Category: Uncategorized

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!

Why is it that when people go to the grocery store, the cashier puts practically every item in its own plastic bag? Have you ever sat and watched all the bags coming out of the grocery store in the space of five minutes? Where do those grocery bags go? My guess is mostly in the garbage. Some are used to line trash cans etc but some just get thrown into the garbage as their own trash. Then they get dumped into landfills where they never disintegrate. Or they get blown around and end up as indestructible strips of plastic that wrap around a duck’s neck or get swallowed by an animal…

I also don’t understand the concept of putting garbage in plastic bags. Most people take their little plastic bags from their various garbage cans and then throw those into a big plastic garbage bag, tie it up and take it to the street for garbage pick-up.

Why does garbage have to be that well preserved?

Here’s what I do —

I refuse plastic grocery bags. Even in a clothing store, I ask for the items bagless and un-tissue wrapped. For groceries, I use those heavy duty plastic reusable bags. You can fit a whole heck of alot more groceries into them and they stay standing in the trunk, unlike plastic bags that spew groceries all around. I used to use paper grocery bags and then recycle them to wrap packages but few stores have paper bags anymore.

As for garbage, I have two big rolling garbage cans and a garbage disposer. All the messy stuff gets ground up and goes down my sink. I must confess to using small plastic bags in my kitchen and bathroom garbage cans but I don’t put them in a big garbage bag. I simply toss them into the garbage cans. Other stuff goes into the garbage cans unbagged.

Just don’t get me started on water bottles …..