Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the festivities at Word Vancouver (the west coast version of Word on the Street) and what a grand day it was. As always, it was wonderful to see the range of books published by authors who live here.

The highlight was hearing some of my colleagues talk about their new works. I especially enjoyed seeing Irene N. Watts (author) and Kathryn Shoemaker (illustrator) speak about their graphic novel, Seeking Refuge — the story of a young girl, Marianne, who finds refuge in England after being rescued from the Nazis on the Kindertransport. (Irene helped me enormously on my own book on this topic, Rescuing the Children.)

I also stopped by the booth of our local organization,  CWILL BC (Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia), and was happy to see their presence there. At the top of this post, is the lovely CWILL banner designed and drawn by our very own Mary Jane Muir. (If you are ever looking for an author or illustrator to visit your classroom, you can search for one on the CWILL website.)

It was an excellent day to celebrate books and writing in our book-loving community!

I’ve often said if I weren’t a writer, I’d like to be a cook. Spending time in the kitchen is one of my favourite things to do. I find it both relaxing and creative — especially when I am baking pies (my specialty) for family and friends.

For years, I’ve wanted to combine my two of my favourite pastimes: writing and cooking, and now I’m happy to say, I am hard at work on a cookbook for kids. It turns out that writing a cookbook isn’t as easy as I might have thought. Each recipe requires much testing and retesting, both on my own and with the kids in my family, who provide me with a lot of great feedback and inspiration.

And helping me along are the books on food that I am currently reading: The Cassoulet that Saved Our Marriage, which is a wonderful collection of essays about people and their relationship with food and family; and Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Roadtrip, an account of two women who spent five months camping across Canada, eating and talking to locals about their favourite foods.

My own book, Cooking with Bear, which combines a story and 20 recipes won’t be out for some time, but it continues to be a fun and interesting project. More on this later.

In the meantime, I can recommend both of the books noted here. I’m certain they will provide you with hours of happy reading and eating!

I am working on a presentation for the BC Teacher-Librarian Association conference that takes place next week. As I prepare my slide-show, I’ve been thinking about my gratitude to librarians and the valuable work they do. Such a noble calling!

Much of the great learning that happens in schools is a result of the dedication and enthusiasm of the librarians who support students and their classroom projects with a librarian’s wide knowledge of books and finely-honed research skills.

Sadly, funding for school libraries has dropped dramatically in recent times and most school libraries do not have a full-time librarian. Some schools have no librarian at all and the library is run by clerical staff or parent volunteers instead.

Meanwhile, many librarians have returned to classroom teaching or they shuttle back and forth between two or three schools, trying to keep all the libraries in their care up-to-date and functioning. An impossible task, I’d say.

So, in this lead up to the conference, I’d like to say an enormous thank you to the teacher-librarians of this world. You have my total support and appreciation. I know that your work is crucial to the development of literacy and the ongoing success of kids in school. I am very grateful.

See you next week!

When I was a teacher, I might have held the record for the longest daily story time in my school. Every afternoon, right after lunch, the students and I enjoyed book after book and were always reluctant to move on to the next activity on the program.

I was told by the teacher-librarian that I was the most frequent visitor to the school’s library and, as was true in my life outside of my teaching job, I was often found in the hallways struggling under the weight of a staggering armload of books.

Why? I love books and reading. This fascination with the printed word began in the early days of my childhood and has continued until today.

Now that I am no longer teaching, I read stacks of books to the small children in my family, carrying on a wonderful tradition that began with my parents and grandparents (and likely beyond).

All this to say, let’s read more to our children. Let’s make story time in schools one of the most important features of the day. Let’s choose a wide variety of books: long, short, old, new, wordless, poetic, books with heart, books with humour and books that celebrate who we are, in both fiction and nonfiction.

A great story is a gift to a child. One that can last a lifetime.

Let’s get reading.

The program to the Vancouver Writer’s Fest arrived in my mailbox last week and it has been fun looking through the wealth of festival offerings. Lots of great authors are coming to town to wow us with their new books. It’s exciting!

And from our very own city, are some wonderful authors too. Congrats to my friend and colleague Tanya Kyi! You can read about her festival events here.

I’m a festival member and one of the benefits of membership (a bargain at $25 a year) is being able to buy tickets before they are released for general purchase.

The pages of my program are now flagged with a zillion brightly coloured sticky notes marking the sessions that interest me most. The difficult next step is to narrow down these choices into something more manageable. Help!

(Member tickets go on sale on Sept. 1. Tickets for the public’s purchase on Sept. 8.)

The festival is in late October, so it’s a long wait — but it is entertaining to contemplate the fall readings schedule as we amble through the remainder of this hot, dry west coast summer. (Where is the rain???)

