BOOK 1: ADVOCATING FOR YOUR CHILD'S EDUCATION

A Parent's Guide to Special Education, IEPs, and School Success

Your child needs support at school, and suddenly you're drowning in acronyms, meetings, and paperwork. This book walks you through the special education system step by step, from requesting evaluations to understanding IEPs and 504 plans, preparing for meetings, and knowing what to do when the school says no. You don't need to become a lawyer. You just need to know enough to ask the right questions.

BOOK 2: MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION

Supporting Your Child Through Depression, Anxiety, and Substance Use

When your child is struggling with their mental health, you need answers, not judgment. This book covers warning signs, how therapy works, questions to ask about medication, what happens during hospitalization, and how to support recovery while taking care of yourself. You didn't cause this. You can't fix it alone. But you can help your child find their way through.

BOOK 3: HEALTHCARE NAVIGATION

A Parent's Guide to Medical Systems, Insurance, and Advocating for Your Child's Health

When your child has complex needs, you become the coordinator of a care team you never asked to lead. This book helps you organize medical information, communicate with specialists, fight insurance denials, know when to seek emergency care, and advocate effectively within the medical system. You are your child's best advocate. This book gives you the tools.

BOOK 4: FINANCIAL NAVIGATION

Benefits, Tax Credits, and Resources for Families of Children with Disabilities

Raising a child with disabilities is expensive, but help exists if you know where to look. This book cuts through the confusion of government benefits, the Disability Tax Credit, RDSPs, medical expense deductions, and emergency resources. No jargon, no judgment, just practical guidance to help you find the financial support your family deserves.

BOOK 5: LEGAL NAVIGATION

Understanding Your Rights as a Parent and Protecting Your Child

You have rights. So does your child. This book prepares you for the legal situations families of children with disabilities too often face, from child welfare visits to custody disputes, school discipline to police interactions, and planning for your child's transition to adulthood. Knowledge is protection, and this book gives you both.

BOOK 6: CRISIS AND HARD SPACES

A Parent's Guide to Navigating Emergencies, Trauma, and Difficult Seasons

When everything falls apart, you need a guide, not a lecture. This book is crisis support in book form: assessing danger levels, safety planning, what to expect at the ER, de-escalation strategies, supporting siblings, and recovering after the storm passes. You've survived every worst day so far. This book helps you survive the next one.

BOOK 7: TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL LITERACY

A Parent's Guide to Screens, Social Media, Online Safety, and AI

Screen time, social media, online predators, gaming addiction, AI: today's parents face challenges our own parents never imagined. This book provides age-by-age guidance, device setup strategies, conversations about online safety, and practical tools for raising kids who can navigate the digital world wisely. Technology isn't the enemy, but your child needs you to help them use it well.

BOOK 8: SUSTAINING YOURSELF

Self-Care, Support, and Survival for Parents in the Trenches

You cannot pour from an empty cup. This book is your permission slip to take care of yourself, covering the 7 types of rest, building your support village, asking for help, protecting your partnership (or thriving solo), finding joy in hard seasons, and recognizing when you need professional support. You matter too. Your needs matter too.

Book 1: The Room

Leo comes to Halifax for a fresh start; a new school, a new hockey team, and a chance to leave his past behind.

But the pressure to fit in pulls him into a culture of secrecy inside the locker room, where loyalty slowly turns into silence and silence into harm. As old mistakes surface and the weight of addiction and debt grow heavier, Leo must decide whether protecting others is worth losing himself.

The Room explores peer pressure, toxic loyalty, and the cost of staying quiet when something feels wrong.

Book 2: Box Out the Noise

When basketball becomes more than just a game, a teen athlete learns how quickly praise can turn into pressure.

Surrounded by expectations from coaches, teammates, family, and social media, the main character struggles to separate who they are from who everyone else wants them to be. As anxiety builds and confidence slips, they must learn how to block out the noise and trust their own voice.

Box Out the Noise is about identity, mental health, performance pressure, and finding balance in a world that never stops judging.

Book 3: Deep Fake Candidate

During a heated school election, a popular student becomes the target of a viral video that looks real, but isn’t.

As reputations crumble and friendships fracture, it becomes clear how quickly misinformation can spread and how dangerous digital manipulation can be. The truth feels harder to prove than the lie, and the consequences are very real.

Deep Fake Candidate explores social media ethics, cyber manipulation, critical thinking, and how quickly online harm can reshape real lives.

Book 4: What the Cracked Pot Taught

When home doesn’t feel safe and trust feels fragile, one teen discovers the power of a single adult who shows up again and again.

Through moments of crisis, setbacks, and growth, the story highlights how consistent support can change the course of a young person’s life, even when everything else feels unstable.

What the Cracked Pot Taught is about mentorship, trauma-informed care, belonging, and the life-changing impact of safe relationships.

Book 5: The Chicken Coop

"Sometimes the hungriest people aren't asking for food. They're asking to be seen."

The Chicken Coop tells the story of a young person navigating the daily humiliations of hunger: skipping lunch to avoid the cafeteria, wearing the same clothes because there's no money for new ones, and learning that a community garden project at school might offer more than just vegetables. For young adult readers, this book normalizes what millions of families experience in silence, showing that needing help doesn't mean you're broken. It means you're human. The book validates the impossible calculus of poverty: paying rent or buying groceries, keeping the lights on or keeping the kids fed.

The Chicken Coop shows both generations that asking for help, and accepting it, is an act of courage, not defeat. The real hunger, the book reveals, is for connection, for community, for someone to simply see you without judgment.

Book 6: Somewhere to Be

"Home isn't where you're born. It's where someone leaves the light on for you."

What happens when home isn't safe? When "family" is a word that hurts? Somewhere to Be follows a young person navigating housing instability: couch-surfing, shelter stays, and the terrifying in-between of not knowing where you'll sleep tonight while searching for the adults who might become chosen family.

Somewhere to Be teaches young readers that "home" is ultimately about people, not places, while showing mothers that their worth isn't measured by their address. The lighthouse in this story isn't a building, it's any person who says, "You belong here. You matter. Stay."

Book 7: The Hard Way Home

"When the soldier comes back, the war doesn't always stay behind."

Military families sacrifice in ways civilians rarely understand, and the children of veterans carry burdens they didn't choose and can't always name. The Hard Way Home tells the story of a young person whose parent has returned from deployment changed—struggling with PTSD, addiction, anger, or simply an emotional distance that feels like abandonment.

The Hard Way Home gives permission to struggle, to grieve, to admit that the homecoming you imagined isn't the homecoming you got. The lighthouse here is the slow, patient work of rebuilding—not the family you had before deployment, but the family you can become after.

Book 8: When the Bough Breaks

"The hardest thing a mother can do is admit she needs help. The bravest thing is asking for it."

Told through the eyes of a teenager watching their mother struggle with postpartum depression, anxiety, or a mental health crisis that the family doesn't have language for. Will Mom be okay? Is this my fault? Who takes care of us if she can't?—while learning that their mother's illness is not a reflection of her love.

When the Bough Breaks teaches young readers that their parents are people too: flawed, struggling, and trying. Falling apart doesn't mean failing your children. Sometimes the bough breaks and sometimes, with help, it grows back stronger. The lighthouse in this story is the radical act of a mother saying, out loud, "I'm not okay"—and a family learning that those words aren't an ending, but a beginning.