The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike was a key moment in Canadian history when demands of workers and returning soldiers all played out in the bloody streets of Winnipeg. The governing elite condemned the strike organizers as "Bolsheviks" and unleashed waves of violence. The country hasn't fully healed since. City on Strike is a riveting middle-grade fiction focusing on a 13-year-old boy and his younger sister, part of a poor but hardworking immigrant family in Winnipeg's North End. And like so many others, it's a family that gets drawn into the chaos that terrible spring. "History often repeats itself " author Harriet Zaidman says "In 1919 more than 30,000 people in Winnipeg went on strike. Those in authority wanted to maintain their power and profits, so they spread lies and stirred up racism to create divisions in society. Today there are still those who make harmful statements about different groups. These negative comments prevent society from being united and making advances. Canadians need to know the history of the Strike, which teaches us that we need to look behind the message, to make choices that unify society and give everyone a chance to fulfill their potential."

Thirteen-year-old Dale Melnyk finds himself stuck in an iron lung, desperately fighting for breath -- and wishing he could die. It is the worst outbreak of polio in the history of Winnipeg, and Dale is one of the many young victims being treated in the early 1950s. Second Chances follows Dale's slow and often agonizing struggle to regain his life, first of all to breathe on his own and then to regain the use of his limbs. Will he ever be able to play hockey again, he wonders? Dale comes to realize that he is doing better than a number of the other patients including Charlene, a young Métis girl confined to a wheelchair but always trying to help their fellow patients. When Dale discovers his younger brother Brent is also in the polio ward because their father rejected the school program vaccine, a confrontation with his father becomes inevitable. Brent is not getting better and will be dealing with paralysis indefinitely. When Dale finally emerges from his recovery he must reassess what is most important in life -- a life that has been changed forever.