Congratulations to Mireille Messier and Kass Reich for winning this years RMBA award! Winners of this award are chosen by the student readers in Alberta. I was very happy to have The Very, Very Far North included in this year’s selection.
I will be virtually visiting two schools in Killaloe Ontario today and tomorrow to talk about my middle grade novel, Audrey (cow) and to give writing workshops about Voice & Dialogue.
Thank you to the Ontario Council for the Arts and their Writers-in-Schools program for making this to happen!
Just Beyond the Very, Very Far North is a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. Being nominated for an award is always a great honour, and even more so when it’s in your own province. And I’m thrilled that it is for a sequel, because it tells me I must have done something right with the second book 🙂
Congrats to all the finalists, in all categories this year!
I am so pleased to announce that The Very, Very Far North has been nominated for the 2022 Colorado Children’s Book Award. This is a wonderful continuation of good news from the state, having had two schools there select my middle grade novel for their One Book / One School event which gets a copy into the hands of every student.
Yesterday evening I completed the teaching of my children’s creative writing course. It was online and on Zoom, as is most of our lives. We started in September with the majority of the students in various cities in China and one in Hong Kong (it was morning for them), and the rest of them, here with me in Vancouver. The Wi-Fi was spotty for some, terrible for a couple, most kept their screens black, and others had no access to YouTube where I might have downloaded videos to supplement teaching. So bizarrely, despite the technology that made this pan-world course even possible, it was a pretty low-tech affair, relying on a smorgasbord of simple writing exercises, group storytelling, puzzle games to foster curiosity and question-asking, group book discussions to foster opinions and how to articulate them. There were successes and there were frustrations but certainly nothing to compare to the challenges many teachers have had to deal with even more of that, along with the fears and stresses of in-person teaching.
I have nothing profound or pithy to tie this post up in, other than to wish everyone – teacher and student alike – who has tried their best under these strange circumstances, to take time to rest over the holidays, to acknowledge you got through it, and to be kind to yourself if outcomes did not meet your standards.
It’s October 6th which means that the sequel book is officially released. Here’s a quote from a fun review from yesterday that I may just steal in the future:
“It was a grand adventure … and contained so many pearls of wisdom, one could make a necklace from them.”
Thank you Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers!
A big, heavy parcel arrived here in the Very, Very Far North. Duane and his friends are pretty excited and a little bit proud too.
An online interview with me was recently published on Medium.com. Among many things, I had a chance to discuss the ideas behind The Very, Very Far North and the upcoming sequel, Just Beyond the Very, Very Far North. You can click on the link to read it:
Julie’s Library is a podcast co-hosted by iconic actress, Dame Julie Andrews and her daughter, children’s author and educator, Emma Walton Hamilton. I was thrilled to have my picture story read by Ms. Andrews, accompanied by music and sound effects in their latest show. You can hear it by going to:
In this chapter, we look at Frisbee. Is it a game of peace and love, or is it a harbinger of doom? And why were the Ancient Greeks so bad at it?
To go there directly, click on: Chapter Eight: Frisbee
Dan Bar-el 