Tag: Holodomor

A four school virtual day

Such a pleasure to meet with 4 schools today! First up was Delran Middle School in NJ. Students had just finished reading Making Bombs for Hitler and we had such good discussions about the real people and history behind that novel, that trilogy and also about Winterkill.

I also met with students from Souris School in Manitoba, East Selkirk MS, and Hollyburn School in West Vancouver.

Here are some Hollyburn pics:

This is a pic from East Selkirk

Boo! East Selkirk as well!

Velshi’s precise backgrounder on the Holodomor

Ali Velshi 

Saving for posterity

Because in a blink of an eye, the numbers will change. But this shows the power of Ali Velshi. Winterkill shot up on Amazon in both the US and Canada. In the US, Winterkill is currently at #40 overall and is #1 in several categories. Check it out:

Amazon.com
This is Amazon.com
Amazing to be #1,2,3 and 4 in a category, all for the same book!
In Canada it’s a little bit different — a bunch of my books ended up in the top ten!
Wonder how long this tag will stay on amazon.com

Oh, and I must have missed it totally, but Winterkill was #3 overall on Amazon.com on Feb 19th, according to Top Ten Books:

#VelshiBannedBookClub

I admire Ali Velshi’s fierce defense of freedom to read. His Banned Book Club sheds light on books that illuminate, educate and irritate. Everyone should be able to read what they want and being able to read a variety of books from all different viewpoints is the cornerstone of a democracy. It was such an honor to have Winterkill featured today on Ali Velshi’s Banned Book Club segment, particularly because Ali is in Kyiv right now, highlighting the injustices of russia’s genocidal war. This is so important with the anniversary of the war fast approaching.

I was particularly impressed with the superb research that went into the Holodomor backgrounder as an intro to Winterkill. Deep respect for Ali Velshi.

Here’s the interview:

And a really good backgrounder on the Holodomor here:

Thank you, Joanne Levy, for taking this pic!

An excellent and terrible book

Thank you Susan Lowell and the Historical Novel Society for this review of Winterkill. You’d think an author wouldn’t like their book to be called terrible, but seeing as I’m immersing the reader in the midst of a largely unknown genocide that’s being replicated by Russia right now, the description is apt. Here’s how the review begins:

This is an excellent and terrible book.

Well-written, it includes convincing and sympathetic characters, and it bears witness to an awful historical event: Stalin’s partially successful attempt between 1930 and 1933 to starve Ukraine to death. Its author, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, is, in her own words, “fierce in her pursuit of truth.” Read more here.

World Read-Aloud Day 2023

Eleven schools on WRAD23. The 2 in Texas were snowed out (stay safe and warm my friends) and one school was late, but by luck that coincided with a snowed out school, so all good. In addition to Winterkill I talked about Sylvia McNicoll’s What the Dog Knows and Adrian Lysenko’ s Five Stalks of Grain, and then showed the best nonfiction written about the Holodomor, Anne Applebalm’s Red Famine. 

Educator feedback:

“Thank you for reading aloud to my fifth and sixth graders today. It was fabulous. We now have a waiting list for Making Bombs for Hitler and for Winterkill.“

“Thank you so much for Zooming with us this morning. The excerpt you read was powerful and I anticipate Winterkill being checked out for the foreseeable future! Thank you for shining a light on this lesser known piece of history.”

“We enjoyed hearing you read from Winterkill and learning so much about your writing process.”

Thanks again for visiting with us! Every single one of your books that I have are checked out to students now! Success! 

Sweet! Meeting with Saint Vincent students

It was such a pleasure to speak with 6th grade students from Saint Vincent Elementary School in Concord PQ! Such thought-provoking questions about the Holodomor and Winterkill but also about the process of writing and how I feel about the books that I wrote ages ago — would I like to go back and change them? I particularly appreciated the question about why an author like me would get hate mail and death threats for writing about the Holodomor. It provided the opportunity to describe intimidation tactics used by oppressive regimes to control information and to deny history. It’s not just politicians and protesters who are treated this way. Writers and journalists are key targets too.