Excerpts from Hoping for Home
Ever since we left England, I've had to nod and smile and tell everyone we meet how much I like Canada. I don't! Yes, the people have been immensely friendly, but the land is too vast and wild. I miss Devon's green fields and hedges, our neat villages and small shops. Canada frightens me.
When Jane showed me the letters she wouldn't let me cry. She told me I must try to be brave. I am so, so tired of hearing those worlds.
- "Marooned in Canada", by Kit Pearson
This place is a prison. Ba views me as a toddler. When I go pump water, I return quickly, before he comes looking for me. When the restaurant emptied this afternoon, I thought to walk around town. Ba said no, it was too hot outside. He added that the Westerners dislike us and might do harm. Instead, I washed the window again.
Why come to Canada if I cannot explore it?
- "Prairie Showdown", by Paul Yee
I feel as if I have an album of pictures in my head that opens every so often and I can see photographs of the war, the soldiers, guns, people running... Our poor granny, who got left behind in Poland all alone... Papa saying we couldn't take her along because we only had visas for the four of us... Grandpa getting beaten by a Nazi soldier on a ghetto street...
- "In the Silence of My Heart", by Lillian Boraks-Nemetz
... Then, when the afternoon ended and we came down our road, Will was waiting on the front steps. When he saw be coming, he jumped up and ran to the door yelling, "Hattie's home! Hattie's home!"
And I was.
- "Hattie's Home", by Jean Little
From On Board the Titanic
"Jack felt the back of his neck prickle with fear. What he had known in his heart for the past hour was suddenly very clear. They would never get in a lifeboat. There simply weren't enough..."
One More Border
Can You Hear the Trees Talking?
