Category: Uncategorized

Stolen Child is a MYRCA 2012 Honor Book!

The Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award (M.Y.R.C.A.) aims to promote reading and Canadian literature by giving young people the opportunity to vote for their favorite Canadian book from an annual preselected list. The books are nominated based on their quality and reader appeal.

Congratulations to the MYRCA 2012 winner, Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom by Susin Nielsen!

We would also like to congratulate the authors of the MYRCA 2012 Honor Books: Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel, and Stolen Child by Marsha F. Skrypuch.

CCBC Annual General Meeting, June 19, 2012

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre is holding its Annual General Meeting, featuring special guest speaker Marsha Skrypuch, on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 6:00 p.m.

Location:
Room 200, Northern District Library
40 Orchard View Blvd.
(Yonge & Eglinton)
Toronto, Ontario M4R 1B9

Reception to follow at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre
Suites 217 & 222, Northern District Library

Please RSVP by June 12 to Shannon Howe Barnes at 416.975.0010 ext. 227 or rsvp@bookcentre.ca.

To view the formal invitation, go here.

 

Children’s Book News awesome review of Last Airlift!

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War
written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Pajama Press, 2011
9978-0-9869495-4-8 (hc) $17.95
978-0-9869495-1-7 (pb) $12.95
for Grades 4 and up

Non-fiction / Vietnam 1975 / Operation “Babylift” History / Orphans / Adoption / Disability / Courage

Thought-provoking, heartrending and inspirational, author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s first non-fiction book chronicles one woman’s account of a little-known piece of Canadian history: the Ontario government-sponsored Operation “Babylift.”

In April 1975, South Vietnamese orphans were airlifted from Saigon and flown to Ontario where they were adopted by Canadian families. This military maneuver saved interracial babies (with American blood) and disabled children from being killed by the Viet Cong. Written from the perspective of eight-year-old Tuyet, who is crippled from polio, the book gives the reader vivid insight into life in a Saigon orphanage where children never see the sky and subsist amidst a soundtrack of warfare. Tuyet’s story reveals not only the privations and misplacement caused by war but the assumptions made by well-meaning people about the desirability of Western customs and middle-class values. Plentiful food, her own room and her first family initially cause Tuyet mistrust, discomfort and even terror.

This simply written but masterfully perceptive story of human resilience and courage belongs on every school and public library shelf. Although it could be read aloud to Grade 3 students and independently by Grades 4 to 8 students (e.g., for social studies or language units), the narrative easily captures an adult. Forchuk Skrypuch, who has received numerous awards for her historical novels, enriches this slender book with photos and official documents. Historical and author’s notes, detailing relevant background to Tuyet’s plight and the author’s research methods, make engaging additions alongside a list of further resources and an index.

Aliki Tryphonopoulos

Bombs launch and tread desk

My Brantford book launch for Making Bombs For Hitler is taking place on April 16th. Michelle Ruby of the Brantford Expositor did a lovely story about the novel. You can read it here.

Brian Thompson, photographer extraordinaire, came over the day before to take a photo of me and the book. I asked if we could do something different and he said sure, so I took him downstairs and showed him my tread desk. Go to the link above for the article, then click on the photo. He even captured the movement of my legs! Pretty nifty!

 

 

Come to my Toronto book launch, March 7, 2012

The World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations and the Ukrainian Women’s Organization of Canada, Toronto Branch, invite you to the launch of

Making Bombs For Hitler

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

When: Wednesday March 7, 2012 @7:30pm

Where: UNF Toronto Community Centre, 145 Evans Ave, Etobicoke ON

The author will give a brief talk, followed by Q&A. Books available for sale and autograph. Light refreshments.

 

 

 

 

 

BookDragon’s awesome review of Last Airlift

Check it out here.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is one of those mega-award-winning Canadian authors (with more than a dozen titles) who hasn’t crossed over our shared border (just yet!) with the same success. She’s best known for her historical novels for younger readers about what must be one of the most difficult subjects ever – children and war. Her latest, which debuted far north last fall, hits U.S. shelves next week (March already!). Airliftis Skrypuch’s first narrative nonfiction, the true story of Son Thi Anh Tuyet and her last days in her native Vietnam and her first days with her Canadian family.

Tuyet can’t remember life before she came to live in the Saigon orphanage with all the children, babies, and nuns. Her only memory of “outside” are occasional visits of a woman with a young boy, who may or may not have been her mother and brother. “‘After a while, they stopped coming.’”

