SecondStoryPress Latest Books

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SecondStoryPress — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:42:50 -0500

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Yesterday's Dead

SecondStoryPress — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:43:14 -0400

Meredith struggles to cope during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918

Thirteen-year-old Meredith yearns to become a teacher but must leave school to help support her family. To find the best paying job for a young girl of her class, she travels to the city to work as household help in a doctor’s home. From the start, her life is made difficult by the cantankerous and prickly butler, and confrontations with Maggie, the doctor’s spoiled thirteen-year-old daughter.

As the deadly Spanish Flu sweeps across the city, members of the household fall ill one by one. With the doctor working night and day at the hospital, only Meredith, Maggie, and Jack, Maggie's handsome older brother, are left to care for them. Every day the newspapers’ lists of “Yesterday’s Dead” add to Meredith’s growing fears.

When Jack becomes gravely ill, Meredith must stop fighting with Maggie so they can work together to save him. As Meredith wrestles with questions of duty and responsibility, she opens the door to a future that she thought had been closed forever.

Rachel's Secret

SecondStoryPress — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:19:23 -0400

Rachel, a Jew, and Sergei, a Christian, find their worlds torn apart by violence in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

Rachel is a Jew living in Kishinev, Russia. At fourteen, Rachel knows that she wants more from life than the traditional role of wife and mother. She has dreams of being a writer. But everything is put on hold when a young Christian man is murdered and Rachel is forced to keep the murderer’s identity a secret. Tensions mount as the Christians’ distrust of the Jews is fueled by prejudice and rumour.
While Rachel keeps the truth to herself, she watches as lies and anti-Jewish propaganda leap off the pages of the local newspaper, inciting Christians to riot against the Jews. Violence breaks out on Easter Sunday, 1903, and when it finally ends, Rachel finds that the person she loves most is dead and that her home has been destroyed. As she struggles to survive the aftermath of the riots – or pogroms – support comes from someone totally unexpected, when a young Christian named Sergei turns against his father, a police officer complicit in the riots, to help Rachel.
With everything against them, the two young people find comfort in the bond that is growing between them, one of the few signs of goodness and hope in a time of chaos and violence.

Bernadette to the Rescue

SecondStoryPress — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:49:30 -0400

Bernadette and friends are back for a Lunch Bunch adventure that takes them back to nature!

Bernadette Inez O’Brian Schwartz is back with her friends Annie, Keisha, and Megan, aka The Lunch Bunch. In this third adventure, Bernadette finally gets the puppy she has been dreaming of for so long. She and the Lunch Bunch girls learn how to give back when they help raise money at a charity garage sale.

When school ends, the four friends decide to go to the same day camp. Bernadette discovers that she can indulge her love of science anywhere when the local frogs go missing and she and the other campers use “scientific method” to find out why.

Support the Girls

SecondStoryPress — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:47:21 -0400

Can a book about breast health be both beautiful and funny? This one is.

When the women from a community in Central Ontario needed to raise funds to buy a mammogram machine for the local hospital, it wasn’t laughter that led them to the “Art Bra” project. More likely, it was the fear of breast cancer and the need for early detection that motivated them. But the result is full of fun and whimsy, as people from across the country responded to their call to craft an “art bra”, sending in their creations along with the stories behind them.

You will smile at the bras that have been turned into works of art, with names like “Got Milk”, “Lucky Charms”, “Go, Girls, Go”, and “Cradles of Civilizations”. The book showcases over fifty bras, with accompanying personal stories that celebrate the curative power of laughter. Even hockey greats Bobby Orr and Sidney Crosby have gotten into the act by signing “sports bras”.

The bras come from a community of breast cancer sufferers and survivors, health care workers, friends, and family. These bra “artists” will inspire you and bring you to tears – both of laughter and sadness. Gathered together, their creations bring a sense of lightness and hope to an all-too serious problem.

A portion of the proceeds from every sale will benefit breast cancer research.

Hana's Suitcase Anniversary Album

SecondStoryPress — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:28:28 -0400

Coming in April 2012

A special edition on the 10th anniversary of the publication of Hana's Suitcase, the beloved story now known around the world. One of the most awarded books in Canadian history.

In the spring of 2000, Fumiko Ishioka, the curator of a small Holocaust education centre for children in Tokyo, received a shipment from the Auschwitz museum that included an empty suitcase marked “Hana Brady, May 16, 1931, Orphan”. Fumiko and the children at the centre decided to find out what became of Hana. The heartbreaking story they uncovered of a brave young girl killed in the Holocaust and survived only by her brother, George, was captured in Karen Levine’s book that the world took into its heart.

