Books

Simple, accessible, and direct, this picture book is perfect for kids and parents or teachers to read together, opening the door to conversations about gender stereotypes and everyone's right to be their true selves.
 

Is it okay for boys to cry? Can girls be strong? Should girls and boys be given different toys to play with and different clothes to wear? Should we all feel free to love whoever we choose to love? In this incredibly kid-friendly and easy-to-grasp picture book, author-illustrator Elise Gravel and transgender collaborator Mykaell Blais raise these questions and others relating to gender roles, acceptance, and stereotyping.

With its simple language, colorful illustrations, engaging backmatter that showcases how "appropriate" male and female fashion has changed through history, and even a poster kids can hang on their wall, here is the ideal tool to help in conversations about a multi-layered and important topic.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
 
“Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of ‘dangerous stories,’ harmful past events, and trials of the soul speak to all who’ve encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.” —Margaret Atwood via Twitter
 
“Sarah Polley tells us the truth, even when it feels razor sharp—even when it feels dangerous. These brilliant essays urge us, by example, towards the examined life, the life worth living, and give us a jolt of energy to muster the courage and compassion needed to live it.” —Miriam Toews, bestselling author of Women Talking

Named a Most-Anticipated Book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, and AV Club

Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present.

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven’t told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

Sarah Polley’s work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all of those qualities along with her exquisite storytelling chops to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person you are now but were not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”
 
Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.
 
In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.

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SARAH POLLEY is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor. After making short films, Polley made her feature-length directorial debut with the drama film Away from Her in 2006. Polley received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, which she adapted from the Alice Munro story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Her other projects include the documentary film Stories We Tell (2012), which won the New York Film Critics Circle prize and the National Board of Review award for best documentary; the miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace (2017); and the romantic comedy Take This Waltz (2011). Polley began her acting career as a child, starring in many productions for film and television

From the bestselling author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel, a spellbinding story about two young women whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the course of history

Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she's the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood.

Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie's obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly.

Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father's sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city's gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more.

From the beloved Giller Prize-shortlisted author who writes “like a sort of demented angel with an uncanny knack for metaphor" (Toronto Star), When We Lost Our Heads is a page-turning novel that explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying strength of the human heart when it can't let someone go.

From the internationally acclaimed artist, a stunning collection of portraits of ground-breaking women—Joan of Arc, Josephine Baker, Greta Thunberg, Misty Copeland, and many more history-making women whose names have been forgotten and are finally being brought to light. With a Foreword by Roxane Gay.“

This book, as a whole, offers the reader possibility and promise … You will  be introduced to many of these women for the first time, because history is rarely kind to women until it is forced to be. You will learn about artists and activists, rulers and rebels.” —Roxane Gay, from the Foreword
 

Original Sisters was born from the COVID-19 quarantine. In early March 2020, locked down in her home-studio in Toronto and longing for inspiration, artist Anita Kunz started researching women on the Internet. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she soon found an array of astonishing people who had done amazing things—some of whom she had heard of, but most of whom she had not. And then she began to paint their pictures and write down their stories. The result is a jaw-dropping feat of historic and artistic research. The wide variety of lives, occupations, time periods, and achievements is absolutely mind-bending.
 
From Joan of Arc to Josephine Baker, from Hippolyta to Greta Thunberg, from Anne Frank to Misty Copeland: these women made and changed history. But there are just as many whom you’ve never heard of, who were never recognized in their lifetimes, whose achievements need to be brought to light. They include the anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl, who was executed at age twenty-one by the Third Reich, and Alice Ball, a young African American scientist who discovered a treatment for leprosy but died tragically before she could receive credit for it.

This is not only a breathtaking art book. Original Sisters also recounts a secret history that must be told so that it is a secret no more.

Les libraires ont vendu plus de 30 millions de copies de Je t'aimerai toujours en couverture souple et rigide.

Maintenant, nous avons une version française en édition tout-carton, imprimée sur du carton blanc et net, et légèrement réduit en taille pour les petites mains.

Pourtant, il contient chaque mot de l'original, très apprécié par des grands-parents et parents partout.

Une jeune mère tient son bébé dans ses bras. Elle chante en le berçant.

Et pendant toute sa vie, et toutes les étapes de la vie de son fils, elle le tient dans ses bras et le berce, en lui disant qu'elle l'aimera toujours.

Ainsi commence l'histoire qui a touché le cœur de millions des familles.

This New York Times bestselling, kid-favorite, parent-approved almanac is National Geographic in a book!

