A strange topic for a blog post leading up to the joyous holidays? For many this is a tough time, with the merriness of the season overshadowed by the recent or long ago death of a loved one. Because The Rock and the Butterfly (my latest book) is about friendship and loss, I was asked…

I hope you have had a wonderful summer of reading, writing, swimming, boating, or whatever excites you most about our all-too-short summer season. And I hope you have much to look forward to as we launch into fall — as I do. Orca Books releases The Rock and the Butterfly by me and Brooke Kerrigan, a picture…

Like this photo, this fall seems to have a lot going on. So thankful I am that I am able to engage in all this… I’m taking a fitness class that has me working on cardio, strength, and balance, to supplement what walking the dog does for me. I’m singing with a women’s choir, Just Sing,…

Soon after learning my dog was seriously ill and unlikely to recover, I had a dream. Georgia and I were walking. She was on a leash that kept getting longer as the weave of its nylon fabric unravelled, until it was hanging between us by only a thread. I woke up before the last remaining…

Whatever your plans for the summer season now upon us, I wish you days — or at least moments — filled with all you find beautiful in your life. And lots of time for reading some great books too!

… as Paul Simon wrote in the lyrics of “Old Friends” while still in his twenties. My birthday is this month. Friends older than I am smile or even laugh when I say how strange it feels to be on the brink of seventy. “You’re so young,” one said to me recently. I suppose in…

What do these books have in common? 1. Both were signed to me personally and mailed to me from the US by their authors. 2. I value both books highly, and even moreso the connections I’ve made with their authors, whom I have never met. This would not be the case, were it not for…

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…

There is much to love about spring in Canada: longer days, warmer temperatures, trees budding, flowers blooming. This year it may be harder for many to find or hold onto hope in the season than other years, with all that has been lost by so many since last spring, and with so much uncertainty about what the…

Like many, my partner and I send out fewer cards than we used to. We may not have sent any last year. We are sending out a handful this year, but I wanted to share our card with all who read my blog as subscribers or as occasional visitors. The message inside reads:   As…

When I was a teacher (eons ago), one of my favourite writing assignments to give students came with the change of seasons. The idea was to write a “Goodbye…Hello…” piece based on things they were leaving behind and things they were looking ahead to. Something like, depending on the season: Goodbye hockey. Hello baseball. Goodbye sandals.…

I feel like the ground in winter, Hard, cold, dark, dead, unyielding. Then hope pokes through me Like a crocus. — Jean Little If you’re feeling at all these days like the frozen ground in winter, my wish is that hope will soon come to sit alongside your fears, your sadness, your despair, your numbness, your…

The World Wide Web was invented by an English scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, in 1989. Through the 1990s, it became increasingly useful and popular. Thanks to my tech-savvy sister, Janet Barclay, www.kathystinson.com came into being in 1999.   Janet wrote about last year’s total makeover of my site (after many updates along the way) on her own site: Janet Barclay:…

A friend recently sent me a “Memory” of hers that popped up on Facebook. It was something I’d tagged her with ten years ago. What’s still the same? she asked me. What has changed? Here’s my answer. THEN: I am going to Liberia in February. NOW: One of the writers I worked with there has…

This summer my blog will feature of series of posts inspired by my sister. (This is not the first time she has inspired me.) In a recent blog post of her own, she mentioned a question she posed to her followers on Facebook: If a holiday was named in your honour, what would it commemorate,…

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…

You know you’ve made the big time when your name appears as a clue in the crossword of a national newspaper. (Okay, so it had to be The Post.) The clue to No. 7 Down on April 30 was “Canadian Children’s author Stinson” 5 letters. That’s me! So I decided it was time to start…

I am well and truly home. I’ve celebrated my daughter’s birthday, visited with my son and his wife, had lunch with my sister and my dad, and settled back into daily routines with my husband and my dog. On the work front, I’ve sent a writer whose manuscript I’m editing comments to congratulate her on…

Joanna Perkin first wrote me in 2003 to tell me she’d enjoyed reading the first two Marie-Claire books. I wrote her back, she wrote me back, and so on. We kept up a correspondence – about books we’d read and about writing stories, because like me Joanna is both a reader and a writer –…

