Gabrielle Prendergast
Orca Book Publishers, Ages 9-12
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of goodness to overcome that which others consider weaknesses: youth, poverty, lack of education, dysfunctional families. Ten-year-old Journey Song doesn’t. She looks beyond these things and the slummy side of her 1970s Eastside Vancouver neighbourhood, seeing instead a community that includes classmates, school staff, street people, community workers, and local merchants. And she’s going to need all of them in her mission to help the pandas stuck in limbo at a local warehouse while the Chinese and U.S. governments engage in a bureaucratic kerfuffle regarding action during the Vietnam War.