Cheers!

I wasn’t able to attend last night’s celebration of BC authors, but was definitely there in spirit. How wonderful that we have an annual event to recognize the depth of writing talent found here on the lovely west coast of Canada.

Congratulations to all the nominees and winners of the 2014 BC Book Prizes! To read the complete list of nominated authors and prizes, please go here.

The Book Prizes Gala has always been a favourite night for me. It is a thrill to see the huge gathering of avid booklovers coming together to celebrate the written word.

Last night, for the second year in a row, a children’s author was chosen to receive the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. Congratulations to my colleague and friend, Kit Pearson!

In the jury’s comments it was noted that, “In a career spanning three decades, Kit Pearson has demonstrated mastery in that most traditional of genres, the novel for young readers. In both her fantasies and her historical fiction she looks to the past: to Canada’s war guests, to the War of 1812, to Alberta in 1949, and to Mayne Island in the 1930s. She sees children as those residents of the past who are largely overlooked in the story of where we have come from.”

If you’d like to learn more about Kit and her books, please go here.

Writers spend much of their time alone at their keyboards, dressed in their dog-walking clothes — writing is by nature a solitary and casually-attired profession. But once a year, the BC writing community dons glamourous outfits and joins with one another in a great celebration of books, authors and their amazing accomplishments.

Thank you to the juries and organizers of such a remarkable event. And hearty congratulations to all the writers in this province (and everywhere!) who toil at their keyboards day after day, creating inspiring works for us all to read.

I have been an avid reader for most of my life and have found so much comfort and solace in books. Reading was always a favourite activity and one I could count on when life took its inevitable difficult turns. Books taught me a lot about the world and other people. They gave me hope and satisfied my curiosity. Books were very good friends.

Little did I realize, when I was younger, that avid readers often become writers. That’s what I always tell students in the schools that I visit. Then I ask the group, “Who likes to read?” I invariably find keen readers (like my younger self) who love nothing more than to immerse themselves in a book. I tell them that they may become writers someday. The children are always thrilled.

I am frequently asked by other adults about how to break into writing, and how to get a manuscript published. My advice always begins with a suggestion to read. Read widely and read voraciously; read in the genres you wish to be published in and read other ones, too. When you are reading, you are learning about the ways that words can be strung together and what makes a compelling story. You are discovering how to create a memorable book. You might need to read hundreds or thousands of books before you are ready to write one. (Most people don’t want to hear this; they want a faster road to publication.)

But getting published is not a speedy process. It can take years and years. You’ve got to love reading and writing more than the idea of getting published. And not everyone does.

I had a fall some months ago and have been on a long, slow recuperation from a concussion. In the early days, I wasn’t supposed to read or write. It was very tough to give up those activities. The months have passed and I am thrilled to be back to reading several books in a week, and also polishing a manuscript to submit.

Reading and writing: what wonderful pastimes! So happy to have them as an integral part of my life.

I have never been the kind of person who believes we should tell kids what to read. In my mind, we should give kids opportunities to read all kinds of books and surround them with many chances to do so: at bedtime or school story time, by taking trips to the library, giving gifts of books on topics that a child is interested in and showing our own interest by having a house filled with books and providing daily examples of us reading.

Nor have I been the kind of person who thought kids shouldn’t read [fill in the blanks here: comic books, scary books, books with fantasy elements etc.]. I think kids should be able to read widely and in any way that suits them.

So you can imagine my distress the other day, when I was in a local bookstore and I saw an adult stop a child from buying a book that she really wanted to read. The adult had decided that the book was too difficult for the girl and made her return it to the shelf. It is true that the girl couldn’t fluently read every word on the page (the adult made her read aloud in the store), but the child definitely had the gist of the story and was very keen to tackle it. It was all I could do to stop myself from buying the book for the girl and smuggling it into her backpack.

I thought to myself that if there is ever a way to discourage a child from reading, this was the way to do it. Not every child reads fluently, not every child picks the most age-appropriate book, but if we want kids to develop a love of reading, we want to encourage them — not set up roadblocks to their enthusiasm and eventual success.

On that note, a big thank you to my parents who let me read anything and everything, and I did so voraciously, including the volumes of Sigmund Freud when I was still a kid. I don’t think I understood anything about the theories or even the language, but I was grateful to be allowed to wander over to the adult section of the library and pick out any book I wished to read. It made me feel like a reader and gave me a sense that the world of knowledge was wide open to me. It was liberating!

Sincere thanks to all those adults out there who are working hard to put great books into the hands of kids, and to help them become avid and enthusiastic readers. It is a most worthy endeavour.