Last week I had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony at Dalhousie University where Cornelia Oberlander was receiving yet another honorary degree. Giving the convocation address, she spoke the importance of taking risks. To paraphrase: “To make the world a better place, we cannot keep doing things the same old way they have always…

It’s always nice when a fan of one’s books comes up to you at the end of a reading, and yesterday at Word on the Street was especially so.  At the end of a long afternoon of reading and signing, on a gorgeous fall afternoon, a woman sat down beside me in the Little Reader’s…

We moved house a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve had lots of people ask how we’re “settling in” and how we’re enjoying the new place. I’m really enjoying getting set up here, but I’m also very much looking forward to just “being” here – writing, reading, doing puzzles, and of course taking Keisha for…

Today my sister is coming. I’m pretty excited because she hasn’t been here since the day after we moved in, when she did a great job helping me get our new kitchen organized.  We instituted what we call our “sister visits” a number of years ago, when we discovered that much as we enjoy visiting in…

On Monday morning I walked into the dining room at the Sylvia Hotel. A woman at a table at the far end of the room waved. At me? I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew there; there must be someone behind me, I thought. But the woman seemed to be looking at me and…

My sister Janet tagged me earlier this week. I’ve decided to use her challenge to “play along” with her as an opportunity to write about some of the things I’ve only thought about blogging about this month. 1. Perhaps a children’s writer should not admit to this, but for years I’ve felt rather “bah humbug” about…

It felt great to be back in my novel-in-progress this past week and I’m really pleased with the progress I made. I started on Monday with 103 notes to myself [embedded like this in the manuscript] and I dealt with enough of them by Friday that I now have only 20 left – and that’s with having added…

Congratulations to Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who has been promoted to Officer of the Order of Canada “for her influence and contributions as a landscape architect who sets new standards of excellence through her environmentally responsible landscape designs.” Members of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects will have the opportunity to hear her speak at the organization’s…

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…

It seems fitting, it being Inspirational Role Models Month in the US, that I should meet this week with a professor from Smith College to discuss her work on a book about Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. “Like you,” she said in her initial email contact, “I was asked by Cornelia to write a book, and like…

An email from a friend told me about the Christmas baking she’d been doing. I responded to her: You will be happy to know that even this grinch sees baking shortbreads as a must-do every Christmas. It’s even a want-to do. One year I baked shortbreads and other delightful sweet nibblies in the company of…

Years ago, when I first started celebrating Christmas with the Carver family, toward the end our turkey dinner my father-in-law Humphrey would begin a round of toasts. Each person at the table would in turn propose a toast to someone not at the table with us. Because the Carvers had extended family all over the…

Walking my dog one morning in the last week of 2009, lamenting the fact that another year had gone by and I had yet to figure out how to fit time for all my interests into my life, I came up with a plan I think will help me do it. (Notice I don’t call…

Did you know that today is “Wear red” day? And no, I didn’t make that up! Even though as author of Red is Best, maybe I should have. 🙂 Red’s not your colour, you say? You have nothing red in your closet? Why not – just for today – borrow something from your sister, your…

Last week I said I’d say more on the subject of scrapbooks. I started keeping one in 1982 after my first book, Red is Best, was published. I put my rejection letters in it, the letter Annick sent saying they’d like to meet with me, the earliest Robin Baird Lewis sketches I saw that convinced…

Sunday was Mother’s Day. My kids took me and their stepdad to dinner the night before the official Mother’s Day, at one of their favourite Toronto restaurants and they gave me the lovely roses you see pictured here. I’m grateful for their presence in our lives and I imagine that as I grow older, that…

This has been quite a month for me and my family. My son graduated in the top 10 percent of his class, having completed his MBA while working full time. My daughter danced up a storm at a recent performance put on by the school where she’s been having a great time mastering the art…

There are serious approaches a person could take to World Food Day, but one of my ongoing aims in life is to be less earnest in my writing. (Hard when my best ideas for books lately seem to be about serious stuff.) So on this WFD, instead of blogging about world hunger, genetically modified foods, or…

Sometimes I lament the time it takes to keep up with emails, as many people do these days. But I received a few recently that made me very glad for this way of connecting with people I might otherwise not hear from at all. Like this one: Hi Kathy!! I just bought and read your…

