Carol Anne Shaw

The rules are simple when you live the way Eddie and his sister, Maya do: lay low, trust no one, and make sure you have plenty of duct tape on hand. But Maya is growing up fast. She's forgetting how to play the game and Eddie is finding it harder and harder to keep them both safe from the outside world. When their lives become suddenly complicated through a mistake Maya makes, Eddie begins to lose his composure. And why wouldn't he? He hasn't had time to address his own emotional scars. He's been too busy looking out for his sister. But even in the worst of times, even when you think you've hit rock bottom, there is always hope.Told in the third person, present tense, along with first-person excerpts from the pages of Eddie's sketchbook/journal, THE PICASSO PROJECT is a novel about strength and courage, and what can happen when you finally own your past, let it go and open yourself up to possibility.

The Picasso Project

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Myles Cook is having a rough time. Not only has his mother run off with Jocelyn, her yoga instructor, Myles and his dad have moved to a tiny rural island on BC's west coast to live in a log cabin. Garcia Island is nothing like Myles' old home in the city; there are no stores, the WiFi is sketchy, and let's face it, the people are strange. There's Clyde, the old guy in the silver airstream trailer who carves erotic demon sculptures from wood, Daisy Archibald, the island coven's high priestess (whom Myles secretly believes is a hack), and Axel Jespersen--a recumbent cyclist and angora goat farmer who is just plain nasty! Finally, there is Norm next door, a man who teaches Myles a little about llamas and a lot about life. Factor in a taxidermy raccoon (with superpowers), a first crush, and a whole lot of growing pains, and Myles quickly discovers that truth really is stranger than fiction. But people can be full of surprises, and as the saying goes, you can't always judge a book by its cover. And sometimes, when things are out of your control, the best thing you can do is simply stand tall, take a deep breath and just go with the flow. (Well, you can try!)

Carol Anne Shaw

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