On April 11, 1975, Tuyet is frantically packed into the back of a van with babies and toddlers strapped into makeshift boxes headed to the airport. She is one of 57 children on what will turn out to be the last Canadian airlift operation to save orphans from a war-torn Saigon on the verge of collapse. As an older child of 8 with a leg weakened by polio, Tuyet is convinced she’s been brought only to help care for the younger children; as long as she remains useful, perhaps she will not be sent back to the orphanage.

Her remarkable journey – filled with unfamiliar faces, words she cannot understand, a future that seems so uncertain – lands her with a family of her own. “‘You are my daughter,’” her new mother assures her even before she can understand the words, “‘Not my helper.’” “Grass … swing … play,” her new father teaches her. And “‘sister,’” her new siblings call her with comforting hugs and kisses.

Enhanced with documents and a surprising number of photographs, Airlift is a touching, multi-layered experience. The strength of Skrypuch’s storytelling shows strongest in the smallest details: Tuyet’s wonder at discovering that stars are real things in the sky, her knowing better than the adults that to quiet the screaming babies is to place them close together, her doubt about “dads … [who] didn’t seem very real [as] she had never actually seen one.”

In the ending “Author’s Note,” Skrypuch explains how her initially intended novel became Tuyet’s narrative: ” … I was going to piece together a story of one orphan based on the experiences of many. But as I recreated these experiences from my research, an interesting thing happened. In small flashes, Tuyet bagan to remember more. … When Last Airlift was complete, Tuyet was overwhelmed by the fact that it was, in fact, her own story that had been reclaimed.”

Terry Hong
BookDragon
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
http://bookdragon.si.edu/
http://www.facebook.com/sibookdragon
@SIBookDragon

Doing a book talk: Advice for the newly published

Speaking about your own book is a lot of fun. Relax and enjoy it.

A talk is a conversation with individuals who just happen to be sitting all together. Make eye contact. Read their expressions. Modify your talk depending on those expressions.

If it’s a big group, be sure to use the microphone. Make eye contact with someone in the back row and ask if they can hear you.

The ideal set up is to have either a wireless microphone that’s pinned on, or a handheld. If it’s not wireless, hopefully you’re on a long leash. When at all possible, I like to walk amongst the audience so that the people in the back and on the edges don’t feel left out.

Because you are having a conversation with your audience, do ask them questions. When I give a talk, I like to ask a few questions right at the get-go so I can tailor my talk to the particular crowd at hand. No two audiences are ever the same. One thing I like to find out is if there are aspiring writers in the room, or students, or librarians etc. If there are writers, be sure to give some writing tips at some point during your talk.

You can also ask them why they came. You may be surprised at the reasons. The answers can break the ice. Also, you’ll find out what they want to know from you by how they respond to this.

Ask how many have read your book. Sometimes everyone has. Other times a few or none have. If everyone’s read the book, you’d talk about the story behind the story — the research, problems, anecdotes, stuff that went wrong. If few have read the book, be sure not to give away the ending.

As to an actual reading. Be brief.  I tend never to read more than three paragraphs, or about 2/3 of a book page. You want to paint an intriguing picture, and then you want to stop. It’s better to leave them wanting more than to put them to sleep.

The key thing people want to know in a book talk is why you were compelled to write it and how you went about doing it/researching it.

A couple other do’s and don’ts:

1. Do ask one of the organizers to mind the time for you. You don’t want to be looking at your watch. If an organizer can give you a signal when there’s 10 minutes left, then 5 minutes, you won’t go over.

2. Do not do power point. Power point is a sedative.

3. Do not be afraid of silence. If you ask for questions and none come immediately, pause. Look at your audience and give them a relaxed and expectant smile. If the first question doesn’t come after 60 seconds, ask them a question. This will get the ball rolling.

4. Do repeat each question in a clear voice so everyone knows what you’re answering.

5. If someone asks a question you don’t want to answer, say, “that’s a great questions” then reframe it into something you want to answer. As an example,when I speak to kids’ and teen groups, invariably someone will ask me how much money I make. I turn it around and ask how much money they think I get from the sale of a single book. Then I tell them and let them do their own math.

6. Don’t talk about awards, honours, sales, blah blah blah. Talk about your failures.

7. Don’t over-prepare. Don’t try to breathlessly shoehorn everything you can think of into your talk. White space and silence and pauses are very effective.

8. Do have fun!