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A couple of years ago, an award-winning British author, Elizabeth Laird, wrote a novel called A Little Piece of Ground. Like Deborah Ellis’ book, Three Wishes, this one too delved into the thorny issue of Palestinian/Israeli issues.

In Deborah’s case, the censorship is backfiring. The media and writers’ organizations are clearly in support of her freedom of expression. In Elizabeth Laird’s situation, the opposite is true. Here’s the amazon page about her book:

http://tinyurl.com/pxzch

Here’s some background on the controversy:

http://www.canpalnet.ca/archive/vkbs.html

When the controversy erupted, I was intrigued.

I tried to get the A Little Piece of Ground in bookstores, and it couldn’t be found anywhere. Even Chapters online did not carry it. I was able to finally get it through Amazon and I read it myself. It’s an excellent novel, told from the point of view of a Palestinian child.

Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t understand why there is always such a push for censorship every time a children’s book tackles this difficult subject. I think the more we can read on the issue, the better.

I just searched on the chapters site, and it is now listed. I guess now that it’s out of the news, it’s okay to sell it again.

Marsha Skrypuch
www.calla.com

This is Freedom to Read week.

The right to read without censorship is an important one. Even more important is the right of the author to delve into subjects that others may find uncomfortable. If we all only write about things everyone feels comfortable about, what would be the point of reading?

A few years ago, I received hate mail and death threats for writing about Soviet atrocities against Ukrainians during the Stalin era. The Canadian Freedom to Read Week committee awarded me a “laurel” for my perseverence in 2003:

http://www.freedomtoread.ca/freedom_to_read_week/darts_and_laurels_2003.asp

This year, a fellow author is being targetted with censorship. Deborah Ellis, whose book Three Wishes, was nominated for the 2006 Silver Birch Award, has had her book withdrawn from the York school board:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/02/28/silver-birch.html

If any author can handle a delicate topic even-handedly, it is Deborah Ellis.

On a brighter note, Turkey has dropped charges against Orhan Pamuk, the prize-winning Turkish author who publicly acknowledged the Armenian Genocide:

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=270808&ssid=43&sid=ENT

I carry an itty bitty purse and inside I have the world’s smallest wallet, hairbrush, lipgloss and teeny tiny pen. My little 5X7 purse can also hold my Treo phone/organizer and keys.

And now I have something else in my teeny tiny purse. Check it out:

http://www.knifezone.ca/Victorinox/swisscardtr.htm

Okay. I did it. I took the plunge. I am no longer a cream addict. I am still a coffee addict, but at zero calories, what’s the problem with that? For the last three days I have been drinking my coffee black and I really quite enjoy it.

My mother has been drinking black coffee for years. She is very particular about her coffee and so am I. Years ago, when she was Executive Director of the Red Cross in Brantford, she would have to visit a number of people in a professional capacity and they would always offer her coffee. She found coffee with powdered creamer disgusting and coffee with milk was ick. Coffee with cream is divine, but black coffee, even if it’s weak coffee or old coffee, tastes better than adulterated coffee.

I did two school presentations in Cambridge Ontario yesterday. What a treat is was to do readings so close to home. I tend to cluster my school readings on Wednesdays whenever I can. Last Wednesday it was a full day in Guelph, and the Wednesday before that I was all the way to Whitby, which is a huge long drive for me.

The Cambridge students were fantastic. I love it when kids ask thoughtful questions. One student asked why the baby had to die in a particular scene I read from Nobody’s Child. Good question. Because in the real situation that scene was based on, the baby did die. Another student asked, “How do you come up with the exact perfect words to use when you’re writing?” I told her that I see the story in my head and I just describe what I see.

Another neat thing about yesterday’s presentations was that James Bow came to sit in on one of them.

