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February Book List: Feeling Nostalgic

The CCBC is celebrating our 50th anniversary! When we opened our doors in 1976, it would have been difficult to imagine books set in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s considered works of historical fiction. But here we are! Bring on the nostalgia with these Canadian middle grade and young adult novels set in decades past.

2000s | 1990s | 1980s | 1970s | 1960s

2000s

A Bucket of Stars 

Written by Suri Rosen 

Scholastic Canda, 2023 
IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5

It’s the summer of 2003 and 13-year-old amateur astronomer Noah Cooper has just moved to Queensport, a small town with a vast sky full of stars. There he meets Tara Dhillon, a lonely girl and aspiring filmmaker. When the two team up to produce an astronomy movie and enter a film contest, they discover a secret plan to turn their rural hamlet into a huge subdivision.

*** 

Age 16 

Written and illustrated by Rosena Fung 

Annick Press, 2024 

IL: Ages 12-18 RL: Grades 7-8

 

Toronto, 2000: Sixteen-year-old Roz is grappling with who she wants to be in the world. The only thing she is certain of is that if she were thinner, things would be better. How can she start living her life, instead of just photographing it? 

When Roz’s estranged por por abruptly arrives for a seemingly indefinite visit, three generations are now under one roof. Delicate relationships are suddenly upended, and long-suppressed family secrets begin to surface.

*** 

Green Glass Ghosts 

Written by Rae Spoon 

Illustrated by Gem Hall 

IL: Ages 14-18 RL: Grades 9-10 

 

At age 19 in the year 2000, the queer narrator of Green Glass Ghosts steps off a bus on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, a city where the faceless condo towers of the wealthy loom over the streets to of the east side where folks are just trying to get by, against the deceptively beautiful backdrop of snow-capped mountains and sparkling ocean.

Armed with only their guitar and their voice, our hopeful hero arrives on the West Coast at the beginning of the new millennium and on the cusp of adulthood, eager to build a better life among like-minded folks.

*** 

Journal of a Travelling Girl 

Written by Nadine Neema 

Illustrated by Archie Beaverho 

Heritage House Publishing, 2020 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5

 

This fictional coming-of-age story traces a young girl’s reluctant journey by canoe through the ancestral lands of the Tłı̨chǫ People, as she gradually comes to understand and appreciate their culture and the significance of their fight for self-government. 

 

The journey ends at Behchoko, where the historic Tłı̨chǫ Agreement of 2005 is signed, and the Tłı̨chǫ People celebrate their hard-won right to self-government. Julia is there to witness history.

***

Mall Goth 

Written and  illustrated by Kate Leth 

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2023 

IL: Ages 12-18 RL: Grades 7-8

 

Liv Holme is not exactly thrilled to be moving to a new town with her mother. After all, high school can be brutal, even more so when you’re a 15-year-old, bisexual goth. But Liv is determined to be who she is, bullies or not. Still, being the new kid and the only out student brings her a lot of unwelcome attention, and Liv flounders in her search for community. The only person who makes time for her is one of teachers, but Liv isn’t sure how to feel about the way he behaves toward her. 

Thankfully, she’s found the perfect escape: the mall. Under its fluorescent lights, Liv feels far away from her parents’ strained marriage and the peers who don’t understand her. Amid the bright storefronts, food court smell, and anonymous shoppers, Liv is safely one of the crowd and can enjoy the feeling of calling the shots in her own life for once.

1990s 

Barry Squires, Full Tilt 

Written by Heather Smith 

Tundra Books, 2020 

IL: Ages 12-18 RL: Grades 7-8

 

It's 1995. When the Full Tilt Dancers give an inspiring performance at the opening of the new bingo hall, 12-year-old Finbar (Barry) Squires wants desperately to join the troupe. Led by Father O'Flaherty, the Full Tilt Irish Step Dancers are the most sought-after act in St. John's, Newfoundland (closely followed by popular bagpiper, Alfie Bragg and his Agony Bag). With questionable talent and an unpredictable temper, Barry's journey to stardom is jeopardized by his parents' refusal to take his dreams seriously.

*** 

Here for a Good Time 

Written by Kim Spencer 

Swift Water Books, 2026 

IL: Ages 14-18 RL: Grades 9-10

 

It is 1990. Morgan has lived all her life in the small fishing town of Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia. Ever since her mom took off when she was 10, Morgan has kept an eye on her dad, a commercial fisherman who works hard and occasionally parties even harder. After struggling to keep up and find a place at a public high school, Morgan's best friend Skye convinces her to attend an alternate school.

 

There, she meets Nate. Both cute and intelligent, Nate introduces her to a wider worldview, including music, movies and books, and becomes a lifeline after an unimaginable tragedy strikes. In the aftermath, Morgan learns hard truths about her mother's painful past and the resulting intergenerational effects of that trauma, and as she struggles to come to terms with her new reality, an unexpected development offers a chance of a fresh start, with love and forgiveness at its core.

