Ann Alma – författare

Short-listed for the 1995 Silver Birch Award Eleven-year-old Josie Grun escapes from Communist East Germany with her mother and father one dark night in 1989 just months before the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down. Braving border guards, barbed wire, and rifle shots, Josie reluctantly turns her back on her best friend, Greta, and all that was once familiar. She crosses the ocean to join her uncle in Calgary, attempts to learn a foreign language, and overcomes the prejudices of her schoolmates in order to forge a new life. Clinging to the passion that has always been a comfort, her figure skating, she enters a local competition to prove that she is free on the ice and off.

Short-listed for the 1995 Silver Birch Award Eleven-year-old Josie Grun escapes from Communist East Germany with her mother and father one dark night in 1989 just months before the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down. Braving border guards, barbed wire, and rifle shots, Josie reluctantly turns her back on her best friend, Greta, and all that was once familiar. She crosses the ocean to join her uncle in Calgary, attempts to learn a foreign language, and overcomes the prejudices of her schoolmates in order to forge a new life. Clinging to the passion that has always been a comfort, her figure skating, she enters a local competition to prove that she is free on the ice and off.

During a camping trip, 11-year-old Lee finds herself on a rough trail in a Vancouver Island forest. Halfway to an abandoned homestead, Lee trips and is knocked unconscious. She awakens in a world unfamiliar – all the usual landmarks have disappeared and the terrain is unpopulated except for a strange trailer and a herd of dogs. Lee investigates only to find an ornery woman at an easel who says she’s Emily Carr, and a family from the Depression-torn Prairies illegally logging the island’s mighty cedars.