Teacher Assignments: Hallam - English 9 - CLA Awards

After a childhood cut short by war and the harsh strictures of Nazi Germany, sixteen-year-old Wilm is finally tasting freedom. In spite of the scars World War II has left on his hometown, Leipzig, and in spite of the oppressive new Soviet regime, Wilm is finding his own voice. It's dangerous, of course, to be sneaking out at night to leave messages on police buildings. But it's exciting, too, and Wilm feels justified, considering his family's suffering. Until one mission goes too far, and Wilm finds he's endangered the very people he most wants to protect.Award-winning author Karen Bass brings readers a fast-paced story about a boy fighting for self-expression in an era of censorship and struggle.

Ursula is different. With her book learning and outspoken manner, she doesn't fit in, and her spirited way's get her into trouble. When a neighbor accuses her of being a witch, her only hope to save herself is to march in the holy People's Crusade to Jerusalem. Along with thousands of other pilgrims, Ursula embarks on a dangerous journey, and must summon all of her courage just to survive.

Alexandra's beloved grandfather was fond of saying, Life is full of surprises, and sometimes the good and the bad get all bunched up together. However, he could not have prepared her for the death of her father, a man she never knew, and his legacy -- a cabin on prairie land formerly owned by the LaFreniere family. Lonny LaFreniere's stepfather is the kindest man Lonny has ever known. But Lonny, tormented by guilty memories and visions he can't shake, rejects the land Pop always wanted to pass on to him. How could he have known it would end up in the hands of a city girl like Alexandra Sinclair? Acclaimed author Martha Brooks tells an unforgettable story about two teens and their quest to understand the land and each other.

It's going to be a long, hot summer for 15-year-old Lizzie. Normally a vacation at her grandmother's northern Manitoba cottage is the highlight of the year, but this summer the whole family is going along, including her new stepfather whom she detests. To escape the family's bickering, Lizzie explores a nearby island, where she finds the remains of an old cabin and uncovers a pair of spectacles. When she tries on the old glasses she is surprised to find herself watching a woman and girl from the past. Lizzie is determined to find out who these ghosts are, and why they are appearing to her. Enlisting the help of her grandmother's teenage neighbor, Alex, she puts together clues about the ghosts' identities and in doing so, finds a way to help her estranged family reunite. It's a compelling story, carrying young readers from the present to the past and back again.

Having barely survived a brain aneurysm two years earlier, fifteen-year-old Adrien, working at her Aunt Erin's summer camp, is caught between the land of the living and the spirit world, unsure where she belongs. As she struggles to understand the message delivered by the spirits of the five young women that only she sees, she learns of the tragic consequences of their connection to her aunt. Faced with the knowledge that another aneurysm could strike her at any time and mostly shunned by the other staff because she is the boss's niece, Adrien finds a soulmate in Paul, the camp handyman, who is convinced that he has seen his own death foretold.

Ratchet Clark's mother spends most of her time dreaming about the Hunt Club. Ratchet doesn't interest her very much. So Ratchet is sent off to spend the summer with her twin aunts Penpen and Tilly in Maine, in a huge old isolated house surrounded by deep woods with bears. But Ratchet misses her mother nonetheless. Soon it becomes clear that her eccentric elderly aunts also miss their mother (who died many years before by cutting off her own head). And midway through the summer, Ratchet meets Harper, a girl who never know her real mother. These motherless children of all ages inhabit a world that turns out to be a haven of love and caring, even though it does not conform to conventional ideas of the right place to raise children. The old twins are preoccupied by death and the fear that one will die first, leaving the other alone. For the girls, milking the cows, canning blueberries, gardening, swimming and learning to fend off the bears are ways to slowly begin a healing process.

When sixteen-year-old Angel meets Call at the mall, he buys her meals and says he loves her, and he gives her some candy that makes her feel like she can fly. Pretty soon she's addicted to his candy, and she moves in with him. As a favor, he asks her to hook up with a couple of friends of his, and then a couple more. Now Angel is stuck working the streets at Hastings and Main, a notorious spot in Vancouver, Canada, where the girls turn tricks until they disappear without a trace, and the authorities don't care. But after her friend Serena disappears, and when Call brings home a girl who is even younger and more vulnerable than her to learn the trade, Angel knows that she and the new girl have got to find a way out.

