The Tinderbox - Tapa blanda

Flames are bright against the night sky. Thirteen-year-old Emma watches with horrified fascination as they consume the family’s log cabin, leaving her and her younger brother orphaned. These three books are set in the early 1830s. Emma’s grief and shock, and her bravery in building a new life, are timeless.

Marianne Brandis’s vivid evocation of pioneer life in Upper Canada – the texture of the log cabin, the sights and smells of harvest, the raw cold of outdoor chores at dawn – has been delighting readers since the first book was first published in 1982.

Marianne Brandis fell in love with the English language when, as a child, she arrived in Canada from the Netherlands. She began writing in her teens, and continued while working as a copywriter at private radio stations and the CBC. She taught at Ryerson University for many years, before becoming a full time writer. She has won many awards including the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People and the IODE Book Award.

G. Brender à Brandis was born in Holland and came to Canada when he was five. He has a Fine Arts degree from McMaster University. His work is included in both public and private collections, and public and university libraries in Canada and the United States.