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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!!!!!

I am thrilled to announce that another one of our Private Kidcrit members has received a book contract.  Mahtab, The Third Eye is going to look fabulous between Dundurn covers! Way to go!!!!!!!!!!

I was at Oakville Public Library yesterday as the guest speaker for Battle of the Books.

I had no idea what to expect. It had been on my calendar for over a year. A couple weeks ago I googled Battle of the Books and found out that it’s sort of like Jeopardy or a spelling bee. There were about 20 schools represented — each with a team of half a dozen or so students. I had a brief moment of fear, thinking maybe I was supposed to ask the questions??!!!!

But no, I was to give a talk. Yesterday was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and since many of my books are centred around the Armenian Genocide, they asked me to speak on that.

I arrived early so I could sit in and watch the students do their book battling. Very interesting! They all had to be familair with so many books. A number of times I had to restrain myself from waving my hand and saying, “Me, me! I know the answer!”

Doing a talk to a group of bookaholics is about the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon. These kids were keen. And they asked such good questions. After my talk, many of the students crowded around and we continued to talk books and reading. It was great.

I must say that the librarians at Oakville Public Library are fantastic organizers.

The Kobzar Literary Award Foundation announces:

Scholarships and Workshops

Scholarship and Faculty position at Humber School for Writers in Toronto

In a partnership between Shevchenko Foundation and Humber College in Toronto, Humber’s annual “Writer’s Workshop” in July 14-20, 2007  offers  the Kobzar Writers Scholarship and welcomes Marsha Skrypuch as a faculty member in a week long writers workshop.

The Kobzar Writer’s Scholarship is a full scholarship which covers registration, accommodation and some travel. This scholarship is offered to a writer anywhere in Canada who has an “advanced manuscript” on a Ukrainian Canadian theme. This scholarship is intended to assist in preparing the manuscript for publication. The manuscript may be submitted in any of several categories; poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays, musicals and young people’s literature.

For information regarding applications to the summer program and the scholarship, please contact   www.humber.ca and continue with creative&performingarts,humbercollege.ca/writers/summerworkshops
or merely search “Kobzar scholarship” on the web.

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The brochures for Brantford Kids’ Book Camp and Brantford’s Summer Writing Workshops were available here.

Todd Kyle, librarian extraordinaire, emailed yesterday to let me know that Aram’s Choice has been nominated for the Canadian Library Association’s 2006 Book of the Year for Children Award!!

I am thrilled to be nominated!! It is wonderful to be amid such stellar company.

My prediction is that Tim Wynne-Jones will win.

Small things make me happy.

I used to swim all the time but being allergic to chlorine had a cumulative negative impact on my enjoyment. But now that I have access to a saltwater swimming pool, I’m enjoying the sport all over again.

However, I wear contact lenses. I got myself a pair of goggles. They seemed to work well, but when I got out of the pool and looked at myself in the mirror I almost fainted. I had two bright red indentations encircling pasty puffed up skin under my eyes. I looked like a koala bear. The first time I swam with goggles in a saltwater pool, the eye enhancements were dramatically visible for about 8 hours and still noticeable by me three days later.

I tried swimming without my contact lenses but I couldn’t even see the line on the bottom of the pool, so I kept going crooked and bumped into people.

And then I discovered Seal Masks.

They look dorky, but so do goggles. And they are so crisp and clear to see through. And best yet, they don’t give me raccoon eyes. I am happy!