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The contest in Books and Writers Community is up and running and it is so interesting to read the submissions and Ann Featherstone’s responses.

You don’t have to join to read the various threads. Here’s a link to the posts.

Anything that begins with BP is a blue pencil submission for Ann Featherstone. Anything that begins with AF is a question.

We just got back from San Francisco. While there, we had a most amazing dinner at Fleur de Lys. For dessert, I had one of their signature treats, called the FleurBurger, which is lightly spiced chocolate ganache (hamburger pattie) , home-made Beignet (the bun), cherry flavoured mousse (the milk shake) and frozen fennel ice cream Pomme Frites.

Here’s an article from Quill & Quire online.

We’re celebrating our third anniversary this month!

 

Ann Featherstone, longtime editor with Fitzhenry & Whiteside and formerly with Orca, will be the guess editor on Compuserve’s Books and Writers Community forum for two weeks, starting April 13. In the first week, she’ll answer questions. In the second week, she’ll give virtual blue pencil sessions to a number of submissions. Here’s what she’ll give feedback on:

The first page of a children’s or YA novel, or the first page of a picture book text
or
A query letter
or
A pitch

She will select from those submitted, not necessarily the best, but the ones that exemplify something in particular. She will also select the three best submissions and award prizes to those three.

Second and third prize will be an editorial critique of an entire first chapter and outline. First prize will be that too, plus a phone conversation with Ann so that she can go into more depth with her comments.

In order to participate, go here.

You will have to sign up, but it’s free. Once you get there, scroll down to the YA/Children’s section for complete instructions.

 

Congratulations, karen dyer, on today’s launch of A Walk Through a Window!

 

I just found out that Hope’s War has been published in a Japanese edition.

 

Here’s the Amazon Japan page for Hope’s War.

I was THRILLED to see this Susan Perrin review today in the Globe & Mail:

CALL ME ARAM

By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, illustrated by Muriel Woods, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 88 pages, $18.95, ages 8 to 11

A sequel to Aram’s Choice (2006), Skrypuch’s Call Me Aram takes up Aram’s story, based on a true one, as he and a group of Armenian boys, survivors of the genocide that occurred in Turkey in 1915, arrive in Georgetown, Ont., to begin a new life.

After the murder of his parents in Turkey, Aram and his grandmother had scrounged a living by begging on the streets of Ankara. He and thousands of other children were then moved from Turkey to an orphanage on Corfu.

Sponsored by the newly formed Armenian Relief Association of Canada, 100 boys, among them Aram, travelled to Canada in 1923, their destination a farm where they would be cared for, educated and trained to be farm helpers. These boys came to be known as the Georgetown Boys.

Skrypuch’s tale is an affecting one, made even more so by artist Woods’s limpid paintings of the bucolic Canadian farmland. The boys’ experiences in and their reactions to their new country and home are revealed via Aram’s eyes and voice: the disgust with which they greet the gooey mess of porridge, their breakfast; their disbelief when they are given new, Canadian names – those of individuals who have sponsored them; their bewilderment about new customs like bed-making; and their relief when a kind Canadian of Armenian descent comes to stay with them and explicates their new world for them.

As this book ends, Aram declares, ” ‘My name is Aram Davidian. And I am a Canadian.’ He would never get tired of saying that.”

Appended are archival photographs of the Georgetown Boys, a historical note and lists of suggested reading, Internet sites and films.

In the afternoon, Kate Murray of the Freckled Lion rented the building that had been the dorm for the Georgetown Boys. The kids arrived:

And they got their books signed:

After the student presentation, we went to the Freckled Lion. Here’s a photo of me with Philippe, who played Aram in the play,

and Kate Murray, bookseller extraordinaire:

And here’s a photo of me holding Rob Weston’s AMAZING Zorgamazoo, and Rob holding my Call Me Aram:

Note the crutches in the corner. I don’t recommend doing a book launch while on crutches, but authors will launch despite sleet and rain and snow and torn cartilage….