Book picks similar to
Cammie Takes Flight by Laura Best


grade-5-reading
realistic-fiction
canadian
not-good

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists


Sophie Rickard - 1914
    Owen’s spirited attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system, and his support for a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all, rather than to generate profit for a few, eventually rouses his fellow men from their political passivity. Described by George Orwell as a piece of social history and a book that everyone should read, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is often cited as “one of the most authentic novels of English working class life ever written.” In this faithful graphic adaptation, creators Scarlett and Sophie Rickard craft a compelling fiction that paints a comprehensive picture of social, political, economic, and cultural life in early 20th century Britain that is still acutely relevant today.

We Are Not Free


Traci Chee - 2020
    Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us. We are not free. But we are not alone.”  We Are Not Free, is the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

The Age


Nancy Lee - 2014
    A coming of age novel for today, The Age will appeal to readers of Annabel Lyon, Lisa Moore, Heather O'Neill.Set in Vancouver in 1984, as Soviet warships swarm the North Atlantic, The Age follows Gerry, a troubled teenager confronted with her single mom’s newest relationship. When she takes solace in a ragtag group of activists planning a subversive protest at the city’s upcoming peach march, her fascination with the group’s leader, and her struggle with sexual identity creates a rift between Gerry and her best friend, Ian. Bolstered by her grandfather, an eccentric ex-news anchor in the throes of a bitter divorce, Gerry tries to put herself at the centre of the protest group’s violent plot. When the demands of these complex relationship become too difficult, Gerry escapes to the role she knows best, survivor in a post-nuclear dystopia of her own creation. Gerry’s real life and fantasy life alternate and accelerate until a collision of events and consequences forces her towards life or death decisions in both worlds.Electric and engaging, with piercing observation, subversive wit, and the same fearlessness that caused a sensation amongst critics and fans of Dead Girls, The Age is at once a startling post-apocalyptic drama, a harrowing journey through adolescent recklessness and desire, and a dark portrait of a generation molded by nuclear anxiety. Its arrival confirms Nancy Lee as one of Canadian Literature’s most thrilling and compelling voices.

The Truth Commission


Susan Juby - 2015
    The year she emerged from her older sister’s shadow—and Kiera, who became a best-selling graphic novelist before she even graduated from high school, casts a long one. But it hasn’t worked out that way, not quite. So Normandy turns to her art and writing, and the “truth commission” she and her friends have started to find out the secrets at their school. It’s a great idea, as far as it goes—until it leads straight back to Kiera, who has been hiding some pretty serious truths of her own. Susan Juby’s The Truth Commission: A story about easy truths, hard truths, and those things best left unsaid.

The Bethany Tales: Four Intertwined Stories of Restoration and Hope


Bryan E. Canter - 2020
    Peer into the lives of four people from the village of Bethany—a harlot, a mistress, a beggar, and a leper—as their worlds interweave and collide. Throughout similar circumstances, they each have unique and personal encounters with Jesus. Along the way, they learn what it means to experience authentic relationships, genuine community, and true faith. These emotionally charged stories reveal people who struggle with the same kinds of life issues that we all encounter today—feelings of loneliness, guilt, inadequacy, betrayal, and despair. Yet their interactions with Jesus bring profound changes to the way that they view their world, each other, and themselves. These four tales use the creative gift of imagination to explore what each of these men and women might have been thinking and feeling, while remaining true to the biblical accounts and consistent with life in first century Israel. So come on a journey that will challenge you, inspire you, and like these characters from Bethany, leave you forever changed.

Summer Days, Starry Nights


Vikki VanSickle - 2013
    She dreams of the day she can run Sandy Shores, and she spends her time helping out at the resort, swimming, climbing trees, and singing under the stars.One day, Reenie's mother announces that she thinks the resort could use some entertainment. She invites Gwen, her best friend's almost-grown daughter, to come and teach a dance class. Although Gwen seems sad and remote, Reenie's thrilled to have her there.As Reenie starts to learn more about the world beyond Sandy Shores, she comes up with a plan that could really put it on the map. She also finds herself caught between the simpler world of her childhood and all of the wonderful new discoveries (boys) and heartaches (boys) that growing up can bring. Reenie thought she wanted Sandy Shores to never change, but after this summer nothing will ever be the same again.With the same humour and insight that she brought to the acclaimed Words That Start With B, Vikki VanSickle expertly captures those lazy, hazy, crazy days of the last summer before high school. Though set in a different time, Summer Days, Starry Nights is sure to resonate with all young readers on the verge of adolescence.

Holding Up the Universe


Jennifer Niven - 2016
    Following her mom's death, she's been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libby's ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for every possibility life has to offer. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything. Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he's got swagger, but he's also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can't recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He's the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything, but he can't understand what's going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Don't get too close to anyone.Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game—which lands them in group counseling and community service—Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.

In the Blue Light of African Dreams


Paul Watkins - 1990
    Disfigured and demoralized, he deserts from France's famed Lafayette Escadrille, only to be captured, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in the Foreigh Legion. He serves in Africa, where, along with a motley group of convicts and outcasts, Halifax is forced to fly illegal arms shipments to the very tribesmen they have been sent to fight. But a dream keeps Halifax alive even as his companions fall to harm or misery-the relentless determination to become the first pilot to fly nonstop from Paris to New York.

