The Leaving
In these eleven short stories, Budge Wilson, the popular author of Lorinda's Diary and Thirteen Never Changes, explores growing up in a colourful but imperfect world from a female point of view. A pen pal halfway around the world, starting a diary, a favorite teacher's romance with metaphors, the intricacies of family relationships, a high school reunion, the bittersweet taste of first love are all fodder for stories that will be read over and over again, and to treasure for a lifetime.
Oliver's Wars
by Budge Wilson
from Fitzhenry and Whiteside
It seems that everywhere twelve-year-old Oliver Kovak turns, there's a battle to be won - or lost. When his father, a nurse, is assigned to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, Oliver, his mom, and his twin brother, Jerry, move East to live his grandparents. There, not only must he learn to get a long with his grouchy grandfather, but he must cope with the cruel put-downs of a gym teacher and the taunts of new schoolmates. But his biggest "war" is a personal one - Oliver, who always looks as if nothing bothers him, must learn to let people know when he is hurting...
Mothers and Other Strangers: Stories
by Budge Wilson
from Harcourt
The Dandelion Garden
Duff the Giant Killer
by Budge Wilson
from Formac
Duff and his best friend Simon do everything together--they get chickenpox together, miss school together, and now that they're mostly better, they convalesce together.
Convalescing to them means spending the day in the playground acting out Jack the Giant Killer, a play they've seen on TV. But when a neighbour looks out the window to see one truant boy chasing another with a sword, she immediately thinks the worst. Soon the police and ambulance are on the scene, and the whole neighborhood is in an uproar.
Duff the Giant Killer is a lively, humorous tale that traces the effects of too-vivid imaginations, in children and adults alike. (199804)
Duff's Monkey Business (First Novel Series)
by Budge Wilson
from Formac
Duff's dad thinks his son has an over-active imagination: one day their neighborhood is menaced by flying saucers, the next by stray elephants or boa constrictors.
So when Duff announces he's found a monkey in the barn, no one believes him. No one, that is except his best friend Simon. The harder Duff and Simon try to convince people that the monkey is real, the less they're convinced. Simon's mom takes her worries to the rabbi; Duff's priest preaches sermons about the dangers of lying.
When Mr. Antonio comes to town looking for the star performer of his Mountie Monkey Act, however, people think twice about what Duff and Simon said, and about how they responded to it.
Duff's Monkey Business is a hilarious story about the importance of honesty, and of keeping an open mind to the truth. (20010105)
House Far from Home
The Courtship
by Budge Wilson
from Fitzhenry and Whiteside
In The Courtship we meet characters from the very young to the elderly who seem uncannily familiar to us in their pain, delight, and love. In "The Dress" a child's birthday party turns into a bizarre psychodrama. In "The Courtship" seventy-seven-year-old Mrs. Knickle romantically pursues eighty-year-old Mr. VanBuskirk with some hesitation, however, as she has come to enjoy her afternoons of peanut butter sandwiches and reading. And in "Elliot's Daughter" a writer, not only unrequited in love but unpublished, confesses his frustrations to his diary.
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