Eleni moves to a village in the clouds, where the blue mountains and the sky seem to stretch forever but, surprisingly, people's minds don't. She's been hoping that she can make a new start and leave behind the sense of loss and the low self-esteem that she has been struggling with for most of her life. But this is the kind of place where she'll never fit in. And Eleni is definitely different! So when she and her friends come up against small-mindedness, they find a way to fight it and to change attitudes - beginning with their own. Eleni draws unexpected strength from her mother's determination to live triumphantly and realises that even in her bleakest moments, her life has been transformed by various kinds of magic and more than once has been touched by angels.

Eleni moves to a village in the clouds, where the blue mountains and the sky seem to stretch forever but, surprisingly, people's minds don't. She's been hoping that she can make a new start and leave behind the sense of loss and the low self-esteem that she has been struggling with for most of her life. But this is the kind of place where she'll never fit in. And Eleni is definitely different! So when she and her friends come up against small-mindedness, they find a way to fight it and to change attitudes - beginning with their own. Eleni draws unexpected strength from her mother's determination to live triumphantly and realises that even in her bleakest moments, her life has been transformed by various kinds of magic and more than once has been touched by angels.

Having no legs didn't stop Tony Christiansen from climbing trees, racing go-karts or being a surf club life saver. His answer? "It's not what happens to you that counts, it's what you do about it." Suggested level: primary.

Partially autobiographical, this translation of the Spanish Patas de Avestruz is a masterpiece of introspective, linguistically innovative fiction about the relationship between two sisters--one severely handicapped, the other gifted yet overlooked. Mariana is four years older than her sister Alcira, but Mariana is seriously disabled and slowly dying. Conveying the experience of a physically messy process, this account points out the flaws in adult society through the point-of-view of its child protagonist. At its core, the novel is about the abuse of power and its consequences--whether that abuse is by a government, a parent, or a child.

First published by Anansi in 1969, Five Legs was a breakthrough for Canadian experimental fiction, selling 1,000 copies in its first week. At the time Scott Symons wrote that "Five Legs has more potent writing in it, page for page, than any other young Canadian novel that I can think of." Or indeed any young American novel — including Pynchon and Farina. Five Legs is the subversive tale of two guilt-ridden young men, Lucan Crackell and Felix Oswald — one a professor, the other his student — caught in the grip of the North American Protestant ethic, with its emotional web-spinning and sexual torments. Gibson captures both their mortifications and their spirited resistance to all things WASP, themselves included, in stream-of-consciousness prose that is at once fluid, disjointed, and hilarious. Essential reading for any Canlit junkie, and quite a trip. This edition features a new introduction by Sean Kane.

SC-SPCOLL (copy 1): From the James and Margaret Beveridge Fonds.

Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation Award for International Cooking, this is the authoritative guide to stir-frying: the cooking technique that makes less seem like more, extends small amounts of food to feed many, and makes ingredients their most tender and delicious. The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of years—and is the key to quick and tasty meals. In Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, award-winning author Grace Young shares more than 100 classic stir-fry recipes that sizzle with heat and pop with flavor, from the great Cantonese stir-fry masters to the culinary customs of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as other countries around the world. With more than eighty stunning full-color photographs, Young’s definitive work illustrates the innumerable, easy-to-learn possibilities the technique offers—dry stir-fries, moist stir-fries, clear stir-fries, velvet stir-fries—and weaves the insights of Chinese cooking philosophy into the preparation of beloved dishes as Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli, Chicken Lo Mein with Ginger Mushrooms, and Dry-Fried Sichuan Beans.