Short for Chameleon


Vicki Grant - 2017
    Cam Redden and his dad are rent-a-relatives, available for hire to anyone looking to upgrade.Cam’s job is all about being whoever other people want him to be. Then two new clients come along. Albertina is an old lady with a big mouth, a bigger wig and a serious mission. Raylene is a beautiful girl with a nose ring, a wonky eye and a painful secret. Now to get to the bottom of the tragic mysteries that fuel them both, Cam may finally have to be himself.

My Lady Deceiver


Freda Lightfoot - 2012
    Rosie Belsfield feels as if her life has ended when she is rejected from Ellis Island and put on the next boat back to England, leaving her family behind. But fate gives her a second chance when she befriends Lady Rosalind. Having boarded the ship with one identity, fate decrees that Rosie leave it with another ...As Rosie arrives in Cornwall as 'Rosalind', she finds herself increasingly trapped by her deception and the cruelty of those around her. Her only hope seems to be the enigmatic Bryce Tregowan, with whom the promise of a new life beckons. As she falls deeper into love and lies, can Rosie keep up the act, or will her secrets reveal themselves? And to what consequences?

Undercard


David Albertyn - 2019
    As Tyron reconnects with his old community, he will learn over the next twenty-four hours that much has changed since he left Las Vegas… and there is much more that he never understood.The Reef, an aquarium-themed casino and the hottest resort on the Strip, is the backdrop for this bullet-paced narrative, where loyalty to one’s friends, one’s family, and one’s community are ever at odds, and every choice has deadly repercussions.

The Beothuk Saga


Bernard Assiniwi - 1999
    It begins a thousand years ago in the time of the Vikings in Newfoundland. It is crammed with incidents of war and peace, with fights to the death and long nights of lovemaking, and with accounts of the rise of local clan chiefs and the silent fall of great distant empires. Out of the mists of the past it sweeps forward eight hundred years, to the lonely death of the last of the Beothuk.The Beothuk, of course, were the original native people of Newfoundland, and thus the first North American natives encountered by European sailors. Noticing the red ochre they used as protection against mosquitoes, the sailors called them "Red-skins," a name that was to affect an entire continent. As a people, they were never understood.Until now. By adding his novelist's imagination to his knowledge as an anthropologist and a historian, Bernard Assiniwi has written a convincing account of the Beothuk people through the ages. To do so he has given us a mirror image of the history rendered by Europeans. For example, we know from the Norse Sagas that four slaves escaped from the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. What happened to them? Bernard Assiniwi supplies a plausible answer, just as he perhaps solves the mystery of the Portuguese ships that sailed west in 1501 to catch more Beothuk, and disappeared from the paper records forever.The story of the Beothuk people is told in three parts. "The Initiate" tells of Anin, who made a voyage by canoe around the entire island a thousand years ago, encountering the strange Vikings with their "cutting sticks" and their hair "the colour of dried grass." His encounters with whales, bears, raiding Inuit and other dangers, and his survival skills on this epic journey make for fascinating reading, as does his eventual return to his home where, with the help of his strong and active wives, he becomes a legendary chief, the father of his people.

See Me


Nicholas Sparks - 2015
    . .Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, he's determined to walk a straight line. To Colin, that means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life. Reminding himself daily of his hard-earned lessons, the last thing he is looking for is a serious relationship.Maria Sanchez, the hardworking daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the picture of conventional success. With a degree from Duke Law School and a job at a prestigious firm in Wilmington, she is a dark-haired beauty with a seemingly flawless professional track record. And yet Maria has a traumatic history of her own, one that compelled her to return to her hometown and left her questioning so much of what she once believed.A chance encounter on a rain-swept road will alter the course of both Colin and Maria's lives, challenging deeply held assumptions about each other and ultimately, themselves. As love unexpectedly takes hold between them, they dare to envision what a future together could possibly look like . . . until menacing reminders of events in Maria's past begin to surface.Rich in emotion and fueled with suspense, SEE ME reminds us that love is sometimes forged in the crises that threaten to shatter us . . . and that those who see us for who we truly are may not always be the ones easiest to recognize.

Mary Green


Melanie Kerr - 2016
    When she discovers that her only friend is to leave the country forever, that her confidence has been betrayed by the unfeeling youngest daughter of the family, and that her very deprivation is the object of the mockery and scorn of everyone she has sought to honour, she determines to cast them off and make her own way in the world. On her twenty-first birthday, free to choose her own destiny, she dreams of peace and tolerance, and perhaps a partner who might be noble enough to love her in all her simplicity. But when an unexpected foray into London society disrupts all her plans, she is faced with an uncharacteristic storm of feelings. Will she grow strong and happy in her independence, or will her character be lost amidst her newfound ambition? Unable to trust the whims of her own heart, Mary is forced to confront the question that has forever plagued her: Who is she and where does she come from?

The Josephine Bonaparte Collection: The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe, and the Last Great Dance on Earth


Sandra Gulland - 2002
    All are works of historical fiction on a grand scale that recount a stirring, unforgettable love story.The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. traces Josephine's early years as she leaves the exotic, lush, and remote Martinico for the heart of European society. There she meets Napoleon, whose destiny will prove to be irrevocably intertwined with hers.Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe continues the saga as Josephine awakens to her new life as Mrs. Napoleon Bonaparte and we witness the political intrigues and personal betrayals that result in death, ruin, and victory for those closest to Josephine.The Last Great Dance on Earth is the triumphant final volume that opens four years into the passionate yet troubled union of Josephine and Napoleon. The tumultuous times will, ultimately, drive them apart, culminating in Josephine's greatest tragedy: her divorce from Napoleon and his exile to Elba.