I “met” James Bow when he joined my private kidcrit group in Compuserve’s Books and Writers Community:

http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&tsn=4&tid=50942&webtag=ws-books

I was so impressed with his writing that I contacted my editor at Dundurn and forwarded the first few chapters of James’ novel (with his permission, of course). Dundurn loved it, and they’re publishing it in May! James just unveiled the website for his new book here:

http://unwrittengirl.ca/

James wanted to see how to do a school visit. Years ago, I sat in on a wonderful school visit by Barbara Haworth Attard:

http://www.barbarahaworthattard.com/

I urge every new writer to sit in and watch how a seasoned writer does school presentations.

Marsha Skrypuch
www.calla.com

Over the weekend, the last story for Kobzar’s Children was edited.

I am really excited about this book.

The kobzars were the blind minstrels of Ukraine, who memorized the epic poems and stories of 100 generations. Traveling around the country, they stopped in towns and villages along the way, where they told their tales and were welcomed by all. During the early years of Stalin’s regime in the USSR, the kobzars wove their traditional stories with contemporary warnings of soviet repression, famine, and terror. When Stalin heard of it, he called the first conference of kobzars in Ukraine. Hundreds congregated. Then Stalin had them murdered. As the storytellers of Ukraine died, so too did their stories.

Kobzar’s Children is an anthology of short historical fiction, memoirs, and poems written about the Ukrainian immigrant experience. The stories span a century of history from 1905 to 2005; and they contain the voices of people who lived through internment as “enemy aliens,” homesteading, famine, displacement, concentration camps, and this new century’s Orange Revolution. More than a collection, it is a social document that revives memories once deliberately forgotten.

I just signed the contract for my tenth book recently, but this book is a first. It’s the first time that I’m an editor. The stories and poems in Kobzar’s Children were written by a diverse group of people. Most of the contributors contacted me initially after reading my books. They wrote to me and said, “I have a story too.”

I was moved by these stories. So many that have never been told before.

I began collecting these people and these stories together and many of us have formed an online critique group for Ukrainian story writers.

All of the royalties for this anthology are being donated to the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. To find out more about UCCLA, go here:

http://www.uccla.ca

Here’s the amazon entry:

http://tinyurl.com/kr6cv

I can hardly wait until I can hold this anthology in my hands.

Marsha Skrypuch
www.calla.com

Remember that Express Posted package that I sent to Elizabeth that got sent back to me — plus I had to PAY $7.50 to get it sent back to me?

Well, today in the mail, I got a lovely letter from a woman from the main post office in Brantford, apologizing for the mix-up. She also included $9.20 worth of stamps.

Made my day!!

If you’re Canadian and you need to get a passport, I strongly suggest that you fill out your application here:

http://www.ppt.gc.ca/

Then print it off and take it to a passport office. I did that today and I didn’t have to wait in line at all. You get issued a bar code when you fill it out online so it only takes them about five minutes to process. Kewl.

Ever had one of those days that it feels like you’re working hard but getting nothing done? I had one like that today.

I am on day 8 of a bad arthritis flare-up in my hands. I had trouble sleeping last night because my fingers were swollen and hot like freshly boiled bratwurst sausages. I decided to sleep in a bit later to make up for it but at 8am sharp, the doorbell rang. I bounded out of bed and greeted the Express Post guy who had an intriguing package for me. It was a wooden box about two feet by two feet and four inches deep and it had a little rope handle on it. I pried it open with a screwdriver and sore hands. Inside was a beautifully framed first page of Bill C-331, which recognizes the injustice of Ukrainians being interned as enemy aliens during WWI. It was signed by Inky Mark, the MP who brought forward Bill C-331 as a private member’s Bill, and he wrote a nice note on it about how fortunate the Ukrainian community in Canada was to have a storyteller like me.

Very nice. The nicest thing that happened all day!

Once I got out of bed for good, I plunged into a major ironing marathon. We drove to St. Catherines last night and had dinner with our son Neil (who is in 3rd year at Brock) and he gave me a month’s worth of laundry. Unlike normal 21 year olds who wear t-shirts and jeans, Neil doesn’t even own a pair of jeans, and he rarely wears t-shirts. He likes silk Hawaiian shirts and they need ironing. Being a Ukrainian mother, I also iron his boxer shorts. I ironed for two solid hours.

