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Last Wednesday was a busy day, what with the giant Peel event, followed by the visit to a school in Don Mills immediately after. As a rule, I will only do one full day of school presentations in a week. Any more than that and it drains me. I broke the rule several times during May in order to accommodate as many school requests as I could.

I got up early on Thursday morning and did the three hour drive to Leamington. That afternoon, I did two back to back presentations at a Leamington high school. The first presentation was in the gym with about 400 students, and the second was in the library. Initially, the second presentation was to be for 25 or so students who were in the reading club, but as time passed, the numbers crept up. The day before, the teacher-librarian emailed to let me know that 50 kids would be there. I had wanted to do a bit of a writing workshop with the students, and although 16 is the ideal number for that, I felt I could still incorporate a writing exercise with 50 if they were seated around tables.

When I got there, it turned out that 100 students had signed up! This was an honour, seeing as it was voluntary on their part, however, it’s hard to do any sort of writing exercise with a group that big. And there was no way to accommodate that many student around tables. So the teacher-librarian had set up rows and put an aisle down the middle. Many of the students had been to the presentation in the gym, so this second presentation was entirely different. I concentrated on the writing and revision process, answering questions about their own writing and also answering questions about my books — every single student in attendance had read at least one of my novels and many had read all.

And I did do a bit of a writing exercise. I was delighted with what the students were able to create during the exercise. Several read them to the entire group and they were fantastic! Any one could have been the intriguing beginning of a great story! I was thrilled!

That evening, Margaret Snow, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, took me out for dinner. Another local teacher librarian joined us and it was a pleasant evening. Then I drove back to my B&B and was asleep before I knew it.

The next morning, I did two back to back sessions at Margaret’s school, Gore Hill. Margaret had prepared the students so well for my visit that they were all familiar with my books and they asked excellent questions. One of the groups had concentrated on Aram’s Choice, so as a treat, I read them the first chapter of Call Me Aram, which is the sequel to Aram’s Choice and will be coming out in the spring of 2008. This was the first time I have shared the story with a class and they were all wanting more.

Margaret had arranged for a catered lunch and also had a huge cake that was iced with a greeting to me. I ate a piece of it as I was driving to the next school — yum!

The second school of the day was a small one and again, the teacher-librarian had prepared the students well. In the session for the younger children, there were letters each had written as if they were Aram, writing to his grandmother. There was also a stack of letters written to me with lots of questions. I incorporated the answers to those questions into my talk and also shared with them the first chapter of Call Me Aram. The second group was grades 6,7 and 8 and they had read the first half of The Hunger. It was also an interesting group of students who asked good questions.

After that 4th session of the day, I packed up and skedaddled before the bell rang. I wanted to beat the school bus out of the parking lot.

It wasn’t until I got home that the exhaustion hit. It took the entire weekend and more to recuperate. I don’t know why I don’t keep to my own rules and stick to the one day a week of presentations.

On May 22, I posted an entry about an old prepared salad that I had found in my fridge that was suspiciously fresh looking. I checked it today and it still looks fresh. The sliced mushrooms are not at all slimy and the spinach is still crisp. I checked out the date stamp on it. The salad was made on May 10th and expired on May 13th. I’m going to keep it in my fridge to see how long it takes to rot.

I have sworn off grocery store salads. Frozen vegetables or farmers’ market vegetables are the only ones I’m trusting now.

I did my last Forest of Reading event of the year and it was MASSIVE and very well-organized. It was for Peel and was held at the Powerade Centre on Kennedy Road in Brampton. There were 4,800 students in attendance! Other scheduled authors were Robert Munsch, Eric Walters, Peggy Dymond Leavey and Michael Boughn. I happened to be chatting with LM Falcone  — this year’s winner of the Silver Birch Award for fiction — yesterday and mentioned the Peel event. Lucy hadn’t been told about this event and wondered if perhaps she should contact the organizer to let her know that she would be delighted to drop by. I told her I was positive the kids would be thrilled to have the winner of the Silver Birch show up! I gave Lucy the contact info, she called, and was added to the program.

A young lady by the name of Samantha was my student ambassador. Not only did she have to say a short speech about me, but she had to carry an enormous sign that had been hand-painted about Aram’s Choice. It was beautiful, albeit heavy.

All of the authors’ signs were awesome! Peggy’s was especially spectacular. And even though Lucy was a last-minute invitee, there was a sign for her and a student gave a speech. I was very impressed with the speeches the students made. It was nerve-wracking for me to get up in front of all those people, but to be able to do it while still in grade school shows a phenomenal amount of poise and preparation.

I loved listening to all of the authors speak and it was also fun to see the students do the wave and hold up their posters. What an event! Kudos to Peel for a successful event!

At the end of the program, I booted it out with an egg salad sandwich in tow. Good thing I was wearing an egg salad sandwich coloured blouse because it’s messy eating and driving. I hopped on the 407 and got to a lovely private school in Don Mills with 5 minutes to spare. The students were already sitting in front of a comfortable rocking chair and the teacher-librarian was talking about Aram’s Choice. We switched places and I continued on. It was interesting, going from a group of 4,800 to a group of 30. The students asked pertinent and interesting questions and at the end of the session I was given a chocolate sundae. Yum!

Off to Leamington early tomorrow morning for two days of readings.

I have a spinach salad in my fridge that I bought a week ago and forgot about. I found it just now and it is still crisp and green. The tomatoes look like tomatoes and even the mushroom slices look fresh. What the heck did they spray on this? Formeldihyde? I don’t think I’m going to eat it.

My Dear Canada is set to be released in the fall. I just got the cover art on Friday. Here it is:

 

This year was the first time that all of the Forest of Reading award ceremonies happened on the same day and at the same place. And because I feared traffic and exhaustion, especially after a hectic Wednesday, I stayed overnight in Toronto the night before and took a taxi to Harbourfront.

