Books published by publisher Child1st Publications

Twelve-year-old Kari Ann is angry her family insists she attend a family reunion with them instead of going with her best friend to the Mall of America. She feels awkward, out-of-sink with her body and life. She hates being twelve! When Kari Ann's mother gives her a journal to capture her thoughts during the reunion, Kari Ann takes the assignment seriously and so begins a journey of discovery about life—including an exciting rescue, faith and herself. It was good at the beginning of the story. It was great to the end. I liked it very much.Thumbs up. --Alicia Age 9

Casey struggles with self-worth because of her limitations. Along comes a very special cat that not only leads the family a merry chase, but also shows the family--and Casey--what being special is all about. Besides, special things happen at Christmas, don’t they?WHERE IS CAT? melds laughter and learning and fun. However, this book offers more than a Christmas story, it offers the message of hope that each child, each person, is special and worthy of love. *********WHERE IS CAT? can be read alone, read in a classroom setting, or used in library readings. It can become part of a nap or bedtime ritual or a weekly family night.

Welcome to Parr's Landing, Population 1,528 . . . and shrinking. The year is 1972. Widowed Christina Parr, her daughter Morgan, and her brother-in-law Jeremy have returned to the remote northern Ontario mining town of Parr’s Landing, the place from which Christina fled before Morgan was born, seeking refuge. Dr. Billy Lightning has also returned in search of answers to the mystery of his father’s brutal murder. All will find some part of what they seek―and more. Built on the site of a decimated 17th-century Jesuit mission to the Ojibwa, Parr’s Landing is a town with secrets of its own buried in the caves around Bradley Lake. A three-hundred-year-old horror slumbers there, calling out to the insane and the murderous for centuries, begging for release―an invitation that has finally been answered. One man is following that voice, cutting a swath of violence across the country, bent on a terrible resurrection of the ancient evil, plunging the town and all its people into an endless night.

The Greece of The Door in the Mountain (Book 1 of a two-part series) is a place where children are marked by gods and goddesses; a place where a manipulative, bitter princess named Ariadne devises a mountain prison for her hated half-brother, where a boy named Icarus tries, and fails, to fly, and a slave girl changes the paths of all their lives forever. "The novel is an engaging retelling of a familiar Greek myth that will please fans of Greek mythology and also serve as an accessible introduction to the stories for new readers." - CM Magazine

Living in St. Jude, a 110-year-old dying city on the edge of the Mississippi, is tough. But when a letter informs fourteen-year-old Cinque Williams of the passing of the father he never met, he is faced with an incomplete past and an uncertain future. A curse meant for his father condemns Cinque to a slow death even as it opens his eyes to the strange otherworld around him. With help from the ghost Willy T, an enigmatic White Woman named Iku, an African Loa, and a devious shape-shifter, Cinque gathers the tools to confront the ghost of his dead father. But he will learn that sometimes too much knowledge can be dangerous — and the people he trusts most are those poised to betray him!

AIN'T NO SUMMERTIME BLUESThe school year ended with a bang, and now the boys and girls of the Starriders get to enjoy their summer...or so they think. With a gang of toughs called the Virus looking to settle the score and one of their own holding a dark secret, the summer of fun could turn into a summer of danger that not even their mysterious benefactor, Nick James, can protect them from.

Dessi's Romance' is a compelling read, rich with humour and the ups and downs of being a teenager. Anyone can relate to the trials and tribulations of each character in this gripping read.Dessi and Emma are best friends like their mothers before them and can’t imagine anything or anyone ever coming between them. They’ve just graduated from high school and are looking forward to Schoolies celebrations on the Gold Coast with a group of mates while waiting to find out if they’ve been accepted into their chosen university courses.When Dessi is injured in a traffic accident and must stay home to recuperate, Emma asks her new boyfriend and her best friend to look after each other while she’s away. What Emma couldn’t have foreseen was the instant attraction between Dessi and the older, darkly exotic Middle Eastern Abdul. Dessi’s romance threatens to destroy a friendship that promised to last a lifetime. To complicate matters, Abdul’s family is far from welcoming of his Australian girlfriend.Virginia Lowe, acclaimed reviewer of young adult novels adds the following:‘What is the best way to punish a so-called “close friend”?’Emma and Dessi have been best friends forever, as have their mothers. Nothing comes between them until ‘schoolies week’ when ‘love’ hits Dessi for the first time – then disaster! All the problems and worries of the end of Year 12 are here: jobs (Emma works in ‘the supermarket-from-hell’), results, tertiary applications and ‘schoolies week’ at Surfers. But alas, poor Dessi has also just acquired a badly broken ankle. This is a teen romance told in two alternating voices. Emma is the artistic one, and she’s sure her folio from Year 12 Art will get her into a course she’ll love – or she hopes so. She spends quite a bit of time throughout the story sketching her environs, or thinking how she could mix a particular colour she encounters (especially, it must be said, among her friends’ faces, who are going right over the top with alcohol and drugs, in celebrating schoolies week.)Dessi is the literary one. She writes flawless poetry. This is one of the strengths of the book – unlike many stories in which a young person is a poet of some renown, but the poetry is very weak – here the short simple free verse poems are a delight. Love is a leach, a bloodsucking vampirewhose sole aim is to turn you into a babbling idiotwith sightless eyes, deaf ears, and helpless limbs.The story is a powerful picture of people at the end of their school years and the beginning of their lives in romance, work and tertiary study. It is gripping reading, as the relationships get more and more complicated, and we yearn for their resolution.

What would you give to make good on the sins of yourpast? For merchant Barnabas McDoon, the answer is: everything. When emissariesfrom a world called Yount offer Barnabas a chance to redeem himself, he acceptstheir price to voyage to Yount with the key that only he can use tounlock the door to their prison. But bleak forces seek to stop him: Yount'sjailer, a once-human wizard who craves his own salvation, kidnaps Barnabas'snephew. A fallen angel a monstrous owl with eyes of fire willunleash Hell if Yount is freed. And, meanwhile,Barnabas's niece, Sally, and a mysterious pauper named Maggie seek withdream-songs to wake the sleeping goddess who may be the only hope for Yount andEarth alike.