*** 

The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan 

Written by Salma Hussain 

Tundra Books, 2023 

IL: Ages 10-14 RL: Grades 5-6 

 

Mona Hasan is a young Muslim girl growing up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when the first Gulf War breaks out in 1991. The war isn't what she expects—"We didn’t even get any days off school! Just my luck"—especially when the ground offensive is over so quickly and her family peels the masking tape off their windows. Her parents, however, fear there is no peace in the region, and it sparks a major change in their lives. 

Over the course of one year, Mona falls in love, speaks up to protect her younger sister, loses her best friend to the new girl at school, has summer adventures with her cousins in Pakistan, immigrates to Canada, and pursues her ambition to be a feminist and a poet.

*** 

 

Summer of Rocks 

Written by Jenna Greene 

Heritage House Publishing, 2025 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5  

 

It’s the summer of 1990, and Amy (age 11), Beth (age 9), and Marion (age 6) are in for the family vacation of a lifetime. No, they’re not going Disneyland, Hawaii, or on a Caribbean cruise. They will be looking at rocks, though. Lots of rocks. So many rocks. 

You see, when your father is a geologist, that’s what you do on your summer vacation. You drive for days to the British Columbia–Yukon border, strapped in the backseat of the family truck with your sisters, fighting over the Gameboy, listening to your parents tell you “fascinating” facts about the scenery, playing the Little Mermaid soundtrack on a loop, and trying not to get elbowed in the face. Doesn’t that sound like a dream vacation?

*** 

True Colors: Growing Up Weird in the ‘90s 

Written and illustrated by Elise Gravel 

Translated by Montana Kane 

Drawn & Quarterly, 2025 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5 

 

Tweeny-bopper Elise knows she’s different, but kind of just chalks it up to being a weirdo. And in the 90s, who isn’t? Other girls might be shifting their attention to boys, but Elise is putting the freeze on all that adult stuff to get lost in play with her besties and pour her energy into making her art. Besides, what’s the point in rushing when being a kid is such a blast? 

In True Colors: Growing Up Weird in the 90s, Elise invites readers into the pages of her diary and takes them back to a radically different time before smartphones and home computers. Creative and curious kids, anybody dealing with anything from not fitting in, to anxiety—or even an ADHD diagnosis—will see themselves in the pages.

 

 

1980s 

The Agony of Bun O’Keefe 

Written by Heather Smith 

Tundra Books, 2017 

IL: Ages 12-18 RL: Grades 7-8

 

It's Newfoundland, 1986. Fourteen-year-old Bun O'Keefe has lived a solitary life in an unsafe, unsanitary house. Her mother is a compulsive hoarder, and Bun has had little contact with the outside world. What she's learned about life comes from the random books and old VHS tapes that she finds in the boxes and bags her mother brings home. Bun and her mother rarely talk, so when Bun's mother tells Bun to leave one day, she does. Hitchhiking out of town, Bun ends up on the streets of St. John's, Newfoundland. Fortunately, the first person she meets is Busker Boy...

 

*** 

 

Beast 

Written by Richard Van Camp 

Douglas & McIntyre, 2024 

IL: Ages 14-18 RL: Grades 9-10

This YA historical horror/fantasy novel by celebrated author Richard Van Camp blends sharply observed realism and hair-raising horror as it plays out against a 1980s-era backdrop replete with Platinum Blonde songs and episodes of Degrassi Junior High. Unfolding in the fictional town of Fort Simmer—the setting of previous Van Camp stories—Beast delivers a gripping, spirited tale that pits the powers of tradition against the pull of a vengeful past.

*** 

The Cricket War 

Written by Tho Pham & Sandra McTavish 

Kids Can Press, 2023 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5 

 

It's 1980, and 12-year-old Tho Pham lives with his family in South Vietnam. He spends his afternoons playing soccer and cricket fighting with his friends, but life is slowly changing under the Communists. His parents are worried, and Tho knows the Communist army will soon knock on their door to make his brother, and then him, join them. Still, it shocks him when his father says that arrangements have been made for him to leave Vietnam by boat, immediately. Tho tries to be brave as he sets out on a harrowing journey toward the unknown...

 

*** 

 

I Won’t Feel This Way Forever 

Written by Kim Spencer 

Orca Book Publishers, 2025 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5

 

It’s the summer of 1989, and Mia is on her own—adjusting to life without her ex-best friend, Lara. Summer vacation starts off well enough as Mia binges MuchMusic and learns how to jar fish with her aunty and uncle. Then her grandma starts feeling unwell. At first, Mia isn’t too worried, but when a call comes in from the clinic to say her grandmother has to go to the hospital in Vancouver, everyone realizes this is serious. Mia and her mom and aunties head to the city to be by her grandmother’s side.

