NatureTag

Nicholas Ruddock & Ashley Barron Show Tenderness to Tiny Fragile Snakes, and Other Creatures

It's always fun and insightful to have picture book authors featured on Open Book, but we're doubly lucky today to share this conversation between author Nicholas Ruddock and illustrator Ashley Barron. ...

Oonya Kempadoo Explores the Deep Blue of the Caribbean in Naniki

The origins and ancestry of a people are almost always tied closely to their relationship with the lands and waters around them, where they makes their lives and leave traces of themselves for future ...

Mariam Pirbhai Digs Deep to Find Profound Truths in Gardens, and Ourselves

We are surrounded by plantlife all the time, and yet, how often do we really think about the ways that we interact with even the most familiar vegetation? Perhaps it takes a person who has travelled far ...

Jan Conn's 10th Collection Blends Flowers, Neurons, & More to Celebrate and Cry Out for the Earth

Jan Conn's award-winning brand of poetry, which she has established in her nine previous collections, is absorbing, smart, and constantly curious; a poetry engaged with the world as it is and might be.  ...

Co-Creators Kirsten Pendreigh & Crystal Smith Help Young Readers Find "Comfort and Connection in Natural Spaces"

Finding ways to connect to the people we've loved and lost can be a complex process. In author Kirsten Pendreigh and artist Crystal Smith's gentle and beautiful new picture book, Maybe a Whale (Groundwood ...

Frieda Wishinsky Uses the Hidden Secrets of Gardens to Explore Community in Her New Picture Book

Plenty of people enjoy the beauty of a flower in a garden, but when was the last time you asked yourself what a flower was actually doing? In Frieda Wishinsky's A Flower is a Friend (Pajama Press, illustrated ...

Marcus McCann on Writing the Ethics and History of Park Cruising (Plus Some Helpful Advice from Dionne Brand)

Many Torontonians will know lawyer and writer Marcus McCann from his 2016 defence of several people charged in Project Marie, an undercover sting operation where Toronto police targeted people—mostly ...

SJ Okemow on Her Heartwarming Debut Picture Book's Unconventional Path to Publication

The humble dandelion rarely gets much love, often cited as a nuisance weed that spreads easily and takes over. But the hardy little plant has many lessons to teach us, and in SJ Okemow's Âmî Osâwâpikones (Annick ...

"Poetry is a Tool for Making Sense of Our Pasts" Kate Siklosi on Challenging Herself in Her New Poetry Collection

Kate Siklosi's Selvage (Invisible Publishing) contains hybrids and graftings, as gestured to in its title, mashing up self and salvage, two concepts that come together in powerful ways as Siklosi populates ...

Read an Funny, Gentle Excerpt from Veterinarian David Waltner-Toews's Memoir of Backyard Chickens

When we think about the relationships between humans and animals that have changed the course of history, it's easy to default to the obvious: the horse, the dog, the ox. But there is a more humble animal ...