7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids

Now in a new edition featuring updates concerning where the kids interviewed in the first edition are now and what they're doing, 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids is a compilation of true stories about successful tweens, each with a personal strategy for achieving his or her goals. From a skateboarder to an actor, a drummer, a ballet dancer, a magician, and much more, each young person describes largely in his or her own words the challenge of honing personal skills, as well as the rewards of achieving progress towards one's dream. An excellent inspirational and motivational book, especially recommended for grade school library collections.

This year, 2005, marks the 125th birthday of our national anthem. What most people don't know is that it started out as a French-only song written to celebrate a holiday in Quebec, long, long ago, and grew slowly, like our nation. This book tells the story of that long journey.Picture a palacial ballroom in Quebec City on the night of St. Jean Baptiste day, June 24, 1880. Five hundred guests are on hand for a banquet -- the crowning event of an international celebration of the French in North America. The Governor-General is here, along with Quebec's Lieutenant-Governor and the Honourable Wilfrid Laurier, plus senators, judges, mayors and delegates from across Canada and New England. They sit at six long tables laden with delicacies: salmon, turkey, capon, roast beef and lobster salad. For dessert are ices, creams and pies of strawberry, peach, raspberry, rhubarb and plum. What a party! All that's needed is a song. And the organizers have just the thing: a tune freshly-penned by one of Quebec's most renouned composers: Calixa Lavallée.Lavallée hailed from St.-Hyacinthe, Que., and his resumé shows that nothing ever changes: He had to go south to succeed. Lavallée enlisted as a musician in the Union army in the U.S. Civil War, emerging wounded and honourably discharged. He then found fame writing operas in New York, Boston, Paris and London. Returning to Quebec in 1880, Lavallée found his compatriots buzzing with plans for celebration. The habitants had heeded the Catholic Church's plea to make babies, and the French felt powerful and proud. Party planners asked Lavallée for some music. The words came from another son of Quebec, Mr. Justice Adolphe-Basile Routhier.After the meal at the Quebec City banquet hall, the band of 100 trumpets struck up, accompanied by a choir. "Electrified by an unstoppable impulse," reported those who were there, the crowd stood and heard for the first time the brand-new song, whose words existed only in French: "O Canada." Over the next 20 years, the song became a hit in Quebec, sung in churches and on all formal occasions; 2,000 schoolchildren sang it to the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), when he visited Quebec in 1901. Then the tune spread east and west -- but with no English words.People across Canada began to compose their own English lyrics, and by the 1920s, English Canadians sang 200 different versions. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, seeking an official English O Canada for the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation in 1927, asked his chief archivist to write Canadian Clubs from coast to coast, asking for "a copy of the text used by your club." The replies, as preserved at the National Library, show that Stratford sang, "O Canada! Beloved country thou; Hope's holy wreath adorning thy young brow," while Toronto sang, "Lord of the lands! Beneath thy bending skies; On field and flood, where'er our banner flies."Amid this confusion, one version stood out, written in 1908 by yet another son o

7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids tells the stories of real kids and what makes them successful as kids. It provides good insight into what it takes for kids to be happy and feel a sense of accomplishment using actual stories from about 15 kids, both boys and girls, from Canada and the U.S. Kids can read this to see how other kids have handled situations similar to those they may be facing themselves, whether it's moving or dealing with problems at school or any of numerous other challenges children have to face and overcome. It can inspire kids to bring out the best in themselves.

Imagine you're 11 years old. You are performing a magic show in front of 50 children. You pull out your "magic wallet" out of which you can make flowers appear. Only, they don't appear. What do you do?In 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids, David Armstrong, a child magician in Toronto, describes how he overcame that challenge. In all, 22 kids from across North America share stories of their success in this book, aimed at kids aged 8-12. Meet a skateboard champ, a pianist, two singers, a drummer, a gymnast, a female hockey player and many more kids.