Tag Archives: OLA

Early 2023 Upcoming Events

Welcome to 2023, friends! I’m so pleased to announce that I actually have a few in-person events coming up in the next few months. I hope to add more, but, as always, if you’d like me to come visit with your students/patrons/book club, please check out my visits page and get in touch.

Ontario Library Association Super Conference – Friday, February 3, 10:00am – signing at the Orca Book Publishers booth #410/412. I will be signing books and giving out tons of bookmarks.

See the full list of author signings here.


Sharp Words Book FairSaturday, February 25, 10 – 6pm Bridgeworks in Hamilton (200 Caroline Street North).

I will be signing books with May be an image of text that says 'SHA WRDS RDS HAMILTON'S Winter Book Fair FEBRUARY 25, 2023 SUPER CRAWL' several other kidlit authors. There’s also a full day of programming. See here for details and follow for up-to-date information. 

FREE to attend. 

 


OLA Forest of Reading Festival of Trees – May in Toronto. More details to come. Stay tuned!

 

Trees and Tours and News, Oh My!

First, let me start with the Oh, My! Has it really been this long since my last blog post? Wow. Yeah, I guess it has. I’d like to blame my lack of communication on being really busy and that’s part of it, but mostly I didn’t have enough cool stuff to share. Until now.

So. Where to start.

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Cool Thing #1 – SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE has been named an Honour* Book by the fine kids of Manitoba in their Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Awards. Cool, right? MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch won, which is awesome and so well deserved, but my book was one of two honour books (with UNGIFTED by Gordon Korman). I can’t begin to tell you how amazing this is.

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Cool Thing #2 – As you may know, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE is a Red Maple nominee in the Ontario Forest of Reading program. Another huge honour for me and my little book about ghosts, boys and bras. So I was afforded the opportunity to do a little bit of touring last week up to North Bay and Parry Sound to celebrate at their Festival of Trees. I didn’t take near enough pictures, but here are a few. I always have a great time hanging out with book-lovers of all kinds and I have to say that this event made me feel like quite the rock star. Look at all those fans! Thank you to the Near North School District for making this happen. What a great couple of days!

 

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And this isn’t even the whole crowd. I was told there were about 1600 kids there. Amazing!

Here’s a smaller crowd of SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE fans who came to my presentation and sat in the front row (check out their cool SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE buttons!). <3!

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Here I am with fellow Red Maple nominees, K.L. Armstrong and M. A. Marr (LOKI’S WOLVES: THE BLACKWELL PAGES)

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And a group photo with the rest of the authors (K.L. and M. A. had to leave early) and some of the event organizers. Thank you Near North!

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Also, I was fortunate enough to do some school visits in Sudbury on my trip. Check out the cool artwork some kids did to tie in with my book:

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Here I am with Ms. Vigna’s ASD class. These kids were so great and engaged and asked some of the best questions. I loved meeting you!

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AMAZING! Thank you so much to these great kids. I loved meeting you all and chatting about books.

There will be more Forest of Reading events next week and I’ll update again once I have more pictures.

Until then, thanks for making it to the bottom of my post. Here’s your reward, a dancing chicken:

 

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*These cool things are happening in Canada, so I’ll be using my Canadian spelling here.

I’ve always loved trees and nature, but now especially.

AG00412_Happy Autumn!

Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for, despite it being a tough couple of months. I’m not going to go into great detail here, but I lost my mom fairly suddenly in September and if you know me or follow me on Facebook, you know we were close and well, it sucks.

Okay, so that was some detail, but I don’t want to get all maudlin on you; I’m here today to talk about the things I’m thankful for*:

  1. Turkey
  2. My husband, who makes a mean turkey
  3. Family and friends who have been amazing these past weeks
  4. Being shortlisted for the Fiction list of the 2013 Hamilton Literary Awards (which take place on my birthday–attention universe!). I’m in excellent company on this very small list of three and am amazed to be on there. Go Hammer!
  5. That I was able to go to NYC last week and have a really good time, including seeing ANNIE! Check out Katherine Longshore’s cool recap because I’m too lazy to do one of my own (includes goofy dancing video–must see).
  6. redmapleThat SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE has been chosen to be on the 2014 Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading Red Maple list.  This is one of those things that I crossed my fingers for, hoping it would happen, but didn’t dare believe it would. This is HUGE and to be recognized here at home in Ontario is so special. I’m honoured and in such great company with wonderful fellow Canadian authors that I really feel like we all win. I’m also so glad I attended the 2013 award event in support of my author friends, so I have a good sense of the impact of this program. I’m so, so, so excited and I know my mom is watching and she is, too.
  7. This means more readers for SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE. So cool, right? My little book about bras and boys and ghosts and kissing. Still feels weird to me that people who are not immediate family members want to read my book.
  8. There is a Chinese food buffet that we go to called…wait for it…RED MAPLE! I think it’s kind of the law that I need to go there and celebrate, right? Just as soon as I eat all of this turkey…
  9. YOU. Thank YOU for being here and for supporting me and my book. Even though SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE came out last year, it’s still finding its way to readers and I’m so thankful for that. I wish I could hug you all, but failing that, anyone want a drumstick? Some turkey soup? Casserole? A turkey sandwich, perhaps? Please?

*As I finished writing this list, it occurred to me that I should note that these items are not in any order of importance.