• Age: 9 to 14
• Grade: 4 to 9

Life in her new neighborhood isn't going to be easy for Croatian immigrant Lucy Vakovik. Her mother has saved enough to buy them an onlyhouse: a single detached home. But to Lucy's friends, her mother says, My sometime English is broking."

What's a kid to do? Lucy's got a fight ahead of her and important choices to make. But she knows she's not a stereotype like some people think - she's Lucy and that's a good place to start.

TERESA TOTEN won the Governor General’s Literary Award in Canada for The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, which also won the American Library Association’s Schneider Family Book Award, and was chosen by the International Board on Books for Young People as one of its Outstanding Books for Young People With Disabilities in 2015. She is the author of the international bestseller Beware That Girl and the acclaimed Blondes series, as well as The Game, The Onlyhouse, and, with Eric Walters, The Taming. Teresa lives in Toronto, Ontario. Visit her online at www.teresatoten.com and on Facebook, and follow her at @TTotenAuthor on Twitter.

Teresa Toten's profile page

"It's rare to encounter a narrative voice so authentic and compelling it draws us with instant enthusiasm into the, but this is exactly what first novelist Teresa Toten has accomplished with Lucy Vakovik, the hero of Onlyhouse. ...a pleasure to read, and an extremely impressive debut."
— Quill & Quire

"Thoughtful and impressive . . . strong, believable child characters."
— Regina Sun

"Toten's first novel is crisp and realistic. The author expresses her protagonist's emotions and captures the nuances of life in Toronto perfectly... Young readers will enjoy the misadventures and the way that Lucy learns to fit in without compromising her values."
— School Library Journal

"Told in a breezy and often humorous, first person style, it is easy to identify with Lucy's struggles to adapt and make friends at her new school. Lucy, her mama, and her friends are very believable characters and it is easy to care about how they resolve some of their problems."
— Canadian Children's Literature