In The Dog Patrol: Our Canine Companions and the Kids Who Protect Them details both the joys and responsibilities of dog guardianship, from choosing where to get a new puppy to making sure your dog’s social and physical needs are being met. Along the way, tens of thousands of years of history between humans and dogs come to life. Highlighted throughout the text are profiles of kids who have gone above and beyond to help canines in need. With informational sidebars, full-colour photographs, a glossary and index, and a list of further resources, The Dog Patrol is the quintessential handbook for young readers inspired to improve dog welfare at home and beyond.
-2019-2020 Red Cedar Book Award shortlist
-2019 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-fiction shortlist
-2019 Green Earth Book Award Honor Book
-2019 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award shortlist
This book will shed some light on these famously shadowy mammals, from their habits and habitats to their importance for maintaining biodiversity. I explore bat biology alongside the history of human-bat relations, with facts to fascinate even the most nervous reader. Spotlight features on “Bat Citizens” make this an empowering book for children seeking their own expressions of global citizenship. With informational sidebars, color photographs, a glossary and index, and a center-gatefold bat illustration, Bat Citizens is a book that will both instruct and inspire.
Bat Citizens Teaching Guide 2018
-2016/2017 OLA Silver Birch Express Award Nominee
-2016/2017 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award Nominee
-2016/2017 Red Cedar Book Award, Information Book Nominee
In 2013, people across North America were riveted by the story of Toka, Thika, and Iringa, the last three elephants at the zoo in Toronto, Ontario. After decades of living in a too small enclosure in an inappropriate climate, the elephants desperately needed a change. The zoo and animal activists agreed that they should be moved to a healthier home, but the best option—the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) sanctuary in distant California—seemed like an impossible dream. In clear, straightforward prose, Rob Laidlaw describes the elephants’ experiences on the journey of three days and 4,100 kilometers that brought them to the sanctuary at last.
-2015/2016 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award Nominee
-2016 Skipping Stones Honor Award
Elephants are truly remarkable, unmistakable animals. Their huge size, giant ears, amazing trunk and incredible intelligence make them unique in the natural world. They are highly active, complex, wide-ranging animals who play a key role in the ecosystems they inhabit.
5 Elephants will provide you with some fascinating elephant facts and figures, as well as introduce you to some of the serious challenges that wild and captive elephants face. To truly understand elephants, though, we must also get to know them as individuals. We must learn their stories. In 5 Elephants, you’ll read the stories of five famous elephants.
-2015 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award Honour Book
-2015 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award Nominee
-2014/2015 Red Cedar Book Award Nominee
-2014 Spring Best Books for Kids & Teens – Starred Selection
Around the world, young people are making a difference in the lives of cats. In Cat Champions: Caring for our Feline Friends, meet kids who are helping abandoned cats. Animal advocate Rob Laidlaw brings readers a hopeful, inspiring look at the issues facing cats at shelters, fostering kittens, volunteering with sterilization programs, and caring for abandoned domesticated and feral cats, and the “Cat Champions” who are working to help them.
-2014 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award Nominee
-Durham Family of Schools Choice for Best Book – Non-fiction (2014)
-Skipping Stones Honor Award (2014)
-2013 Rocky Mountain Book Award Shortlist
Enraptured with raptors? Love lions? Protective
of pelicans? Saving Lives and Changing Hearts: Animal Sanctuaries and Rescue Centers has something for everyone. Having exposed the cruel treatment of animals in zoos and the entertainment industry in my two previous books, I now show a more positive side of the human-animal relationship: animal sanctuaries and rescue centers. From a donkey sanctuary in Canada to a bear rescue centre in China, Saving Lives and Changing Hearts examines numerous efforts around the world to rescue and care for animals in need.
-2013 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award WINNER
-2013/2014 Hackmatack Award WINNER
-2011 OLA Best Bets for Children and Young Adults – Junior Non-Fiction
-WPL (Winnipeg Public Library) New Children’s Books – Sizzling Staff Selections 2011
Dogs have been loyal companions to humans for thousands of years. We cherish them, groom them as show dogs and depend on them as working partners. But today, millions of dogs are neglected and malnourished. And millions of other dogs are used in scientific research, for entertainment, and kept as pets in a remarkable diversity of conditions.
In No Shelter Here I explore the world of homeless, free ranging, mistreated, and exploited dogs, and the challenges they face. But more importantly, I focus on people I call the “dog champions” — those individuals, small groups and professional organizations around the world who dedicate their lives to helping dogs. Enhanced with photos, informational sidebars and inspiring good-news stories, I hope No Shelter Here galvanizes young readers to become Dog Champions in their own communities.
When you see animals performing on a stage, on television, in a movie, or at your school, do you ever wonder what their lives are like when they are not in front of an audience? In On Parade, The Hidden World of Animals in Entertainment I provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the backstage lives of animals in the entertainment industry. As I did in my first book, Wild Animals in Captivity, I examine troublesome issues, including animal training practices, their living conditions, and their lives after the curtain comes down.
-School Library Journal’s Best Books 2008
-Pennsylvania School Librarians Association YA Top Forty 2008
-2009 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award shortlist
A large family of elephants ambles all day along a well-remembered route across the hot African savanna. Halfway around the world in a zoo in Alaska, a single female elephant paces back and forth in her cramped, concrete pen. During the arctic winter, she lives alone in a dark barn.
As she plods great distances across the ice in the Canadian Arctic, a polar bear continually sniffs the wind, closing in on a ringed seal. In a zoo in Jakarta, another polar bear lies motionless on the concrete floor of her enclosure, panting in the tropical heat. Her fur has turned green from the algae growing inside her hollow guard hairs.
These scenes are at the heart of Wild Animals in Captivity -a book that focuses on wild animals living in captivity around the world. “Captive animals become stressed when they try to act naturally, but can’t. In many zoos, you’ll see them pacing, weaving, or sitting motionless. This is the animal’s way of telling us that it’s bored and unhappy. Wild animals need a rich and varied environment-things to do, space to roam, social groups, families to care for.”
This is an eye-opening look at the lives of captive wild animals-at bad zoos, good zoos, and the best wild animal sanctuaries.
