Girls' Own: An Anthology of Canadian Fiction for Young Readers

by Sarah Ellis

What Sarah Ellis loves about the girls in these stories is their sheer energy, their creative embrace of life's pleasures and troubles. Whether it's a case of helping their families survive, longing for an absent sister or simply wondering who their real friends are and where they themselves fit in, the heroines, each in her particular and utterly original way, manage to figure something out. Silly or serious, brash or quiet, each finds her own path. In choosing the twenty stories and excerpts that make up Girls' Own, writer and editor Sarah Ellis called upon some of Canada's best-known and beloved writers for young people, including Kit Pearson, Deborah Ellis, Jean Little, Teresa Toten, Joan Clark and Linda Holeman. The tales they tell take place in many different times, and in different parts of the world—a village in old China, a city in a modern-day Islamic country, a Blackfoot camp and downtown Vancouver. While the circumstances of their lives differ greatly, the girls share something in common: Each one is at the point of becoming someone new, while still remaining thoroughly herself.

Girls' Own is a refreshingly modern take on a time-honoured tradition: a book of stories that interprets who girls are and what sorts of tales will captivate them.

Genres: Young Adult

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Writer, columnist, and librarian Sarah Ellis has become one of the best-known authors for young adults in her native Canada with titles such as The Baby Project, Pick-Up Sticks, and Back of Beyond: Stories of the Supernatural. In addition to young adult novels, Ellis has also written for younger children and has authored several books about the craft of writing. Praised by Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman as "one of the best children's literature critics," Ellis "writes without condescension or pedantry. . . . Her prose is a delight: plain, witty, practical, wise."

Ellis was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1952, the youngest of three children in her family. As she once noted, "[My] joy in embroidering the truth probably comes from my own childhood. My father was a rich mine of anecdotes and jokes. He knew more variations on the 'once there were three men in a rowboat' joke than anyone I've encountered since.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of to-read books. ;)

[Nicole23 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was fine, it was kind of intresting a bunch of stories. I especially like the one that takes place in Afghanistan, at the time we were also learning about afghanistan so it was kind of cool