The Girl Who Grew A Galaxy by Cherie Dimaline is one of four shortlisted finalists in CODE's (Canadian Organization for Development through Education) 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature. A galaxy of odd planets spins around Ruby Bloom’s head, slick and regulated as a game of snooker. The big purple one is Anxiety. It grew in the slipstream of Guilt, a smooth, loud planet with two moons: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Agoraphobia. The black one is Envy. It’s crusted with ice and solid as tungsten. The pink spotted one, a loud sparkly affair, is Fantasy and it careens wildly about like a ball after the break. There is a shiny amber globe that catches passing light; a small marble named Longing that is the brightest of all the orbs. The universe didn’t start with a big bang of cosmic proportions; instead it grew out of trauma that occurred in the middle of an otherwise quiet childhood. It began the day Ruby Bloom, age seven and a half, killed her grandfather. Ojibwe/Métis author Cherie Dimaline is the Writer in Residence for First Nations House at the University of Toronto.