The headline “An edible education” in the Toronto Star the other day (Nov 3) caught my eye. “Scarborough high school’s garden supplies cafeteria, inspires students and feeds community”. “It’s believed to be Canada’s first school-based market garden,” the article says. I wondered if that was true. Cornelia Oberlander has been encouraging kids to plant vegetable…

When my book group gathers in December, we break from our usual practice of discussing a book we’ve all read. One year I read aloud to the group a story from Rick Book’s Christmas in Canada. Another year we all brought a short Christmas story or poem that we liked. Last year we laughed along…

Did you know that signing your donor card may not be enough to ensure that, in the event of your death, your usable organs and tissue will be donated to someone who needs them? The Canadian Society of Transplantation website provides information on steps you can take, wherever in Canada you live, to ensure that your…

During the last week of 2009, I devised a plan to help me give more time to activities I enjoy, but never seem to find enough time for. I called it The PIRDY Plan (P for Photography, I for Internet, R for Reading, D for Drawing, Y for Yoga. And I was in the plan…

According to Volunteer Canada, there are 12.5 million volunteers in this country, working to make a difference in their communities. The United Nations has declared 2011 the 10th International Year of the Volunteer. To help celebrate the impact volunteers make, the Toronto Association for Volunteer Administration has set an interesting goal: to collect 2011 images…

Seven years ago this week, I began volunteering at the CNIB Recording Studio in Toronto – reading books and teching for others who are reading. In addition to magazine articles and chunks of various textbooks, (and the foreword to a book being read by a male narrator), I have read a wide range of books – for kids,…

So, with the kids home for March Break, what are you going to do to help keep them entertained? (Besides reading lots of Kathy Stinson books, of course!) Why not take inspiration from the open-face sandwiches pictured here? (Get it open face sandwiches?) These faces were created by various members of my extended family at the…

I’ve loved reading books for longer than I can remember. (That’s me in the picture, reading in my gramma’s backyard.) As an adult, I started to wonder if I would like writing them, too. I wondered if I could write something that people who didn’t know me would like reading. I was almost 30 when…

It’s still just once a week that I login at Yoga Today for an hour of yoga practice – usually on Monday morning, before I get back into my work and think I’m too busy to fit it in. But there’s one instruction that the women leading the online classes offer that stays with me…

My dad’s birthday is this week. I wrote this post about him in response to a challenge to “blog about great parents”. My dad didn’t tell me how to live a life of courage and integrity. He showed me, in how he lived his. When I was nine, and my siblings four and fourteen, he…

When I was growing up in the 1960s, most girls were looking at pretty limited options: nurse, teacher, or secretary. I liked school, so I wanted to be a teacher. I taught elementary school in Etobicoke (as far west as you can go in Toronto before you hit Mississauga) for five years. I also wanted…

I turned 50 in 2002, so now I’m… Yikes! How did that happen? Find answers to other FAQs here.

Updated April 2016. Yes! I had a wonderful dog named Keisha for almost ten years. She was a golden doodle. She’s practically famous because the illustrator of A Pocket Can Have A Treasure In It used Keisha as a model for the puppy in the story.   Now I have another golden doodle. Her name is Georgia. Never heard…

I do my best to write full-time, but I don’t earn enough money from book sales to make a full income, so I do other things – related to writing – to make up what I need. I work as an editor. I lead writing workshops for adults and for children. I speak at conferences.…

Not especially. I wrote stories in school, but not after school or on weekends, like some kids do. And I certainly didn’t think about being a writer when I grew up. But I did love to read, and I think that all the books I was reading over many years were turning me into a writer,…

I sure have! Most of the people in the photo here are authors. A few are illustrators. How many can you identify? Can you find me in there? All but one of the authors lives in Canada. Can you find her? She’s really famous! Meeting and hanging out with other authors is one of the great…

I wanted a website that would help promote me and my books, but I had no idea about how to set one up, and wasn’t willing to take time away from my writing to learn. Luckily for me, my sister knew how to do it. Creating websites is part of her business. Since setting up…

I love taking pictures. Last summer someone complimented me on my eye and even said she’d like to hang some of my work in her gallery. I haven’t done anything about that yet, but her encouragement gave me the idea of sharing some of my photos on my blog. I hope that what I pull…

