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Did You Miss the Launch of The Girl Who Loved Giraffes?
Hearty thanks to the over 100 people who tuned in to hear multiple perspectives on this picture book biography last week. Editor Bev Brenna interviewed me, illustrator François Thisdale, the book’s subject Anne Innis Dagg, and Anne’s daughter Mary. We got brief perspectives from cohosts Fitzhenry & Whiteside and The Bookshelf too. Watch the recording…
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Bare Naked Review
There’s nothing quite like having a reviewer as highly respected as Dana Rudolph, founder of Mombian (a blog, resource directory, and book database for lesbian moms and other LGBTQ parents), totally get and appreciate all the decisions made during the course of creating one’s book. When Annick Press and I decided to update The Bare…
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Comfort, Hope, and Connection through Children’s Books
“Kathy Stinson’s stories have always found ways to offer hope and comfort, easily getting into the heads of her characters and recognizing what is important to them,” says Helen Kubiw in her CanLit for Little Canadians review of my latest book. Writing a story often begins for me with wondering, What would it be like…? To…
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Dark Spring
A strange title for a blog post at the beginning of autumn? It was prompted by an email I received last week from the chaplain at the Junior School at Havergal. She said: One of the things I’ve been wanting to do is help our girls process their Covid experiences in a diary (I’m doing…
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Children’s Book Resources During Covid19 and Beyond
Imagine a youtube channel devoted to video resources all about Canadian books for children and youth? Bibliovideo has been launched! The program will bring readings, interviews, activities, trailers, and reviews to teachers, parents, and kids of all ages. The closing of schools and libraries motivated the Canadian Children’s Book Centre to work hard to…
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Stepping Away, Letting Go
Sometimes the best way to renew waning enthusiasm for a project is to step away from it for a while. But what if you step away for a short time, then a longer time, and your enthusiasm simply doesn’t come back? Should you just let it go? Chalk that one up to ‘good practice’ despite…
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A Book Recommendation for Kids AND Writers
When I told friend and fellow writer Jean Little I was thinking of auditioning to read for the CNIB, she said, “Well, they don’t take just anybody you know.” It’s true! But they took me. This month I read Book #45 on my list of those I’ve narrated since passing my audition in 2004. Narrating The Word…
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Exciting News for The Man with the Violin
New editions — Korean and Portuguese coming soon too. But that’s not all that’s been happening with this book lately. The National Arts Centre has big plans. The multi-talented composer Anne Dudley has been laying the groundwork for a musical treatment of the book — for orchestra, solo violin, and narrator. Normal –…
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RED Hair & RED Trimmed Pajamas in a RED Room IS BEST!
Red Is Best is now older than I was when it was first published. It has appeared in hard cover, soft, and in board book formats, as an Annikin, a Gage big book, and as an e-book. And it’s been translated in many languages so kids in other countries can enjoy reading it too. Wow.…
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“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” Part 1
“Spectacular!” “Inspiring!” Two words people used to describe my keynote speech at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference last month. Pretty gratifying feedback! You missed it? Fear not! I’m going to post the whole speech here at “Turning the Pages.” “Sock Fluff” was my introduction to Loris Lesynski, back in the early 90s, before it was…
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Spring Gardens
When I’m not juggling writing, editing, and time with my family, one of my favourite pastimes at this time of year is gardening. Gardening is a lot like writing. How? When you make a change to solve one problem, it often creates a new problem to solve. You often have to yank out and discard…
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Bringing Robert Frost Home From Newfoundland
A man carried stacks of National Geographic magazines from his truck to a table in the Deer Lake Library. They dated back to the 1950s. One issue caught my eye. The face on the cover was not one I expected to see on a NG cover. It was the April 1976 issue. Inside, unrelated to…
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