• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7
• Reading age: 9 to 12

Starting a new life after the death of her mother, Nora learns how to be strong.
Are there wounds too deep to heal, pains too sharp to share? And if a family survives by cutting the ties that bind them, can they ever be whole again?
After losing her mother to illness and her father to his work, Nora Mackenzie must leave her home in the interior of B.C. for a North Vancouver school. Estranged from her classmates, her family, and the life she’s lost, Nora walls herself off from the people around her. At the same time, her young cousin Lizzie is facing an uncertain future as one of the first children to undergo open-heart surgery. As the operation approaches, Nora discovers that she is not the only person in her family isolated by fear and grief.

Rie Charles was born in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and has recently returned there. She spent much of the intervening time in other parts of Canada and the world, including Ontario, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Australia. She holds a Masters Degree in Social Work, plays the harp, teaches yoga, and reads voraciously. Over the years she has worked at many jobs, including teaching in classrooms from kindergarten to Grade Eight, learning from a group of Australian Aborigines, working as a site researcher on a project for disadvantaged children and as a co-facilitator of groups for abused women. Her not-so-secret passion is writing children’s books. She always has several on the go. No More Dragons is her debut novel for young people.

Rie Charles' profile page

The interesting setting might help readers look past Nora’s initial prickliness and root for her as she finds her place in a new home.

School Library Journal

One intriguing element of the novel is found in the details of life in 1960 that the author has worked hard to include.

Canadian Materials Magazine

Charles has captured the inner reality of an indomitable heroine, and Nora’s unquenchable curiosity and sensitivity to other people are a tribute to human resilience.

Quill & Quire

Wonderful story!

by megreader