2012 Children's Book Centre Awards Shortlists

If This Is Freedom continues the story of struggle for Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. In the black settlement of Birchtown, times are especially hard for the former slaves. They face the difficulties of a hardscrabble existence and continued discrimination from their white counterparts.

Like many desperate Bir …

Sherlock Holmes and Irene Doyle are as riveted as the rest of the audience. They are celebrating Irene's sixteenth birthday at the Egyptian Hall as Alistair Hemsworth produces a real and very deadly dragon before their eyes. This single, fantastic illusion elevates the previously unheralded magician to star status, making him the talk of London. He …

In the days after Darklight, the Avalon Theatre has burned to the ground. The shadowy figure poisoning King Auberon is still at large, and Kelley and Sonny are torn apart—because of the lie Kelley told that changed everything.

Now Kelley tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, while Sonny takes refuge with a band of Lost Fae in an aband …

Picture a tree — what do YOU see?

Picture a tree, from every season, and from every angle. These wondrous beings give shade and shelter. They protect, and bring beauty to, any landscape.

Now look again. Look closer.

A tree's colours both soothe and excite. Its shape can ignite the imagination and conjure a pirate ship, a bear cave, a clubhouse, a fr …

When Charlie Sykes wakes up in hospital in St. John's, he learns that he and his father have been in a car accident and that his father is dying. Charlie inherits little more than the brass key that his father pressed into his hand before he passed away. As far as Charlie knows, he has no family in Newfoundland. But then Uncle Nick shows up and is …

Finn loves to swim with the seals in a secret cove. He arrives at the cove one day and rescues a young seal tangled in netting. Finn wishes the seal could live on land. That night the seals sing. "No good comes from seal songs," says Finn's father. When Sheila, a mysterious girl no one has ever seen before, appears on the cannery docks, the fisher …

The darker side of a friendship is portrayed by Jess, a seventeen-year-old who struggles to find the moral courage to remain loyal to her best friend Casey who has been accused of murdering an eight year old girl at summer camp. The town becomes a media circus and the pressure's far too great for Jess to cope.

A person doesn't have to do anything im …