The response since Hana’s Suitcase was published in the spring of 2002 has been overwhelming. Hana’s story has spread across the globe. It was on the bestseller list more than a year. It’s been translated into dozens of languages, honoured with numerous awards, adapted for the stage, and transformed into several films. The United Nations uses it in over 100 outposts, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote a foreword, and Michelle Obama was presented with a copy during an official visit to Prague. To commemorate the tenth anniversary, this new book includes:

•   Commemorative letters from Karen, Fumiko, and George
•   Reaction from readers around the world
•   Letters and art from children
•   Photographs of events and ceremonies
•   Scenes from the play adaptation
•   Posters from the staging of the play in over ten countries
•   Awards and Tributes – lists, emblems, photos, and quotable quotes from juries and the media
•   Covers from the international editions
•   Images from the documentary film
and much more

Writing the Revolution

SecondStoryPress — Thu, 05 May 2011 08:13:40 -0400

Feminist journalist & activist Michele Landsberg - From the front lines of the Women's Movement

One of the most respected voices in Canadian feminism, two-time National Newspaper Award-winning journalist Michele Landsberg has engaged with the second wave of the women’s movement more than any other writer in the country. Her opinions, always careful and sometimes controversial, have mattered to women’s lives.

For 25 year, between 1978 and 2005, Michele wrote a highly influential column in The Toronto Star, recording and interpreting history from the front lines of the feminist movement. In this volume, Michele brings us a collection of her favorite columns. With her trademark blend of kindness, toughness, bluntness and humor, she reflects on when she was right, when she was wrong, what was happening behind the scenes, and what has happened since. The columns show a fearless advocacy on behalf of women and children, peace and pluralism, human rights and social justice. Michele looks back over the years, offering insight and reflection, and also looks at the present and future of feminism. Surprising, enlightening, infuriating or funny, her writing reminds us that feminism changed the world forever and is still alive, still sparking and making debate.

Gloria Steinem on Michele Landsberg:

"Those who make a revolution and those who write about it are usually two different people. Michele Landsberg is one of the few on earth who is trusted and effective at both. There is no one I respect more in the trenches---or on the page."

The Feminist History Society is a project of the Women’s Education and Research Foundation of Ontario Incorporated (WERF), founded in 2008 by a group of feminist activists from across Canada whose goal is to describe, document, preserve and celebrate the work and character of our times, of the women’s movement in Canada over the last 50 years

Morning Star

SecondStoryPress — Thu, 05 May 2011 08:06:28 -0400

The Underground Railroad links two girls living more than a century apart

Flower, her parents, and her baby brother have escaped from the plantation where they were kept as slaves and are making their way north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Their journey is dangerous and often desperate, as they are helped and sheltered by some, and hunted by others. Flower’s courage helps her family through illness, re-capture, and to escape again to safety.

Interwoven with Flower’s narrative is the story of Felicia, a young girl living more than 150 years later in a small Canadian community that was once an end-point of the Underground Railroad. Felicia, one of the few black children in her school, is researching her ancestry for a class project. As she talks to her mother and grandmother and learns about her ancestors’ struggles and successes, their bravery gives her the strength to confront the racism and bullying of a classmate.

Shannen and the Dream for a School

SecondStoryPress — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:46:33 -0400

All children have the right to a school

This is the true story of Shannen Koostachin and the people of Attawapiskat, a Cree community in Northern Ontario, who have been fighting for a new school since 1979, when a fuel spill contaminated their original school building.

It is 2008, and thirteen-year-old Shannen and the other students at J.R. Nakogee Elementary are tired of attending class in portables that smell and don’t keep out the freezing cold winter air. They make a YouTube video describing the poor conditions, and their plea for a decent school gains them attention and support from community leaders and children across the country. Inspired, the students decide to turn their grade-eight class trip into a visit to Ottawa, to speak to the Canadian government. Once there, Shannen speaks passionately to the politicians about the need to give Native children the opportunity to succeed. The following summer, Shannen is nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Her passion and that of the other students makes politicians stand up and take notice, and becomes a rallying point for the community and for the country.

Shannen will never see her dream fulfilled. Tragically, she was killed in a car crash in 2010. Her family, friends, and supporters are continuing to fight and to honor her memory as they work for equality for children in communities everywhere.

Find out about the Shannen's Dream Campaign

Read the Canadian Geographic story on the children of Attawapiskat and their wait for a new school, "Still Waiting in Attawapiskat"

And watch the Canadian Geographic video below, "Still Waiting in Attawapiskat"

Environmentalists from our First Nations

SecondStoryPress — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:16:06 -0400

The men and women profiled here are united by their work to protect the environment and to support indigenous rights. Their stories take us from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to the Black Mesa in Arizona.

Melina Laboucan-Massimo uses her passion to stop oil extraction in Alberta’s tar sands.
Winona LaDuke is a voice for reclaiming Native lands, advocating renewable energy resources, and protecting Native cultures.
Clayton Thomas-Muller is a dynamic advocate for indigenous self-determination and campaigner against tar sands extraction.
Ben Powless brings his youthful energy and skills to addressing climate change issues.
Tom Goldtooth protects sacred sites and organizes global direct-action campaigns for the environment.
Grace Thorpe is a grandmother who dedicated her retirement years to keeping Native reservations from becoming nuclear waste dumps.
Sarah James is a voice from northern Alaska defending the Porcupine caribou herd and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Enei Begaye & Evon Peter are married activists who work as a team on environmental issues and sustainable strategies for Native people.
Klee Benally uses the media to empower Native communities in their fight for environmental justice.
Teague Allston works to ensure a tribal voice is heard in Washington DC.