The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life "before," when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomi’s uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town that’s tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o’clock. As the novel begins, Nomi struggles to cope with the back-to-back departures three years earlier of Tash, her beautiful and mouthy sister, and Trudie, her warm and spirited mother. She lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher whose love is unconditional but whose parenting skills amount to benign neglect. Father and daughter deal with their losses in very different ways. Ray, a committed elder of the church, seeks to create an artificial sense of order by reorganizing the city dump late at night. Nomi, on the other hand, favours chaos as she tries to blunt her pain through “drugs and imagination.” Together they live in a limbo of unanswered questions. Nomi’s first person narrative shifts effortlessly between the present and the past. Within the present, Nomi goes through the motions of finishing high school while flagrantly rebelling against Mennonite tradition. She hangs out on Suicide Hill, hooks up with a boy named Travis, goes on the Pill, wanders around town, skips class and cranks Led Zeppelin. But the past is never far from her mind as she remembers happy times with her mother and sister — as well as the painful events that led them to flee town. Throughout, in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, she offers hilarious and heartbreaking reflections on life, death, family, faith and love. Eventually Nomi’s grief — and a growing sense of hypocrisy — cause her to spiral ever downward to a climax that seems at once startling and inevitable. But even when one more loss is heaped on her piles of losses, Nomi maintains hope and finds the imagination and willingness to envision what lies beyond.

Lee wants to be a Tarantula - a member of the biggest, most powerful gang in his neighbourhood. But when his initiation goes wrong and the police catch him robbing an auto supply store, Lee's father sends him to live with his aunt in New Toronto. Lee feels more lost than ever. His mother's death from cancer, and his father's constant absence working two jobs mean he has practically had to raise himself. But though he initially resists his Aunt Reena and the customers of Reena's Unique Café - a ragtag collection of the unusual, the unkempt and the deeply eccentric - Lee gradually learns to open himself up to his new surroundings. When Lee strikes up an unlikely friendship he is suddenly confronted by the ravages of violence, and is forced to face the consequences of his own aggression. The Blue Helmet is a powerful portrait of one young man's struggle to come into his own, and the peace that comes from the achievement.

Seventeen-year-old Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn't her great-aunt Gloria visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally's tragic car accident on a frozen lake when she was sixteen seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break. Odella tries to hold her family together, but when her mother runs off, the family is left reeling. Then Odella meets Jimmy Tomasson, whose dreams of prophetic flying fish seem to have led him to her. In the heat and tenderness of their deepening feelings and in his belief in her, Odella begins to find the strength to unravel the web of secrets that has ensnared them all.

It would have been the easiest and the best thing, Noreen thought, to just get back in the truck and take off. But she couldn't think of where to go. In fact, she couldn't think at all.

Fourteen-year-old Claire and her mother, Jane, are on their way across the country to visit Claire's grandmother. As they approach the family farm, Claire watches her mother become more and more anxious. Until now, she thought they had an open relationship with a healthy respect for each other's privacy. This trip unlocks the key to the many questions Claire has about their past -- including the identity of her father and the reason her mother never went back home until now. Gayle Friesen's novel Janey's Girl is a coming-of-age story with a twist: Claire's mother is the one who reaches maturity.

Fourteen year old Pamela Collins is struggling to come to terms with her mother's death. Somewhat shy, Pamela is thoughtful, full of passion, often funny and sometimes tearful as she learns to cope with the emotional overload the tragedy has brought to her life. Her favourite things include walking alone in Lynn Canyon Park, the art of Emily Carr, and a certain boy with a "wicked grin." At the moment she dislikes her English teacher, shopping and being singled out for special treatment because of her motherís death. Pamela is tall and slim and mostly uncomfortable with her rapidly changing body. She is unsure of herself and unsure of the loyalty of her friends.

Mike's got it made. He's a star on the high school basketball team. His girlfriend is the gorgeous Gloria Hlady. And he about to go on a hunting trip with his best friend Doug. But then he collapses on the basketball court and his parents won't tell the results of the hospital tests. Mike's search for answers leads on a dangerous and lonely wilderness quest.

Fifteen-year-old Sara Moone, abandonded at birth and shunted from one foster home to another, finds that she cannot remain aloof from her latest family.

The magical tale of the unhappy things that happen to a hero after "happily ever after".

When Burl Crow runs away from home to escape his brutal father, he heads for the place he knows best -- the wilderness. Craving solitude, he is stunned by the sight of a grand piano dangling from a helicopter, and even more startled to find himself drawn to the sounds that eventually come from it. Tracing the source of the music, Burl finds Nathaniel Orlando Gow, the Maestro, standing on the deck of a strange, pyramid-like cabin. The reclusive, eccentric Maestro (based on the brilliant Canadian pianist Glenn Gould) has chosen to escape, too, and only reluctantly offers the wet, starving Burl shelter. Slowly but surely, the two form a bond, and Burl's eyes are opened to a world he never dreamed of.Will his rapport with the Maestro give Burl the inner courage needed to face the difficult choices that suddenly confront him when his father reappears?