***

Unsinkable Cayenne 

Written by Jessica Vitalis 

HarperCollins, 2024 

IL: Ages 8-12 RL: Grades 3-4 

 

As Cayenne enters seventh grade, her parents decide it's time to stop living in their van, roaming from place to place. Cayenne hopes that this means she will finally belong somewhere and make some friends. But it turns out that staying in one place isn’t easy at all. 

When her social studies class studies the Titanic tragedy (the wreckage has just been discovered and her teacher is obsessed), Cayenne sees more and more parallels between the social strata of the infamous ship and her own life. Will she ever squeeze her way into the popular girls’ clique, even though they live in fancy houses on the hill and she lives in a tiny, rundown home with chickens in the front yard? Is it possible that the boy she likes actually likes her back? Can she find a way to make room for herself in this town? Does she really want to? Maybe being “normal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

***

 

What Friends Are For 

Written by Harriet Zaidman 

Heritage House Publishing, 2025 

IL: Ages 12-18 RL: Grades 7-8

 

Set in 1983, at the height of Canada's abortion debate, this powerful, nuanced YA novel follows a young girl as she grapples with an unplanned pregnancy. 

  

At 15, Leesa is preoccupied with friends, crushes, and schoolwork and looking forward to the freedom of earning her own money and learning to drive. Although she doesn’t think much about politics, she has marched alongside her mother and friend Jenny, protesting the planned opening of an abortion clinic in her city. In her traditional, close-knit community, abortion feels like a black-and-white issue, with little connection to her real life. 

  

But after she is raped at a party, Leesa’s life suddenly merges with the headlines of the day. Now she is the one dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, and everything she ever believed is turned upside down. As she struggles to make a decision that could determine her whole future, Leesa comes to realize that she is only one who should have the right to make a choice about her own body. But will opening up to her family and friends mean losing them forever?

1970s 

Boy vs. Shark 

Written and illustrated by Paul Gilligan 

Tundra Books, 2024 

IL: Ages 10-18 RL: Grades 5-6

 

In the summer of 1975, 10-year-old Paul Gilligan doesn't have a whole lot to worry about other than keeping his comic books untarnished, getting tennis balls off roofs and keeping up with the increasingly bold stunts of his best friend, David. And then Jaws comes to town... 

Jaws leaves young Paul a cowering mess, and underlines the growing gap between him and David as well as the distance between where he stands and the world's expectations of a boy's "manliness." And when Jaws himself becomes a kind of macho Jiminy Cricket for Paul, what is a scared and overwhelmed boy to do?

***

 

Elvis, Me, and the Lemonade Stand Summer 

Written by Leslie Gentile 

DCB Young Readers, 2021 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5

 

It’s the summer of 1978 and most people think Elvis Presley has been dead for a year. But not 11-year-old Truly Bateman—because she knows Elvis is alive and well and living in the Eagle Shores Trailer Park. Maybe no one ever thought to look for him at on the Eagle Shores First Nation on Vancouver Island. 

It’s a busy summer for Truly. Though her mother is less of a mother than she ought to be, and spends her time drinking and smoking and working her way through new boyfriends, Truly is determined to raise as much money for herself as she can through her lemonade stand... and to prove that her cool new neighbour is the one and only King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

 

***

Wings To Soar

Written by Tina Athaide

Charlesbridge Move, 2024 

IL: Ages 10-14 RL: Grades 5-6

It's 1972 and Viva’s Indian family has been expelled from Uganda and sent to a resettlement camp in England, but not all of them made the trip. Her father is supposed to meet them in London, but he never shows up. As they wait for him, Viva, her mother, and her sister get settled in camp and try to make the best of their life there.

Just when she is beginning to feel at home with new friends, Viva and her family move out of the camp and to a part of London where they are not welcome. While grappling with the hate for brown-skinned people in their new community, Viva is determined to find her missing father so they can finish their move to Canada. When it turns out he has been sponsored to move to the United States, they have to save enough money to join him.

1960s 

Eyes on the Ice 

Written by Anna Rosner 

Groundwood Books, 2024 

IL: Ages 9-12 RL: Grades 4-5 

 

Ten-year-old Lukas and his brother Denys want nothing more than to play hockey, but it’s 1963, and they live in Czechoslovakia, where the secret police (the “Eye”) are constantly on the lookout for anyone committing crimes against the state—whether that be reading a magazine about the NHL or saying anything negative about the Communist regime. Lukas’s father works for a newspaper, and printing the truth is a dangerous activity...

***

 

Focus. Click. Wind. 