In the midst of ironing, the doorbell rang again. Our mailman (who also happens to be an alderman) had a package for me. I thought it was my contract for the sequel to Aram’s Choice. No, it was a package that I had couriered out at the beginning of the week to Elizabeth, a special little girl in London Ontario, who I send autographed children’s books to every month or so (not mine, but ones that I pick up when I get the chance). I had to pay $7.50 to receive my own package. I thought it was being returned because I hadn’t put enough postage on it. Seeing as I had sent it from the post office and put the postage on that they asked for, I couldn’t figure that out, but already this $20 book had cost me $15 in postage and it hadn’t gone anywhere. I had to mail another package anyway, so I decided to go to the post office and figure out what was going on.

Before I could go to the post office, I had another errand: to get a police check. I do alot of school and library readings (approx 150 this school year) and I had never been asked for a police check before, but the school I’m spending the day at next Wednesday asked me for one. When I phoned the police station, they said all I needed was photo ID and they’d process it in 24 hours. No problem.

So I drove to the police station. The guy at reception said he couldn’t process me because I live in the county.

So I drove to Paris to the OPP station. This is a 20 minute drive and there was a blinding snowstorm.

I got there and the woman who does the police checks said that I needed a letter from the school and said that I would need a different letter from each school that I went to and each time I went to a school it would cost me $25 for a new police check and it would take a week minimum to have each one processed. I felt pretty aggravated by all this but took the forms and left.

I drove to the post office and showed them my undelivered package. The lady said that it wasn’t postage due, but that the sender’s address didn’t exist. This was simply wrong. I mail packages to Elizabeth all the time. I went to look up the postal code to ensure that I had it down right (I did) but by then, there were a dozen people in the lineup so I left. sigh

When I got back into the car (still a blinding snowstorm) I took a good look at that police check form. It was all about sex offenders and people in constant contact with kids.

????????????

When I do a school reading or presentation, I’m up at the front with a microphone and the kids are in the audience.

I called the OPP back. The woman said, “Oh, you want _that_ kind of police check.” Turns out there are three different kinds. I had explained when I was there what I did but I guess it didn’t sink in.

So, I was about to drive BACK to Paris but the woman told me she’d only be there for another 20 minutes and it wouldn’t be enough time to process it.

Sigh.

So I called the teacher who had requested all of this in the first place. She said, “Don’t worry about it. We don’t need it.” Argh.

By this time it was almost 4pm. I had not accomplished anything for the whole day except to iron and open up a wooden box.

I drove to my local post office (ie, not the one from which I had mailed that dud package from). The women at my local post office are lovely. I showed them my package and explained to them that I had been forced to pay courier charges twice now and the thing was still in Brantford despite the fact that the address was 100% correct. They said, “You’ll have to go to the main post office to complain.” I said, “No.”

So they called the main post office for me. And I’m not sure but it looks like my package will be delivered and I’ll get my $7.50 back.

What a day. I’m back to where I started. And my hands are still sore.

Yesterday, Sharon Brooks, organizer extraordinaire of Kids Can Fly and also the key fundraiser for Brantford Book Camp, called with good news. We have received funding from the Ontario Arts Council for this summer’s Book Camp!!! This makes everything so much easier to plan. No scurrying around, asking for little donations here and there. We provide this camp to kids for a mere $50 for the week (fee waived altogether in special cases), but it costs something like $200 per child for us to put this camp on. Thank you, Ontario Arts Council! You have made many aspiring young writers’ dreams come true!

And then today, I got an email from my agent letting me know that the contract for I Am Aram (the sequel to Aram’s Choice) has come through. Muriel Wood will be doing the illustrations for this one too. She is such a joy to work with and I’m really pleased that she’ll be able to start on this new one as soon as she’s finished the illustrations for the first. The tentative publication date is fall 2007.

Yippee!!!