Kids who want to know it all need the National Geographic Kids Almanac! Packed with bright visuals, bite-sized facts, and endless browsability, the latest edition of this internationally best-selling almanac is brand-new and updated for 2027 and features:

• interviews from the field with real National Geographic Explorers
• the latest images from the James Webb Space Telescope
• an all-new chapter on art and creativity
• special content on Canadian history, geography, and culture
• fascinating discoveries about animals
• expertly curated photography
• games, jokes, and laugh-out-loud features

...and more!

Must-have reference materials, including fast facts and maps of every country, are fully updated. Homework help on key topics is sprinkled throughout the book. This is the essential all-in-one book for curious kids!

In a near future where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a robotic vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient robotic vacuum listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she hears in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid monitors every household in the City, and it seeks to remove Harold from his home, where he’s lived for fifty years.

With the help of Adrian, a neighbourhood boy, as well as Kate, Harold’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear.

For fans of Remarkably Bright Creatures, The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances is a compelling, touching, and highly original novel that will make you care deeply about a vacuum.

World-renowned cartoonist Seth returns with three new ghost stories for 2025.

Reading a ghost story on Christmas Eve was once as much a part of traditional Christmas celebrations as turkey, eggnog, and Santa Claus. World-famous cartoonist Seth selects and beautifully illustrates each book for this beloved series in his own inimitable way, bringing back these classic Christmas ghost stories for readers across North America.

From the moment Miss Anderson begins her new teaching job, she encounters ghostly figures and a strange scent of smoke. Whispers of arson and murder circulate among the staff, but Miss Anderson soon discovers there might be more to the tragic story of the woman in black.

Praise for Christmas Ghost Stories

Do you ever feel like exercise is something you “should” do but can never quite stick with? Have you found yourself stuck in cycles of guilt, burnout, or perfectionism when it comes to moving your body? You’re not lazy. You’re not broken. And you’re not alone.

In Attuned Exercise, movement coach and positive psychology practitioner Martha Munroe offers a radically compassionate and refreshing approach to fitness—one that replaces hustle and shame with attunement and embodiment. Drawing on research in positive psychology, trauma-aware practices, and decades of experience as a trainer, Martha invites you to stop treating exercise as punishment and start experiencing it as a meaningful conversation with your body.

Inside you’ll discover:

• Why exercise ≠ weight loss (and other myths that keep us stuck).
• How to shift from control and perfectionism into compassion and sustainability.
• New ways to find motivation that lasts longer than willpower.
• How to reconnect with your body after injury, exhaustion, or shame.
• Why joy is a legitimate fitness goal—and often the missing piece.
• Practical strategies for reclaiming your role as the expert of your own body.

This isn’t another quick-fix habit plan or rigid program. Instead, Attuned Exercise is a guide to cultivating a lifelong, life-giving relationship with movement—one that makes space for rest, resilience, and joy.

Whether you’re a lifelong exerciser, someone who’s tried and “failed” a thousand times, or someone who’s sworn off gyms altogether, this book will help you clear the noise, listen to your body, and move in ways that feel sustainable, nourishing, and deeply attuned.

✨ Reclaim movement. Reclaim yourself. ✨

Profiles of some of the most inventive and creative Canadians and the ideas that are making Canada a leading nation in innovation.

From saving lives to saving harvests...
From discovering ancient diamonds to identifying the first exo-planet...
From driverless cars to quantum computers...
From Nobel laureates to your next-door neighbor...
This book offers uplifting stories of innovative Canadians.

Canadians Who Innovate includes two Nobel laureates, an astronaut, extraordinary business leaders, the godfathers of artificial intelligence, and top quantum experts, including the inventor of what may be the next quantum computer. It features profiles of the first director of engineering at Google, who is now working on nuclear fusion; a medical researcher who communicates on TikTok about the efficacy and potential for RNA vaccine technology; and a PhD in nuclear physics who has twice won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Meet the linguist who works with Indigenous people to make online dictionaries, an internationally consulted specialist on migration, an agri-tech investor, a world specialist on permafrost, and the expert in systems and number theory who has a way to fix health care. And don’t forget the engineer who grew human cells on apples, a feat that is leading to the creation of replacement organs that do not require donors—not to be confused with the aerospace technology developer who created a tethering system to clean up space debris and a 3-D printer that prints biological tissue.

Featuring brilliant thinkers from coast to coast to coast, and others from around the world who now call Canada home, Canadians Who Innovate paints a promising picture of a cleaner, healthier, more innovative future for us all.