Written by Amanda West Lewis 

Groundwood Books, 2023 

IL: Ages 13-18 RL: Grades 8-9

 

It's 1968, and the Vietnam War has brought new urgency to the life of Billie Taylor, a 17-year-old aspiring photojournalist. Billie is no stranger to risky situations, but when she attends a student protest at Columbia University with her college boyfriend, and the US is caught up in violent political upheaval, her mother decides to move the two of them to Canada. Furious at being dragged away from her beloved New York City to live in a backwater called Toronto, Billie doesn’t take her exile lightly. As her mother opens their home to draft evaders and deserters, Billie’s activism grows in new ways. 

*** 

Sixties Girl 

Written by MaryLou Driedger 

Heritage House Publishing, 2023 

IL: Ages 8-12 RL: Grades 3-4

 

The 1960s was a decade of major world events, exciting changes, and unforgettable fashion and music. But for Laura, navigating the cliques at school, avoiding corporal punishment doled out by the nuns, and dealing with her mother’s illness feel more real than the news stories of political assassinations, royal visits, the legalization of birth control, and the threat of nuclear war that dominate the headlines of the day. Sixties Girl is a decade in the life of an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Expo 67, from Beatlemania to miniskirts.

***

The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963: 25th Anniversary Edition 

Written by Christopher Paul Curtis 

Random House Publishing Group, 2020 

IL: Ages 8-12 RL: Grades 3-4 

 

When the Watson family—10-year-old Kenny, Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, and brother Byron—sets out on a trip south to visit Grandma in Birmingham, Alabama, they don’t realize that they’re heading toward one of the darkest moments in America’s history. The Watsons’ journey reminds us that even in the hardest times, laughter and family can help us get through anything.

Creator's Corner: Kim Spencer

Interview by Spencer Miller

From the Gitxaala Nation and living in northwest BC, Kim Spencer is an award-winning, bestselling author. Her debut novel, Weird Rules To Follow, won multiple awards, including the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, and the Jean Little First-Novel Award. 

Here for a Good Time is Kim Spencer's latest novel and her first for young adults. It is also the first novel published by Swift Water Books, a new Indigenous-led imprint in the Tundra Book Group.

Like your previous books, Here for a Good Time is a work of historical fiction set in Prince Rupert. What is it about Prince Rupert that continues to inspire you?

Here for a Good Time is your first YA novel. How did you adjust to writing for an older audience?

The book addressed many of the challenges and difficult decisions that come with young adulthood. What do you hope readers will take away from Morgan’s story?

The characters in Here For A Good Time flip the narrative. They’re coming from an empowered place. Mainstream society has an idea of what Indigenous people’s lives are like, and this book shares a different take. Nate, for example, is smart, well-read and competent. Skye, while troubled, is quick and funny. Morgan is deep and discerning. And most of the families in the story are financially well-off.

I also want my stories to draw readers back to the why. There’s a painful, complicated history for Indigenous people in this country, and it needs to be shared in easily digestible ways. Through storytelling, you can humanize difficult moments. Lead the reader to places they didn’t see coming. There’s often a reason or cause behind things. I would never write about painful or embarrassing moments in Indigenous peoples' lives without drawing it back to the reasons behind our suffering—the why things are the way they are. This happened, and here is how those traumas impacted us.

The characters in this book come alive; they make mistakes, feel deeply, change and grow. How do you craft characters that feel so alive?

David A. Robertson, Swift Water Books’ Editorial Director, praised Here for a Good Time, saying it will “touch the lives of anybody who reads it.” What does it mean to you to be published under this new Indigenous-led imprint?

Experts' Picks

Expert booksellers and librarians share their top picks for young readers. Check out what our experts are reading this February!

Recommended by Linda Ludke, Collections Management Librarian, London Public Library 

 Ellis on Guard 
Written by Sal Sawler 
Illustrated by Nandita Ratan 
Second Story Press, 2026 
IL: Ages 3-7 RL: Grades 2-3

 

Ellis is a worrier. Because they worry so much, Ellis tries to be careful and to prevent bad things from happening. Like their puppy Peanut being dognapped! Ellis's love for Peanut and their determination to be Peanut's Sworn Protector inspires them to be creative and brave, and to confront many of their fears in order to build a dognapper trap that will keep Peanut safe. As they assemble all the things that they need, Ellis discovers many important things. They learn that sometimes the things that we fear don't end up being as terrible as we imagine that they will be. And sometimes people can seem scary but turn out to be nice. And sometimes we can choose to ignore our worries and just play in the rain, knowing that we might get sick, and that—just maybe—it will be worth it. 

Sawler's portrayal of Ellis is the perfect blend of lighthearted and sensitive. Sawler ably demonstrates that although Ellis's worries can be a challenge, they can also be a positive thing too, giving them a heightened awareness of the people and things around them, and helping them to develop the ability to plan and to problem solve in creative ways. Charming and affirming, Ellis is a character that many readers of all ages will relate to and be inspired by. 

Recommended by Lisa Doucet, Manager, Woozles Children's Bookstore