2002 OLA Silverbirch Award Nominee

Twelve-year-old Kate has always had to be more responsible than other girls her age. Since her mother's death and her family's flight to Canada, Kate's father has relied on her to keep house and look after her younger twin brothers. In a new place with poor shelter and no help, Kate must grow up even faster.

It is 1787. After poor crops, with little food to spare, the winter is terribly harsh. Kate's father is forced farther and farther from their makeshift cabin to hunt for food. Then one day, he simply doesn't return. Can Kate fend off...

Bridget Quinlan is a spirited 13-year-old when the Irish potato famine of the 1840s shatters her life. Although her home is a hovel with few possessions, her family survives as long as her father can grow a good crop of potatoes on his small piece of land. Tragedy strikes when crops fail and typhus spreads, killing one of the boys in her school and then her brother, Rory.

With soldiers evicting the ill and unemployed, the Quinlans are forced to accept the offer of a passage to Canada. Appalling conditions onboard contribute to many deaths so that by the time they reach Grosse Ile,...

When the War of 1812 breaks out between the British in Canada and the United States, eighteen-year-old Billy Green is an expert woodsman with romantic ideas of combat. Struggling with his father's ideals and with his attraction to Sarah, the daughterof an American sympathizer, Billy soon finds himself faced with a series of fateful decisions.

Then on June 5, 1813, he spots the massive American forces camped in the tiny hamlet of Stoney Creek. Against all odds, the young man rides three hours in the middle of the night to Burlington Heights to warn the British. The Americans have...

In 1755, on the eve of the Seven Years War, fifteen-year-old Nola and her Acadian parents face expulsion from Grand Pry the British. Nola, her friends Hector and Jocelyne, Nola s grandfather, and a band of bold teenagers manage to flee by boat only to encounter challenges tougher than their wildest imaginings. Their destination is French-occupied Fort Louisbourg, but along the way hostile soldiers, a harsh environment, enigmatic Mi kmaq, and superpowers at war turn their journey into a series of hair-raising adventures.

As it turns out, the runaways route to freedom may be...

Based on the actual expulsion of French Acadians from Nova Scotia in the 18th Century, The Loup Garou recounts the adventures of Robert and his two friends, Louis and Little Otter as the English try and force them from their homes. Having been tricked with other boys and their fathers into being taken prisoner in a church, Robert crawls through a small window to find his way back to his mother and home.

With Robert's bravery, and the help of the Micmac Indians and the mysterious Loup Garou, a legendary creature who turns from man to wolf at twilight, Robert's family struggles to stay...

This is the third book in the story of the Byrne family, Irish farmers whose lives were overturned in Greener Grass, then tested so severely in Wild Geese.

In Timber Wolf, Kit's younger brother, is now the focus. Jack is determined to make his mark in the rough-and-ready lumbering industry up the Ottawa river from late 1840s Bytown. The young boy, not yet a teenager but full of braggadocio, is sure that he can quickly learn to be a hard-muscled and brave rafts-man. But as the story opens, we find Jack lying on a rocky floor in the deep forest, sore and bruised...

George Waltermyer is left behind to care for the family farm while his mother and six brothers and sisters go to New York to find their father, Hans Waltermyer. He has been leading dangerous missions for the British as the American Revolutionary War heats up. But George decides he just can't let them go alone, and so he heads through the wilderness, crossing enemy lines, in search of his family. Flight is the story of one United Empire Loyalist family's harrowing escape from enemy forces, to a new life in Canada.