Books in Time of our Lives series

The last thing Nicholas wants to do is spend time in the Alberta bush, with the bugs, the bears, the cold. But when he crosses the school bully at the Grade Seven dance, his Dene friend Elvis's invitation for a weekend away suddenly seems much more attractive. Walking on the muskeg, Nicholas feels completely lost--the landscape is strange, and so are the language and customs of Elvis's native family. Soon, however, Nicholas sees the point of what they say and do, how it helps them adapt to the harshness of the environment. When Nicholas and Elvis's bushplane crashes, killing the pilot, they need to draw on all the skills they have--and some they didn't even suspect they had. Set against the harsh background of the northern bush, Plan B is Total Panic is the story of how two young men of very different backgrounds are brought together by crisis.

In the warm springtime of 1831, Isobel Macpherson cools her feet in the flowing water of the North Saskatchewan River. Nearby, York boats move northward in procession, carrying furs to the trading posts on Hudson Bay. Soon, however, the skies began to darken for Isobel. The daughter of a Scottish father and a Peigan First Nation mother, her heart is pulled in two directions. She hates that her father has returned to Europe and so moves to live with her Peigan grandparents; there she longs for her European education and her old friends. Caught up in the ongoing struggles between the Peigan and their Cree adversaries, Isobel struggles to stay alive. At the same time she must learn to listen to her heart, and to take the best from both of her worlds. Set against a vivid portrait of the Canadian West in the 1830s, Storm Child recounts one young woman's fierce struggle to understand who she is.

The last thing Nicholas wants to do is spend time in the Alberta bush, with the bugs, the bears, the cold. But when he crosses the school bully at the Grade Seven dance, his Dene friend Elvis's invitation for a weekend away suddenly seems much more attractive. Walking on the muskeg, Nicholas feels completely lost--the landscape is strange, and so are the language and customs of Elvis's native family. Soon, however, Nicholas sees the point of what they say and do, how it helps them adapt to the harshness of the environment. When Nicholas and Elvis's bushplane crashes, killing the pilot, they need to draw on all the skills they have--and some they didn't even suspect they had. Set against the harsh background of the northern bush, Plan B is Total Panic is the story of how two young men of very different backgrounds are brought together by crisis.

Paula Herman, 11 years old going on 12, dyes her hair bright carrot orange. She was trying for blonde, her mother's colour, but she missed. Paula always thought it strange she looked so little like her mother. The summer that they moved from Toronto to Edmonton things got stranger still. There Paula s starts to unravel the mystery of her past and things get complicated. Why does her mother refuse to talk about the past? What has happened to the handsome man in the photograph they find there--the man she knows must be her father? Why is his name Popowich while hers is Herman? The deeper Paula digs into the mystery, the more tangled her life becomes--until running away seems her only solution. But it's a solution that only causes more problems. My Name is Paula Popowich! is a touching story about a girl who must come to terms with her complex and troubled background.

For most of her life, thirteen-year-old Rachel has lived with her parents on an isolated forestry station in the middle of Vancouver Island. She has never had friends, never known life outside the station and what she has read in books and magazines. So when she learns that she will have to spend the summer with relatives in a village on the coast, she is curious...and scared. With her warm, secure world turned upside-down, Rachel tries to create a set of stepparents by matching up her eccentric Uncle Sharky and sensible "Aunt" Ev. But after she meets her new friend Bosko, her desparate need for a family begins to change.Nobody Asked Me is a touching story about a girl who learns that real-life love is a complicated thing, not always like the romance she's read in books.

For Paula Herman, 11 going on 12, life is pretty straightforward - until the summer her mother decides to move to Edmonton. There Paula begins to unravel the mystery of her past and things begin to get complicated. Why does her mother refuse to talk about it? What has happened to the handsome man in the photograph - the man she knows must be her father? Why is his name Popowich when hers is Herman?The deeper Paula goes into solving the mystery, the more tangled her life becomes - until running away seems the only solution. Or is it?

Growing up can be difficult and confusing for anyone--especially if you're growing up in two cultures at the same time. The five stories in this book examine both the harmonies and dissonances of growing up Canadian and East Indian: young Zorana takes her first trip to Pakistan and rides on a camel; Raj Dhillon spends a night alone learning wilderness survival skills; Amit takes a trip to McDonald's with his Bengali-born grandmother; Jaya perseveres in a performance of Indian classical dancing even after a classmate has tried to wreck her costume; and Shanaz visits an understanding neighbour who helps her see the beautiful aspects of her Muslim heritage.The kids in Camels Can Make You Homesick are both ordinary and extraordinary, and are always interesting to read about as they cope with the challenge of growing up Canadian and South Asian at the same time.

The Time of Our Lives books are suitable for use in any program where students are reading at approximately a grade six level. The guide booklets feature the following: pre-reading activities, about the author sections, a variety of activities including reader's theatre, journal entries, writing options and suggestions for integrating novel study with other curriculum areas, resources section and reproducible blackline masters. This guide is an excellent resource for us with Claire Mackay's The Minerva Program, also available from Lorimer.

It's Vivi Aguirre's thirteenth birthday and nobody seems to care. Her Basque dad has left home and moved to Calgary, while her mom is going to Red Bay, Labrador to make a movie and is taking Vivi with her. To make matters worse the film is about Basque whalers in the 16th century, and as far as Vivi is concerned whalers are by definition bloodthirsty lunatics. But as she learns more and more about the long-vanished Basques, and comes to know the tough Newfoundlander who inhabit modern Red Bay, she reflects on her own family and on the pride her father feels for his heritage. By the end of her thirteenth summer, Vivi has learned more about love and life than she had in all of the previous twelve. Set against the historic and awe-inspiring background of the Labrador coast, The Summer the Whales Sang is a touching account of one girl who comes to know and understand her family, and herself.

In these stories, five different kids take us five different places. For Zorana, it is a trip to Pakistan and a ride on a camel; for Raj Dhillon, it's a night alone learning wilderness survival; for Amit, it's a trip to McDoanld's with his Bengali-born grandmother; for Jaya, it's on stage for a performance of Indian classical dancing even after a classmate has tried to wreck her costume; and for Shanaz, it's a visit to an understanding neighbour who helps her see that there are beautiful parts to her Muslim heritage and she must learn to share them with others.The kids in these stories do the ordinary and the not so ordianry and they are always interesting to read about. In an amusing and entertaining manner, they cope with the challenge of growing up Canadian and South Asian at the same time.