• Age: 5 to 10
• Grade: 3 to 5

Emma is getting ready to go partridgeberry picking with her grandparents when she hears a loud thump on the shed roof. Startled, she runs outside to tell her grandfather. Poppy T explains that the noise was caused by a horse chestnut falling from the tree behind the shed. Poppy T teaches Emma the game he used to play with chestnuts, and she decides to try it out for herself. Emma and Poppy T are joined in the shed by Thomas, Jeffrey, and their grandfathers. The battle to be conker champion is on!?xml:namespace prefix="o" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Gerald N. J. Mercer has been an educator in Newfoundland and Labrador for twenty-eight years. He remembers walking to and from school in the fall, filling his pockets with horse chestnuts that had fallen from neighbourhood trees. Although he tried many different ways of preparing them for battle, the oven method seemed to work best. Gerald Mercer lives with his wife, Daphne, and three children, Rebecca, Andrew, and Simeon, in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Jillian Nicol was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Always a lover of art, she attended Sir Wilfred Grenfell University and obtained a BFA in Visual Art. After finishing school, she worked in St. John’s as a screen printer, t-shirt designer, and freelance illustrator, a career she is working hard to pursue in her current home of Gatineau, Quebec.

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Emma’s New Game