These touching stories of Christmas offer a glimpse into each girl’s diary a year after the events of their original diary.

    In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada's top children's authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring. Told in first-person narratives, this collection features a diverse cast of boys and girls, each one living at a different point in Canada's vast landscape and history. With unforgettable protagonists -- such as Miriam, a Warsaw-ghetto survivor, now reunited with her family in Montreal; Wong Joe-on, a young Chinese immigrant who faces racism in a small Saskatchewan town; and Insy, an Ojibwe girl who makes her first trip to a "white" town in Northern Ontario -- young readers will be moved by the opportunities and difficulties that these characters face, as each one ponders what it means to be Canadian, and struggles to fit in.

    The year before Confederation. And the year Rosie's life turns upside-down.She has just gone into service with Mr. Bradley, a civil servant working in Quebec City, the bustling capital of the Province of Canada. When the capital is moved to the rough sawmill town of Ottawa, the Bradleys have to move there too. Rosie will desperately miss her own parents and siblings, and wonders if she will ever have a place in her own family again.Karleen Bradford draws on her own experience as the wife of a diplomat in Ottawa and embassies around the world to craft this authentic portrait of a young girl displaced in the whirlwind of government.

    Triffie knows nothing about what it means to be poor — until the disastrous fire of 1892 burns down most of St. John's, Newfoundland, leaving Triffie's family and 15,000 others homeless.The fire claimed everything but their underwear, Mother's best china . . . and Triffie's journal. With no other options, Triffie's family moves into a filthy warehouse while they attempt to rebuild their lives from the ground up.The aftermath of the fire teaches Triffie a lot about what it means to survive. More importantly, she comes face to face with her own prejudices, and begins to develop a much greater appreciation for how the less fortunate live.

    Tension grips Batoche, Saskatchewan in 1885. Many Métis moved here after the 1870 Riel Rebellion in Manitoba left them disallusioned. But life in Batoche is difficult. The buffalo on which the Métis depended for generations have been hunted almost to extinction, and the coming of white settlers poses a threat to their traditional way of life. The Métis want title to their land, but the government has delayed for years. Promises are no longer enough . . . and talk of a second uprising is in the air. Thirteen-year-old Josephine finds herself torn over her feelings about the Resistance: she is worried for her brother, who is eager to fight; for her father, who prefers a peaceful solution; for Edmond Swift Fox, her friend, whom she loves and will eventually marry; and for Louis Riel, the leader whose efforts to help the Métis preserve their way of life are actions she grows to respect and admire. Through Josephine’s faithful diary entries, the reader is transported into this pivotal moment in Canadian history — the time leading up to the defeat of the Métis and the allied First Nations forces at Batoche, the execution of Louis Riel, and the growing tensions between English Canada and French Canada.

    She finds a kindred spirit in her Grandmother, one of the Home Guard Cree who lives near Fort Edmonton and with her friend Suzanne, but soon she moves south to Fort Colvile. She begs her aunt to let her attend a “real” school at Fort Victoria on Vancouver’s Island. With a small brigade, she beings a sometimes harrowing journey down rivers and over mountains to her new life. But even there, Jenna is restless. She sneaks outside the fort walls, spying on the Company officers, even visiting the forbidden Songhees village . . . sometimes finding more than she bargained for.

    But typhus and other illnesses plague the "coffin ships," so named for the staggering number of immigrants who died enroute. One by one Johanna loses the members of her family — first her baby brother on the journey over, then her mother in the Grosse Isle fever sheds where sick passengers are quarantined when they reach the port of Québec, and her father soon after. Johanna has only her brother Michael left when she sets foot on Canadian soil. When her brother is mistakenly told that she too has died, he sets off to find their uncle "somewhere in Canada," leaving Johanna to face a new life in a strange land... totally alone. A Sea of Sorrows captures a dreadful time in history for those desperate, impoverished Irish families who hoped to make Canada their home. Johanna's incredible journey of survival is told with insight and sensitivity by master storyteller Norah McClintock.

    After their long voyage, they arrive to a “new world" indeed. Will they be able to survive the winter in this harsh country?

    The Great Depression has brought great hardship, and young Noreen’s family must scrimp to make ends meet.In a horrible twist of fate, Noreen, like hundreds of other young Canadians, contracts polio and is placed in an isolation ward, unable to move her legs. After a few weeks she gains partial recovery, but her family makes the painful decision to send her to a hospital far away for further treatment. To Stand On My Own is Noreen’s diary account of her journey through recovery: her treatment; life in the ward; the other patients, some of them far worse off than her; adjustment to life in a wheelchair and on crutches; and ultimately, the emotional and physical hurdles she must face when she returns home. In this moving addition to the Dear Canada series, award-winning author Barbara Haworth-Attard recreates a desolate time in Canadian history, and one girl’s brave fight against a deadly disease.

    It is up to twelve-year-old Arabella to take care of herself and to pray for her father’s safe return.

    It is May 1912, one month after the horrific sinking of the Titanic, and twelve-year-old survivor Dorothy Wilton is sent home from school in disgrace when she strikes another student. Although she's expelled, her sympathetic teacher encourages Dorothy to write an account of her experience on the ship, with the hopes that it will help Dorothy come to terms with her trauma.And so begins a truly remarkable story, which reads like a time capsule of the era: Dorothy writes about visiting her bohemian grandparents in England before setting sail back home, the luxurious rooms and cabins on board, a new friend she makes, and the intriguing people they observe. However, amidst all of this storytelling, a shadow lurks, a secret Dorothy is too traumatized to acknowledge - a secret about her own actions on that fatal night, which may have had deadly consequences.Through young Dorothy's eyes, award-winning writer Sarah Ellis expertly takes a unique perspective on the Titanic tragedy, exploring the concept of survivor's guilt with devastating honesty.

    She likes school, she likes her friends, and she yearns above all else to own a bicycle. Although WWII is raging elsewhere in the world, it hasn’t really impacted her life in B.C.Then on December 7, 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor…and everything changes.Suddenly a war of suspicion and prejudice is waged on the home front and Japanese-Canadians are completely stripped of their rights, their jobs and their homes. Mary is terrified when her family is torn apart and sent to various work camps, while she and her two sisters are sent, alone, to a primitive camp in B.C.’s interior. Here Mary spends the duration of the war, scared and uncertain of how it will all end.In Torn Apart, author Susan Aihoshi draws from the experiences of her own family during “The Uprooting” of the Japanese in B.C. during WWII. Through young Mary’s eyes, readers experience this regrettable time in Canadian history firsthand.

    And her cousin Benny is always getting into scrapes Sally has to try to get him out of. Sally must find the strength and learn to cope with the world around her.

    Traumatized by her experiences in the Holocaust, she struggles to connect with others, and above all, to trust again.When her new guardian, Saul, tries to get Rose to deal with what happened to her during the war, she begins writing in her diary about how she survived the murder of the Jews in Poland by going into hiding.Memories of herself and her mother being taken in by those willing to risk sheltering Jews, moving from place to place, being constantly on the run to escape capture, begin to flood her diary pages. Recalling those harrowing days, including when they stumbled on a resistance cell deep in the forest and lived underground in filthy conditions, begins to take its toll on Rose.As she delves deeper into her past, she is haunted by the most terrifying memory of all. Will she find the courage to bear witness to her mother's ultimate sacrifice?

    But soon after they arrive in the land they hoped would welcome them, World War I is declared, and Ukrainians are considered “enemy aliens” — many of them sent away to internment camps. Anya must find a way to deal with the challenges in the land she now calls home.