Curriculum Connections: Reading for Meaning

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.

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.

Avi Greenbaum is Jewish and lives in West Jerusalem. Moussa Shakir is Palestinian and lives in East Jerusalem.

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.

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.

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