Picturing Alyssa

Who is the girl staring out of the old photograph? Every time Alyssa Dixon looks at it, even by accident, she finds herself on an Iowa farm in 1931. The past is nothing like Alyssa's unhappy life -- her mother severely depressed after the stillbirth of Alyssa's baby sister; escalating bullying by Brooklynne, a popular girl; and a teacher who is unsympathetic toward Alyssa's family's pacifist beliefs.Why can't Alyssa live in the past with her new friend, Deborah? Yet Alyssa is always pulled back to the present, where things only get worse. Maybe the farm isn't so idyllic, though. Deborah's mother is ill with a difficult pregnancy, and there's so much work. A series of old family photos shows Alyssa unsettling things about Deborah's family -- things Deborah seems not to know. Can Alyssa help the baby be born safely, and at the same time work through the overwhelming problems at home? Commended for the 2011 Best Books for Kids and Teens Living in grim Depression-era Toronto with her actress mother, Frannie, Ivy Chalmers has never met her father. In 1931, Frannie sends twelve-year-old Ivy to stay with her paternal grandmother in Larkin, Ontario, while she seeks stardom in New York City. When Ivy's father, Alva, arrives unexpectedly in Larkin, he turns out not to be the Prince Charming she imagined, but an illiterate peddler. Rescuing Ivy from her uncompromising grandmother, Alva takes her with him for the summer, wandering the countryside by horse-drawn caravan, selling shoes. Back in Larkin at summer's end, Ivy meets teenager Charlie Bayliss, orphaned as an infant and raised by his aunt on a farm outside town. Ivy has a flair for writing and boundless imagination, while Charlie loves baseball and loathes farming. Unknown to both of them, though, is a secret connection they share. When the final pieces of the puzzle of their lives fall into place, nothing will ever be the same. 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. But just as Addy's search for Cask is about to end, the First World War breaks out and her world is torn apart once again. With great resolve she devotes herself to joining the war effort on the home front and eventually learns what forgiveness is all about. When Ivy Chalmers' mother sends her away from her home in grim, depression-era Toronto to live with her paternal grandmother, Ivy meets the father she never knew, and a local boy named Charlie Bayliss that shares a secret connection to her In 1910, twelve-year-old Addy sets out into the Canadian wilderness to find her brother, meets some interesting people, and witnesses the beginning of the First World War