The newest Dear Canada title deviates somewhat from the best-selling series’ formula of historical fiction about (and primarily for) young girls. First off, Hoping for Home is an anthology, not a novel, though the 11 original short stories are, like the rest of the series, told through diaries and letters. As before, many of the authors are kidlit mainstays, though the inclusion of young male protagonists also represents a slight shift.

As the subtitle suggests, this book focuses on the experience of discovering a new life in Canada. This new life is sometimes the result of immigration, but not always. For example, Irene N. Watts’s “The Flower of the Flock” describes the passage of a British orphan shipped to Canada in 1912 as a Home Child, while Shelley Tanaka’s “Ghost Town” interweaves diaries of two Canadian-born sisters forced into a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War. In Brian Doyle’s “Entrance Certificate,” narrated by a homeless boy sleeping at an emergency housing shelter and preparing to graduate from middle school in 1948 Ottawa, the “arrival” is mainly internal. (Doyle’s story is excellent, but his variation on the book’s theme might be too subtle for younger readers.) The characters – who get hurt, bully others, build identities, and forge new dreams – inevitably teach us about Canada.

Though both entertaining and an ideal educational tool, the book has weaknesses. The collection’s sole First Nations story – Ruby Slipperjack’s tale of an Ojibwa trapper’s daughter travelling to a city hospital – lacks colour and substance, and barely touches on the troubled history of Canadian aboriginal people. Also, while Lillian Boraks-Nemetz’s story about a young Holocaust survivor offers a wealth of background information, there are distracting contradictions: Miriam brags of translating her writing into English, a language she is struggling to learn, and her diary seems too refined and mature for a 13-year-old Polish newcomer who obsesses over a handbag and some lipstick.

Hoping for Home has its faults, but it is a thought-provoking offering for inquisitive readers hoping to understand the true Canadian experience.