• Age: 12 to 14
• Grade: 7 to 9
• Reading age: 12 to 14

Proceeds from this 10th Anniversary edition support the Canadian Children's Book Centre.

Will Ben ever escape the Landing? The hardscrabble farm on the shores of Lake Muskoka can't generate a living, so Ben's Uncle Henry sells goods and gas to cottagers from the dock known as Cooks Landing. It had never been much of a living and since the Depression hit, it's even less.

Ben's thinking a lot these days, and it's making him miserable. He's thinking about how unfair it is that his uncle only cares about work. He's thinking about what he really wants to do: play the violin. These days, he's lucky to snatch the odd bit of practice between chores, playing to the chickens in the henhouse.

A new job fixing up the grand old cottage on nearby Pine Island seems at first to be just one more thing to keep Ben away from his violin. After he meets the island's owner, Ben changes his mind. Ruth Chapman is a cultured and wealthy woman from New York who introduces Ben to an unfamiliar, liberating world. After Ben plays violin for Ruth and her admiring friends, it only makes him more desperate to flee. Then, during a stormy night on Lake Muskoka, everything changes.

Darrell Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs. Prior to joining Ipsos Reid, Bricker was director of public-opinion research in the office of the prime minister. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Carleton University and is the co-author (with Edward Greenspon) of Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset. He is the co-author, with John Wright, of What Canadians Think About Almost Everything. Follow Darrell on Twitter @darrellbricker.

John Ibbitson's profile page

• Short-listed, White Pine Award, Ontario Library Association
• Winner, Best Bet for Children and Teens, Ontario Library Association
• Winner, Outstanding International Book, USBBY
• Winner, Best Books for Kids and Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre
• Winner, Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, Canadian Children's Book Centre
• Winner, Governor General's Literary Award, children's text, Canada Council for the Arts

... a well-written coming-of-age novel ...

Winnipeg Free Press

This novel, like Lake Muskoka, is deep. Character-driven, suspenseful, and historically accurate, it is both realistic and symbolic.

CM Magazine

The Landing is geared toward young adults, but just as easily belongs to the Canadian coming-of-age genre occupied by the likes of Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence.

The Globe and Mail

The Landing

Ben Mercer has grown up on Ontario’s Muskoka lakes and is at home on and in the water, but his true element is music. In the ‘Prelude’ to The Landing, we meet a small boy at the Gravenhurst Opera House glorying in his first classical concert. High on his father’s shoulders, Ben reaches toward the conductor, to a world of music in which he wants “to drown.” But when the first chapter opens, Ben, now 15, is living with his mother and embittered uncle at Cook’s Landing, where descendants of Muskoka pioneers earn a pinched living during the Depression catering to the needs of wealthy cottagers. One such cottager changes Ben’s life. From New York – and a world of famous writers – arrives an independent widow who entertains Great Gatsby-style. The Muskoka steamer unloads supplies, furniture and a piano! To a small-town boy, the jars of olives are as foreign as the cases of gin, but Ben soon learns to mix a martini almost as well as he learns to repair the dock and the cottage.

As he listens to Sibelius concertos on the cottage’s wind-up Victrola, Ben knows that he will have to leave the Landing (and his practice sessions in the toolshed) if he is ever to realize his dream of playing the violin. As his mother suggests, something might happen. The novel holds out both a threat and a promise of what that might be – and ends with both a crescendo and a haunting chaconne. If, like me, you didn’t recognize that last term, do read The Landing.

John Ibbitson’s writing, spare and powerful throughout, soars when he captures the power of music. But you don’t need to speak the language of music to savour this story of longing, belonging, courage, conflicted loyalties and dreams. Ibbitson, a Globe and Mail columnist known for his YA historical novel Jeremy’s War 1812, has always wanted to write a novel faithful to the place he grew up. He has succeeded admirably, but he has also created a character to care about. Although the cover may not immediately appeal, this would be an excellent novel to recommend to middle and high school readers.

The Landing

Ben is shown an unfamiliar, liberating world by a cultured and wealthy New York woman. After he plays the violin for her and her friends, it makes him more desperate to flee The Landing, a hardscrabble farm on Lake Muskoka. Then, one stormy night on the lake, everything changes.