"From the author of Canada Reads finalist The Bone Cage. Includes research on the shy child, parent-child bonding, social media issues, and the benefits of outdoor activity and nature immersion. Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter's growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover...

Shy Violet attempts to show another girl how she feels on Valentine's Day.

"You probably know the feeling. You're playing happily by yourself in the park, when you're suddenly told, `Go and say hello to that little boy over there!' But what if you don't want to say hello? What if the little boy isn't really a little boy at all? What... what if he's a MONSTER in disguise? Welcome to a weird and wonderful `what if?' story where saying hello can lead to all sorts of surprising adventures..." --

Painfully shy seventh-grader Shira Gordon is cast in a small role in The Music Man and also as understudy for the lead, played by diva Monica Manley, who becomes the victim of a prankster.

Set in Mississippi in the late 1940s and based on Willie Morris' boyhood memoirs. Eight-year-old Willie loses his only friend in the world to the draft until his mother gives him a puppy for his birthday.

"Today, Amik is expecting her beaver cousins for a special visit, and she can't wait to show them her home. But as the visitors arrive, Amik suddenly realizes that her little sister, Nishiime, has disappeared. Where could she have gone? As Amik shows her cousins some of her favorite haunts, the reader also learns how beavers help all the other animals in the forest: they cut down poplar trees so deer have easier access to the leaves, they create canals...