can remember, families, communities, and governments have been grappling with the poverty and lack of life opportunities faced by these parents and their children.For First Nations in particular, the issue has become critical. Aboriginal girls are four and a half times more likely to be teen moms than girls from the general population, and more than half of all First Nations families are now started by teen parents. Yet little has been written on the topic for a mainstream audience.In 2003, Sylvia Olsen began a community study with aboriginal teen parents, believing that the best way to shed light on the issue is to listen first to the parents themselves. Just Ask Us is a result of this project, in which thirteen Tsartlip teen moms participated.Just Ask Us takes a comprehensive, first-hand look at First Nations teen mothers, offering ways to counteract the intractable cycle of poverty and turn reserve communities into places of hope for the next generation. Olsen explores issues of teenage sexuality and relationships, birth control, abortion, and violence. She examines aboriginal and non-aboriginal cultural attitudes and practices and how they affect the lives of young moms and their children. Her book weaves the threads of these young mothers' lives together with colours of desperation, enthusiasm, impossibility, and hope.Awards and Nominations:Stellar Book AwardOur Choice Award

From the moment she first steps off the school bus, 12-year-old Jess is enthralled by Point Ellice House. Although the other students on the tour are just happy to have a day off from school, shy Jess feels she knows what is around every corner and behind every door of the beautifully preserved Victorian home. It's as if she has lived in those rooms before. Her repeated visits and her interest impress the guide in charge, who offers Jess a volunteer summer job.But although she loves sharing her growing knowledge of Point Ellice House, Jess finds herself drawn to lonely spots around the property. There, persistent visions of a girl named Rose take her into the past, to a terrible disaster involving an overcrowded streetcar on the Point Ellice Bridge.Jess holds the key to a mystery that has persisted for more than a hundred years. And now it's up to her to solve it and to ease the troubled spirit who has haunted the area for so long.Inspired by the history of Victoria's Point Ellice House and the worst streetcar disaster in North American history, Penny Chamberlain's novel will grab her audience from the first page. And her imaginative interpretation of strange sightings (sightings that persist to this day) will keep young readers absorbed throughout.Awards and NominationsRed Cedar Book AwardChocolate Lily AwardSaskatchewan Young Readers' Choice AwardOur Choice Award

Like any other eight-year-old, Ting has lots to complain about: too much homework, boring lessons, having to live with her annoying cousin. And missing her parents, of course. She’s in China, they’re far away in Canada, and she wishes they would come home right away. Suddenly, Ting’s life is turned upside down by fighting in a place called Tiananmen Square. Now she’s with her parents again—but in a new country, in a city called Vancouver, where everything is strange. Her cousin doesn’t bother her anymore, but “home” is a tiny, bare apartment with only a ratty sofa for Ting to sleep on. There’s less homework and classes aren’t boring—but Ting can barely understand a word her teachers and classmates are saying. Ting got her wish, but in an unexpected way. Now she has another—to belong. What will it take for her new wish to come true?

Ever since 13-year-old Saara returned from caring for her family’s relatives, she’s been so grown-up and focused on her goal of becoming a teacher. Nine-year-old John jokes and plays pranks, but instead of laughs, all he gets is nagging. What really drives him crazy, though, is what his older sister won’t take seriously: the possibility that enemy spies and saboteurs might be at work in 1915 in Canada—even right here in Port Arthur, Ontario. She thinks that sort of thing only happens in important places.But for once, John knows better. As a newsboy, he’s aware that all of Canada’s grain headed for hungry sol­diers in Europe comes through Port Arthur first. He’s read the reports of bridges blown up and spies captured. Like Saara, John has a dream: to be a reporter. So he keeps his eyes peeled, waiting for the big story.Meanwhile, Saara worries about the mountain of schoolwork she must make up, and about her German friend who’s hauled off to an internment camp with her family. And then there’s her brother—a pest! A nuisance! A TRIAL! She and John can’t stop fighting.Suddenly, a saboteur does strike—and even more shockingly, Saara and John’s own family is in danger! Can sister and brother finally trust each other and work together to save their family?In this final book of the trilogy about the Finnish Mäki family in early Thunder Bay, author Karen Autio responds to readers’ requests for “more about John!” She has crafted an adventure tale based on real espionage, sabotage and paranoia in Canada during the Great War, a tale cleverly told in Saara’s and John’s alternating points of view.

Saara wants so much to go to Finland with her family, to see the grandparents she has never met and the places her mother speaks about with such longing. One misfortune after another nibbles at the savings. Still, bit by bit, the coins keep falling into the coffee-tin bank. Saara's hopes rise higher and higher. But why does her beloved Papa scold and storm and talk of looking forward, not back, whenever she mentions the trip? A travelling year, Uncle Arvo predicted. But not the kind of travelling anyone could have foreseen. Before the year is up, Saara will have learned, not so much about where she has come from, as about how far it is possible for her to go. Second Watch is based on true details of Finnish immigrant culture and the sinking of the great Empress of Ireland. Over the eight years that this Canadian Pacific steamship sailed the Atlantic Ocean, it transported more than 117,000 passengers to Canada. The sinking of the Empress on May 29, 1914, remains Canada's worst maritime disaster during peacetime. Of 1,477 passengers and crew on board, 1,012 were lost—more passengers than in the sinking of the Titanic. Yet the Empress of Ireland and its fate remain little known to most Canadians. Autio's novel, the first work of juvenile fiction to feature the Empress of Ireland, is set in 1914 in the Finnish immigrant community within Port Arthur (now part of Thunder Bay). Young readers will be drawn into eleven-year-old Saara's world. They will travel with her as she navigates a challenging time in her life at home—and as she boards the Empress of Ireland on May 28, 1914.