Firefly — Philippa Dowding

Finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature - Text Firefly lived in the park across from her mother’s home. It was safer there. But after the bad night happens, and her baseball-bat-wielding mother is taken away, social services sends Firefly to live with her Aunt Gayle. She hardly knows Gayle, but discovers that she owns a costume shop. Yes, Firefly might be suffering from PTSD, but she can get used to taking baths, sleeping on a bed again, and wearing as many costumes as she can to school. But where is “home”? What is “family”? Who is Firefly, for that matter … and which costume is the real one?