Awards

• Nominated for Forest of Reading 2025 (Canada)
• Nominated for Forest of Reading Red Maple Fiction 2025 (Canada)
• Short-listed for Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize 2024 (Canada)
• Winner of <I>Winner of the</I> Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize.
• Winner of Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize 2024 (Canada)

Overview

Among CCBC's Best Books for Kids & Teens list, a starred selection of exceptional caliber We live in a hopeless old house on an almost-deserted dead-end street in a middle-of-nowhere town named Hope. This is the oldest part of Hope; eventually it will all be torn down and rebuilt into perfect homes for perfect people. Until then, we live here: imperfect people on an imperfect street that everyone forgets about. For Eva Brown, life feels lonely and small. Her mother, Shirley, drinks and yells all the time. She's the target of the popular mean girl, and her only friend doesn't want to talk to her anymore. All of it would be unbearable if it weren't for her cat, Toofie, her beloved nohkum, and her writing, which no one will ever see. When Nohkum is hospitalized, Shirley struggles to keep things together for Eva and her younger brother, Marcus. After Marcus is found wandering the neighbourhood alone, he is sent to live with a foster family, and Eva finds herself in a group home. Furious at her mother, Eva struggles to adjust-and being reunited with her family seems less and less likely. During a visit to the hospital, Nohkum gives Eva Shirley's diary. Will the truths it holds help Eva understand her mother? Heartbreaking and humorous, Hopeless in Hope is a compelling story of family and forgiveness.

Full Product Details

9781774920831

Table of Contents

Reviews

"A tender and even humorous coming-of-age story...a resonant story of healing, belonging, and persisting despite the odds. -- ""Kirkus Reviews"" Among featured titles for SLJ Webcasts Spring Teen & Young Adult Book Buzz-- ""School Library Journal"""

"Among featured titles for SLJ Webcasts Spring Teen & Young Adult Book Buzz-- ""School Library Journal"""

Author Information

Wanda John-Kehewin (she/her/hers) is a Cree writer who uses her work to understand and respond to the near destruction of First Nations cultures, languages, and traditions. When she first arrived in Vancouver on a Greyhound bus, she was a pregnant nineteen-year-old carrying little more than a bag of chips, a bottle of pop, thirty dollars, and hope. After many years travelling (well, mostly stumbling) along her healing journey, she now writes to stand in her truth and to share that truth openly. A published poet and fiction author, her first novel for young adults, Hopeless in Hope, won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and was named to USBBY's Outstanding International Books list.

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