The Silver Birch Express Award wasn’t given out til past noon, but they had us autograph for a couple of hours in the morning — outside. It was cold! Nancy Shouse (who won the Silver Birch Express that afternoon — congratulations, Nancy!) and I sat side by side in what I am sure was a wind tunnel. We were both frozen.

There was no anxiety or anticipation for me at all. I had known all along that Aram’s Choice would not win the Silver Birch Express. It’s not a fun book. It deals gently with an unknown chapter in history. And it specifically appeals to boys who don’t like to read. But it was so wonderful to have the opportunity to meet more children who had been touched by Aram’s Choice. There is nothing more satisfying for an author than to have oodles of 8 year old boys come up one at a time and say, with wonder, “Did you write Aram’s Choice? I loved that book. It was the first book I ever read because I wanted to.” And what followed after that would inevitably be a combo of:

What happened to Mr. Chechian?
What was Mgerdich okay after he fell out the window?
Will there be another Aram book?
Did this really happen?
How do you know all this stuff?

And then they would ask to have their photo taken with me.

It was awesome!

But even more awesome was that I got to meet one of my writing idols — Sheree Fitch — who was also nominated for the Silver Birch Express.

We had never met and so I didn’t recognize her on sight. When Art Slade introduced us, I was gobsmacked when she said, “I have always wanted to meet you!” That shocked the heck out of me. How did Sheree Fitch even know who I was?

Well, she said that she was thrilled with the review I had given her for her first YA novel — The Gravesavers –a couple of years ago. She said that of all the reviews she got, mine was the one she loved the best because, I “got” the novel. She knew all about my books. Wow! She is such a high profile author, yet so down to earth and nice. She was encouraging and chatty with everyone she met. That personality shows in her writing. Down below is a photo of Sheree, Art Slade and myself in the “Green Room” at the Tree Awards:

Thank goodness a long weekend comes after the Forest of Reading festivities. Now that I have had three sleep-ins and three days of exercise, I am feeling almost back to normal.

Wednesday was quite the hectic day.  I had somehow committed to participating in two separate Forest of Reading events in two different communities — both of which were WAY on the other side of Toronto from me!

Shelley MacBeth of Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge has run a fabulous celebration for several years running for children in the Uxbridge area who can’t get in to the Toronto Forest of Reading event because the tickets are limited. Her celebration is held at the local community centre and is for the Silver Birch, Silver Birch Express and Red Maple reading programs. I attended this one when Nobody’s Child was nominated for the Red Maple a couple of years ago and was very impressed with the organization and the enthusiasm of the kids.

The other one I had committed to was organized by Jane MacKenzie of Whitby and was held at a giant sports centre. This one was for the participants in the Whitby area and it was for all of the reading programs and is HUGE. Again, these are students who wouldn’t have been able to go to the Harbourfront events in Toronto on the Thursday because of limited ticket sales.

What to do, what to do?

I fessed up to both Jane and Shelley, offering to go for an hour to one, then drive 35k to the other and attend that one for an hour.

And then — thankfully — it turned out that I wasn’t the only confused author. Several had committed to both, thinking they were the same event. Some chose one or the other. Three of us managed to hit both. Gail Nyoka, Elizabeth Etue and myself attended Uxbridge from 11 til noon, then we convoyed to Whitby and did it all over again from 1 til 2.

I skedaddled out of the Whitby sports arena before the first school bus left the parking lot because I was on a mission. When Linda Bailey was in town on Monday, she had amassed a collection of lovely gifts that had been given to her by various librarians. One was a beautiful door wreath decorated with action figures depicting scenes from Stanley’s Party. I had taken that plus a beautifully large gift umbrella from Linda and offered to drop ithem off at Kids Can Press on my way to my downtown Toronto hotel. When I got to Kids Can, it was pouring rain. I was tempted, but I did not use Linda’s umbrella. I parked slightly illegally, dashed in, dumped the items off and was on my way to my hotel as quickly as rush hour traffic would allow.

That evening, I got together with a number of other Silver Birch and Silver Birch Express nominees for good chats and dinner.

Blue Spruce nominee and author supreme Linda Bailey was in Brantford and Paris yesterday, doing readings at both libraries. I have been looking forward to meeting Linda in person for a long time so it was a delight to drive her around for the day. It was also neat to be with another author for a whole day. It can get scary though. Linda’s sense of direction is as abysmal as mine so there were many times when we lost the car in the parking lot, turned the wrong way out of the bathroom, and so on. Thank goodness for the GPS in my car.

It was a pleasure to watch Linda present at the Brant County Library in Paris. Every child in the audience was sitting in rapt attention. Linda has a way of presenting that makes each person in the audience feel that they’re part of a dialogue. She got rave reviews.

After the Paris presentation, I took Linda to lunch at the Arlington Hotel right downtown in Paris. This place is now a beautiful restaurant, pub and hotel, but when I was a university student, it was the cheapest place to get beer. A glass of draft was 15 cents. My sister and I ran a youth drop-in centre just off the main drag in Paris for a few summers from 3 til 11pm each day, so became familiar with this place.

After lunch, there was the usual tussle over who got to pay the bill. When I have lunch with Valerie Sherrard, there have been times the bill has ripped in two has we’ve struggled for the right to pay, but Linda had a different idea. She challenged me to an arm wrestle. I won, but just barely.Ha!

I don’t have a picture of our arm wrestling, but here she is, looking might fierce:

And congratulations to Marina Cohen, whose first novel. Shadow of the Moon, is now out.

Marina is also a Private Kidcritter.

And Melissa Poremba, who looks after the publicity for Brantford Book Camp, won this from the OLA. Congratulations, Melissa! Well deserved!!!!!