BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
In the immensely popular Canadian classic, Butter Down the Well, Robert Collins describes his boyhood growing up in Saskatchewan during the bleak years of the Depression. This book evokes the mood of the era through Collins's humorous and touching stories.
"This is a love story. Love of a good man for a good woman. Love of both for their sons and love of those sons for their parents...It is also the best, the most intimate, the truest and the most entertaining depiction of life on a prairie farm during the 1920s and 1930s that I have read..." -- Max Braithwaite
"He tells his story with such exuberant affection that he makes those of us who didn't share his experience feel as though we were somehow deprived and underprivileged." -- Globe & Mail
"At last, a remembrance of prairie childhood during the lean, hungry years of the 1920s and 1930s that crackles with vitality and humour." -- Books in Canada
"The stories are told in a beautifully simple, direct style, colored by a farm boy's cheerful earthiness." -- Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
"Any reader, young or old, will enjoy this book." -- Quill & Quire
"I grinned and chuckled my way through the entire book, interrupted only by convulsive belly laughs and occasional misty eyes. For Collins is a wizard with words, a master of metaphor, and a genius at selecting poignant detail and tugging at the reader's heart strings." -- The Lethbridge Herald
"The dirty thirties might have been barren -- veritable physical wasteland -- but to a young boy with a large imagination and an alert mind, they were years of joy and delight. It is a compelling story which holds one's interest from beginning to end." -- Canadian Book Review Annual
This is a new release of the book published in May 1993.