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2005
finalists.

2005 Hackmatack

Children's Choice Book Award/Prix littéraire - le choix de jeunes

For young Jack, life is tough at the Opportunities School for Orphans. But Jack is good at staying out of trouble. In his years at the Opportunities School he has skipped over trouble, danced around trouble, slid under trouble, melted away from trouble, talked his way out of trouble and slipped between two close troubles like a cat through a picket fence.

When Jack turns twelve, he is given the biggest opportunity of all, but suddenly his life is nothing but trouble. Still, he is a clever and resilient boy, and eventually he makes his way into the big world. He has no family and no fortune, but he has something even more valuable. Jack is rich in ideas, and soon he finds there is a place for an enterprising boy who has whims, concepts, plans, opinions, impressions, notions and fancies to spare.

In the tradition of Natalie Babbitt, Sarah Ellis brings her quirky sense of humor and imagination to bear in this witty, warm fable. Bruno St-Aubin's evocative black-and-white illustrations capture perfectly the dreadful Schoolmaster Bane, the crowlike accountant Mr. Ledger, Lou the skinny bun merchant, and Christabel, the miller's little daughter.

Sarah Ellis is a children's librarian in Vancouver, as well as being a sought-after speaker at conferences and workshops throughout North America and Europe. She has taught children's literature at colleges and universities in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan, and she has been a core lecturer and seminar leader at the Children's Literature New England conferences since 1993. Between 1984 and 1998 she was the regular columnist on Canadian children's books for the Horn Book Magazine. She is also the humor editor for the electronic children's literature journal, The Looking Glass.

Sarah is the author of several award-winning books for young people, including the Governor General's Award-winning Pick-Up Sticks and Out of the Blue, which also won the IODE Violet Downey Book Award and the Mr. Christie's Book Award. In 1995 Sarah won the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work, and in 1999 she was the first children's author to be named Writer-in-Residence at Massey College at the University of Toronto. Her book A Prairie As Wide As The Sea was nominated for the 2003 Hackmatack Award.

Thematic Links

• Using your imagination, whimsy, fantasy, ingenuity
• Adventure
• Words, word games, word play

Suggested Activities

• Find word games in books and on the internet. Have a tournament with your friends.
• Borrow some of Jack's favourite words, like 'trepidation' and: find out what it means; write a poem with it; find other words that sound like it; find other long words that start with T and make charts, diagrams, collages or paintings with them.
• If you were out in the world like Jack, what other creative ways can you think of making a living?
• Set up a marketplace in your room where all the commerce is by bartering and trading services. How is this different from shopping in your local store or shopping centre?