• Age: 7 to 11
• Grade: 2 to 6

“The Jo Boy Deserts” tells the stirring tale of a young boy forced to work for a cruel mate on a merchant ship in the nineteenth century. A young Vancouver Island girl and her family help him desert ship. “The Mystery of the Slashed Cabbages” is set in a rural community in Manitoba and tells the story of a Dutch farming family and the troubles they encounter as they try to win a prize for their cabbages at the county fair. The mystery is solved, and the young boys in the story learn something about the tough times in which they live. “The Trouble with Esmay” is a comic story set in depression-era Winnipeg about an escaped pig and the young ladies who try to help her. A free mini teacher’s guide is available at our website. This collection is ideal for literature-based language arts and social studies classes.

Constance Horne is the author of Emily Carr’s Woo (Oolichan), nominated for the Sheila Egoff Award at the BC Book Prizes, Trapped by Coal (Pacific Educational), The Jo Boy Deserts and Other Stories (Pacific Educational) and Nykola and Granny (Gage). She is also a contributor to Winds Through Time: An Anthology of Canadian Historical Young Adult Fiction (Beach Holme, 1998). She also contributed a story to the young adult historical anthology Beginnings: Stories of Canada's Past (Ronsdale, 2001). Her books have been chosen by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre as Our Choice award winners and she has been short-listed three times for the Geoffrey Bilson Award. She taught school for several years and now lives and writes in Victoria, British Columbia.

Constance Horne's profile page