Books

From the author of If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur comes a funny and sweet cross-country roadtrip adventure with a sassy septuagenarian and her quirky canine.

Feisty Annie Magruder and her dog, Carson, live in British Columbia, Canada, and they're setting out to visit her sister, Elsie, in Newfoundland. In their little rattlebang car, packed with Carson's favorite toy, Squeaky Chicken, and plenty of baloney sandwiches, Annie and Carson hit the road! They travel province by province, taking in each unique landscape and experiencing something special to that particular part of this vast, grand country. For example, they marvel at the beauty of the big, open sky -- and grasshoppers! -- in Saskatchewan and discover the gorgeous red earth and delicious lobster rolls in PEI, before finally being greeted by Elsie -- and a surprise for Carson!

A is for Arctic, B is for Beaver …

Paul Covello’s gloriously bright and detailed board book for the very young highlights Canada’s iconic symbols, souvenirs and events, including the Dogsled, Inuksuk, Loonie, Totem Pole and the Zamboni machine. From the author of the beloved Toronto ABC.

By the end of World War II, Windsor had established itself as one of the greatest industrial cities in the British Commonwealth. The region seemed on an easy path to prosperity. But history took a different turn. Starting with the closure of Ford Plant One in 1953, the city was hit by several unanticipated challenges. How would its residents respond? How would they react to rapid changes that swept North America?

From the Vault, Volume II: 1950-1980 explores what were perhaps the three most important and exciting decades of our history. Revealing how Windsor-Essex County overcame obstacles to achieve later triumphs, the book touches on the region’s baby boom, building craze, auto industry, labour struggles, arts and culture, immigration, Black history, and more.

With a foreword by The Windsor Star’s former photographer and photo editor Bill Bishop, From the Vault, Volume II illustrates the era by featuring over 1,250 iconic images, from the 1954 Centennial celebrations and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 1959, through the Bulldogs’ Allan Cup victory in 1963 and Windsor’s reaction to the 1967 Detroit Riot, to the Curling Club Disaster of 1974 and to the assassination of Charlie Brooks in 1977.

As Windsor-Essex’s paper of record for over 150 years, The Windsor Star remains our region’s greatest source of historical photography and eyewitness testimony. Like its predecessor, the national best-selling From the Vault, winner of the inaugural Kulisek Prize, this book—the most authoritative and beautifully produced of its kind—sets a new standard for Canadian excellence in regional history. Documenting landmark events, timeless memories, and unforgettable characters, it is a “must have” for history lovers.

Windsor, Ontario: the City of Roses, the Automotive Capital of Canada, South Detroit. Whatever name you know it by, this is a city that has flourished and transformed over the years, growing and changing with its industrial nature. In Windsor: Then & Now, architectural specialist Andrew Foot partners with landscape photographer Ian Virtue to explore the life of this mid-sized, blue-collar town through photographs. By contrasting historic images, stretching from the turn of the century to the modernist 1970s, with photographs of today’s Windsor, we see a cityscape in vivid relief. From the Gothic towers of St. Mary’s Academy, levelled for a suburban neighbourhood, to the vibrant downtown Norwich Block replaced by the skyscraping Chrysler tower, Windsor: Then & Now shows us a city balancing a rich heritage with a taste for the new—a constant flux, shifting and renewing itself with the times.

Featuring children's own words and heart-warming pictures, a special little book about why we love Canada.

A lovely gift book at a pocket-friendly price, created by asking real children why they love Canada and combining their words with illustrations of gorgeous baby animals.

• Partly written in children's own words, this is the perfect gift for little Canadians everywhere!
• Use of children's original words ensures instant parent-child appeal
• Adorable animal illustrations throughout are perfectly targeted at the younger age bracket
• The newest title in the cuddly cute Why I Love… series, illustrated by Daniel Howarth

A 10,000 copy seller in Canada, The Rumrunners offers a photographic history of the regular men and women who smuggled Canadian liquor to the United States during the roaring ’20s. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Prohibition.

“I can’t imagine a walk through Windsor’s history with anyone else…A colourful time in Windsor’s history, told by one of our best storytellers.”—Sandra Pupatello, M.P.P. Windsor West

“Prohibition certainly was a colourful era, filled with characters and stories the likes of which we may never see again. If not for Marty Gervais’s research into the phenomenon that was Prohibition, many of these stories would have faded with the memories of their leading players.”—Laryssa Landsale, Walkerville Times Magazine

The latest title in Paul Covello’s winning Canada board-book series features wondrously detailed illustrations for the very young, highlighting some of Canada’s most beloved and iconic creatures. From the author and illustrator of the national bestsellers Canada ABC and Canada 123.

Meet smart, fearless and inspiring women from around the world.

5-Minute Stories for Fearless Girls features women who have pursued their dreams, changed our world, and shown everyone what women can do. From aviation pioneers to leading scientists and gold-medal athletes to princesses, these incredible stories are perfect for bedtimes and on the go!

Boost language skills and get ready for reading with hours of fun and discovery!

100 First Words for Canadian Kids is packed with colourful photographs to help curious kids learn about the world around them. With fun features on food, animals, family, things that go, playtime and hockey, the educator-approved vocabulary is perfect  growing minds!

Shortlisted for the 2017 OLSN Northern Lit Award

The acclaimed author of The Orenda gives us a powerful and poignant look into the last moments of Charlie Wenjack, a residential school runaway trying to find his way home.

An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School, not realizing just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.

Written by Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author Joseph Boyden and beautifully illustrated by acclaimed artist Kent Monkman, Wenjack is a powerful and poignant look into the world of a residential school runaway trying to find his way home.

Praise for Wenjack

“A profoundly sensitive writer with the eye of a painter and a heart as big as the country about which he writes.” —Frederick Barton

“Boyden is such a fine writer, evoking his characters’ emotions in a touching and understandable way.” —Toronto Star

“Boyden continues the difficult conversation of reconciliation by allowing us a glimpse into the frightened mind of a child who only knows that home is where he should be—and that Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School is not it.” —Maclean’s

“Joseph Boyden has written Wenjack, a novella that deftly suffuses Chanie’s tragedy with traditional Aboriginal beliefs. . . . This is a world of transformations where owls can turn into mice, and fish give themselves voluntarily to fishermen—a world in which all beings are interconnected through the ceaseless interplay of life and death. . . . At the end of the novella, Boyden shows Chanie in the afterlife dancing and feasting with the animals. The image, meant to convey an ecological and spiritual truth, does little to redeem his final, terrible hours on the tracks.” —Maclean’s

“Chanie Wenjack was just 12 when his body was found beside the railroad tracks just days after he ran away from his residential school in Kenora, Ont. Now, 50 years later, the young Ojibwe boy is being remembered in . . . this magical novella, the chapters alternating between Chanie’s journey and the spirit animals who document his quest—and wait to receive him when he passes over to their sphere.” —Toronto Star

“It should be required reading.” —CTV News 

WJB Book Club Pick for November 2023

Join us (and the author, Ainslie Hogarth!) Thursday November 30th at Craftheads, 6:00pm

WJB's Book Club Pick for November 2025!

Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off at checkout. 

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice.