Curriculum Connections: Critical Thinking

"No one pays much attention to you if you don't have much to say, so there was no way I could have predicted what would happen when I stopped talking altogether."

For Tara and her brother, Suraj, the year their mother and grandfather fled the village of Morni in the middle of the night has been a nightmare. Their new stepmother is cruel and deceptive, and the village itself is lacking a healer. What's more, men of the village have been disappearing, often returning in a strange, altered form.



When a new healer, Zarku, a mysterious man with a third eye possessing strange power, suddenly appears in Morni, all are mesmerized by his magic -- all except Tara, who sees through his evil disguise.

Fourteen-year-old Casey Templeton has recently moved with his family to the southeastern Alberta town of Richford. One night Casey seeks refuge from a snowstorm in an abandoned farmhouse and stumbles upon his nearly frozen, unconscious science teacher, Mr. Deverell. Casey attempts to revive his teacher and searches the house for something to make a fire with. In the attic he makes a frightening discovery -- a sophisticated office filled with computers, a printer, and racist posters and flyers!

Fifteen-year-old Mackenzie Hill knows something is up when she arrives home to find her father making a home-cooked dinner, instead of his standard delivery pizza. But nothing prepares her for the bombshell announcement: Mackenzie and her dad, alone since the death of her mother a year ago, are moving to Jerusalem, where her father has taken a position as a visiting professor at a university.

Robin Starveling, aka Noah Vaile, is scooped off the streets of seventeenth-century Bristol, England, and dragged onboard a ship bound for Virginia by the murderous William Thatcher, who needs a se

What if the only way to get rid of your worst enemy was to sacrifice your brother?

When hyenas snatch Tara

In 1874, after their father is wounded by hard men who have stolen a number of mares and Smokey, a prized stallion, sixteen-year-old Rob McCann and his adopted Native brother, Luke, ride frantically to Fort Ellice, Manitoba, in the vain expectation that the horse rustlers have stopped there. Learning that a new force called the North-West Mounted Police has come west, the brothers continue south to locate them and ask for help. The NWMP commander, Colonel George French, desperately attempts to have the boys escorted home.

A Victorian garden, a fishing lure, and a ghost named John ?

Absolutely nothing is going right for Max Green. His parents have just uprooted their family from Vancouver to the bleak suburbs of Toronto, he has no friends, and everybody at his new high school is ignoring him. To make matters worse, he?s in love with an older girl who?s completely out of his league.

In 1910, while twelve-year-old Addy McLeod waits in a cabin in the Kootenay wilderness of southeastern British Columbia for her brother, Cask, to send for her, she fends off the unwanted advances of her alcoholic stepfather. When tragedy strikes, she is forced to flee and disguise herself as a boy.

Addy’s determined search for Cask becomes a journey of self-discovery as she encounters a tough trapper woman who cares for her when she’s ill, works in a hotel in the silver town of Kaslo on Kootenay Lake, and meets her first love, Ian.

After the conclusion of The Silver Anklet, Tara’s triumphant return to Morni is short-lived. Tara’s deceased former stepmother, Kali, seeks revenge through her daughter, Layla. And so begins a series of carefully orchestrated events to cast suspicion on Tara: a dead dog in the village temple, contaminated well water, and whispers that Tara is still possessed.

Layla fuels the villagers’ blind superstitions and fears. Soon all of Morni is against Tara, even her own family. Death seems to be the only way to stop her evil stepsister.

Fourteen-year-old Jake MacRae’s life is spinning out of control. He’s making all the wrong choices — gambling, drinking, hanging around gang members — and now he’s been asked to make a “special delivery.” What should he do? Jake knows either way that his decision will seal his fate, but what he doesn’t realize is that this choice might not only destroy his life but the lives of those close to him.

Lexie Malton is an average Vancouver teen with fairly typical issues.

Meet Little Jane Silver, the twelve year-old granddaughter of notorious Treasure Island pirate Long John Silver.

“Before you judge me, there are two things you should know about why I did it.”

Canada was young during the First World War, and with as many as 20,000 underage soldiers leaving their homes to join the war effort, the country's army was, too.

Bullies, baseball, and kids who defy the odds. Hawk, a poor, half-Native boy who lives on the street, is eager to go back to school, to play baseball, and to please both his divorced parents.

Canadians enjoy one of the most stable forms of democracy on the planet, but there is a crisis in their understanding of the role the Crown plays in their country.

Johanna is a 14-year-old Jewish girl who lives in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 18th century.