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May 07, 2024Wendy Orr Takes Readers to The Valley of Horses and Beyond in Her Newest Book
During the fraught and uncertain years of the COVID-19 pandemic, author Wendy Orr and her family found themselves in Australia, locked-down and away from family back in Canada. Worried about the ways ...
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June 09, 2020
What Makes a Good Children’s Book?
You’re buying a book for a new baby, or for your own restless 12-year-old. You know what books delighted you when you were a kid. But are those books actually good? And are they likely to please and ...
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June 16, 2020
The School Library - Why It Matters More Than Ever
School libraries, now sometimes called Information Centres, have been getting short shrift in the last decade or so. Budgets have been slashed, staff hours cut and distributed among multiple locations, ...
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June 19, 2020
To Pre-read, or Not to Pre-read?
Should you be vetting your kids’ reading material? For many, the answer seems so obvious, you don’t even need to ask the question. To make sure kids are choosing books that meet their approval, ...
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June 25, 2023The Rule of Three
I read somewhere once that a writer will always write three versions of their book: one for themselves, one for the professional reader, and one for the public reader. Knowing this has changed my life ...
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March 02, 2017
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Being a Writer #1 - Q& A With Andrew Sullivan
For the last two months I've been writer-in-residence at U of T in Scarborough. This means I get an office to write in, I run a writing group with creative writing students once a week, and give editorial ...
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May 05, 2022"Our World is an Amazing Place" Laura Alary on Her New Kids' Book Exploring Photosynthesis, Food, & Connection
It's easy to forget how fascinating the idea that plants can "eat" sunlight and use it to grow and thrive actually is, but in Laura Alary's Sun in My Tummy (Pajama Press, with artwork by Andrea Blinick) ...
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September 22, 2022"Not Only Landmarks, But Vibration" Tanya Turton on Her Love Letter to Her Toronto Neighbourhood and Black Queer Womanhood
To lose a sibling as a young adult is a brutal experience. For Jade Brown, the protagonist of debut novelist Tanya Turton's Jade is a Twisted Green (Rare Machines/Dundurn Press), the tragedy is made ...
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October 22, 2021RIDING THE WAVES
Marigold stood, held up her fist and struck a defiant pose as she recited William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus.” Out of the night that covers me,Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever ...
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November 23, 2020
Comparing Myself with May from My Day With Gong Gong
Writing May, the main character in my kids book My Day With Gong Gong, was a joy! It was my first time writing from the perspective of a kid as an adult, and for kids as a main audience. A lot of her ...