Ghost Ride

Short-listed for the 2011 Red Maple Award Fourteen-year-old Sam McLean is less than thrilled with the prospect of moving to a collection of old mansions on the northern fringe of a small town called Ringwood. A nobody at his old school, Sam is desperate to be accepted by the cool kids and latches on to Cody Barns, aka Maniac. Codys claim to fame is performing wild stunts the crazier the better and posting them on his blog. When Sam reluctantly joins Cody and his sidekick, Javon, on their midnight ghost riding, a practice in which the driver and passenger climb onto the hood of their moving car and dance, something goes terribly wrong. Cody convinces Sam to flee the scene, leaving Javon for dead. But soon mysterious messages appear on Codys blog and anonymous notes are slid into Sams locker. As Sam struggles with his conscience, a haunting question remains: Who else knows the truth?

i Knew One Thing — I Wasn't Going To Be Rotting In That Place For The Rest Of My Life. I Was Getting Out Of There. That Place Turned People Into The Living Dead. In That Neighbourhood, It Was Hard To Hear Anything That Didn't Carry The Sound Of Defeat.

sixteen-year-old Porter Delaney Has His Future Figured Out, But His Nice, Neat Plans Are Shaken When A Man He Believes May Be His Father Suddenly Appears In His Toronto Neighbourhood. Porter Knows That He Wants Nothing To Do With The Deadbeat Dad Who Abandoned Him And His Sister Twelve Years Earlier, But Curiosity Causes Him To Re-examine The Past.

unfortunately, Actual Memories Are Scarce And Confusing, And Much Of What He Knows Is Based On Things His Mother Told Him. As Porter Looks For Answers, It Begins To Seem That All He's Ever Going To Find Are More Questions.

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after A Year Of Supervised Probation, Sixteen-year-old Porter Delancy Is Taking Back His Life. Supported By His Best Friend And Girlfriend, He Might Even Be Able To Ignore His Mother's Wild Mood Swings And His Sister's Emotional Crises. As A Result, The Appearance In His Toronto Neighborhood Of A Strange Man He Dubs The Watcher Is Especially Disturbing. Could This Man, Who Seems To Be Spying On Porter, Be The Deadbeat Dad Who Abandoned His Family Twelve Years Ago? As Porter Searches His Own Memories And Those Of His Sister, He Realizes Much Of What They Both Remember Is Based Upon Stories From Their Mother—a Horrifying Saga Of Emotional And Physical Abuse And Neglect. Confronting The Stranger Seems The Only Way For Porter To Learn The Truth About His Past And His Father. This Slight Novel Has The Tone Of A Case Study In Parental Alienation—the Destruction By One Parent Of A Child's Relationship With The Other Parent. The Plot Seems Especially Contrived And Unrealistic. When Porter Learns The Identity Of The Watcher, The Knowledge Leads To His Immediate Understanding Of The Parental Alienation Syndrome, Reconciliation With His Father, And Unconditional Acceptance By His Dad's New Family. Among The Characters, Only Porter's Probation Officer, A Bluntly Honest Pragmatist, Remains In The Reader's Mind After The Book Is Done. With Its Uninspiring Cover Art, Didactic Tone, And Unmemorable Characters, This Novel Will Be A Marginal Purchase For Most Libraries. Reviewer: Jamie S. Hansen

For as long as 13-year-old Paige Morrow can remember, the tree fort in the giant oak near her cottage in Ontarios Muskoka has been her sanctuary. Now everything is changing. Its the summer of 1971, and she and her little brother, Toby, have been at their cottage with their mother since school let out. But this year, Paige feels more alone than ever. Her father has stopped coming up from the city on weekends, while her mother buries herself in whiskey and writing. Paige retreats to her tree fort, but becomes concerned when the farmer who owns the property hires a creepy arborist -- a "tree doctor," Paige's mother calls him. Is something wrong with the farms apple orchard or with her tree? When Paige befriends the arborist's troubled teenage daughter, Janine, and her group of rowdy locals, she is pulled into a maze of dark secrets and shocking truths that leads to a life-and-death confrontation. 2011 Red Maple Award — Shortlisted Fourteen-year-old Sam McLean is less than thrilled with the prospect of moving to a collection of old mansions on the northern fringe of a small town called Ringwood. A nobody at his old school, Sam is desperate to be accepted by the cool kids and latches on to Cody Barns, aka Maniac. Cody's claim to fame is performing wild stunts — the crazier the better — and posting them on his blog. When Sam reluctantly joins Cody and his sidekick, Javon, on their midnight ghost riding, a practice in which the driver and passenger climb onto the hood of their moving car and dance, something goes terribly wrong. Cody convinces Sam to flee the scene, leaving Javon for dead. But soon mysterious messages appear on Cody's blog and anonymous notes are slid into Sam's locker. As Sam struggles with his conscience, a haunting question remains: Who else knows the truth? Fourteen-year-old Sam McLean is not thrilled with the prospect of moving to the fringe of a small town. A nobody at his old school, Sam is desperate to be accepted by the cool kids and latches on to Cody Barns. Cody's claim to fame is performing wild stunts, the crazier the better, and posting them on his blog. When Sam reluctantly joins Cody and his sidekick, Javon, on their midnight ghost riding, a practice in which the driver and passenger climb onto the hood of their moving car and dance, something goes terribly wrong. Cody convinces Sam to flee the scene, leaving Javon for dead. But soon, mysterious messages appear on Cody's blog and anonymous notes are slid into Sam's locker. As Sam struggles with his conscience, a haunting question remains: Who else knows the truth? 13 year old Paige takes refuge in her tree fort at her family's cottage in Muskoka, Ontario every summer. This summer she feels more alone then ever until she befriends an arborist's troubled daughter. Janine and her group of rowdy locals pull Paige into a maze of dark secrets and shocking truths that lead to a life-and-death confrontation Sixteen-year-old Porter Delancy has his future plans shattered when a man who may be his dad shows up in his neighborhood in Toronto; while looking for answers about the father who left him and his sister twelve years earlier, he comes up with nothing but confusion and more questions