This month’s photo, like last month’s, was taken in Nova Scotia – this time on the beach at the Kejimkukik Seaside Adjunct. We’ve taken our Seaside Writing Workshop Retreat participants there each year, and hope to again this year, but in this photo it’s my lovely daughter enjoying the enormous sky and exploring one of…

The person in the front of the canoe in this photo is Kristin Millar. The remarkable thing about this scene is that Kristin is attached to an LVAD (a Left Ventricular Assistive Device) – a pump that does the work the heart does for most of us, without our thinking about it much. But Kris…

Between now and my next post, I will turn 60. Turn can mean ‘curdle’ but it can also mean ‘twirl’. I’m choosing to believe I’ll be twirling into my next decade. I can’t pretend I’m 100% enthusiastic about my upcoming birthday, but – please pardon the cliché – it’s better than the alternative. And so…

A ten-minute walk from my home, I can enjoy this lovely view. Well, not quite. Since this photo was taken two years ago, a metal barrier of sorts has been embedded in the rock with a sign attached warning hikers “Deep Gorge Keep Back from Edge”. If I were drunk or otherwise inspired to foolhardy…

I bought my first computer in 1983. It was a Commodore 64 and it was great. I’ve had many computers since, all of them (despite urgings from Mac-user friends) IBM clones – PCs – until this summer. While at the cottage, a long-time Mac-user cousin said, “What you want is a MacBook Air.” “Oh yeah,…

I sometimes get teased because I like taking pictures of my food. Like this spinach salad full of strawberries, blueberries, and toasted almonds. What makes this salad special is that it was made by an old friend who insisted on bringing it to my house when we got together this spring for a long overdue…

Across the country, news of Claire’s death on August 11 was met with much sadness. Friend, writer, mentor, a founding member of CANSCAIP, wife, mother, grandmother – it goes without saying she will be missed. Among words used to describe her on CANSCAIP’s Facebook page (and elsewhere) are: kind, funny, smart, wise, witty, wonderful, a…

Having read several novels by Richard Wagamese, (Ragged Company, Indian Horse, and Dream Wheels), I knew as soon as I found out he offers workshops, that I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from him. In the spring I registered for a workshop that was to take place in August, and was sent a copy of his handbook,…

September in Nova Scotia. October in British Columbia. November in Alberta. What wonderful opportunities to meet readers across this wonderful country of ours. I’m often in Nova Scotia in the early fall. Knowing this, organizers of Word on the Street in Halifax invited me to take part. My audience at the CBC tent included (much…

With the arrival of a new year often comes the tendency to reflect on what’s working well in our lives and where we’d like to make improvements. One of the most common resolutions made is “I’m going to lose weight!” A worthwhile goal for many, no doubt. But whatever your bathroom scale says, there may…

If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, you’re missing out on a good, fun way of finding and organizing all kinds of material relating to your interests – however many and however varied they may be – and of sharing your interests with a whole world of people who share those interests. I joined Pinterest last…

It’s great to travel but I must say it’s great to get back home too.

No, this post has nothing to do with “The Sound of Music”. Before anyone gets offended because they’re not in this photo, let me point out that I’ve clearly stated these are a few of my favourite things, and yes, I do know that people and animals shouldn’t be referred to as things anyway. I…

Because my sister is clever in so many ways I’m not, I have an attractive, helpful, well-maintained website and blog, and have had a presence on Facebook and other social media networks for some time. This month, thanks to Janet, my online presence has been further updated. KathyStinson.com became “mobile-friendly” so it’s much easier to…

Almost a year ago I was inspired by my sister’s blog post to think of just one word to sum up my goals or resolutions for the new year. I’m sure one that came to mind was “patience” because even as I get older and supposedly mellower, I still struggle with being impatient for things…

Since the publication of Red is Best I’ve been treated to all kinds of stories from people of all ages about their experiences with the colour red. This spring I was privileged to hear one of the most moving of such stories. At a volunteer appreciation event at the CNIB, I had the pleasure of…

This second post in this summer’s series of three was inspired by my sister’s blog post about her answer to a question put to her by a prospective client: What 5 songs would you want to have with you if you were trapped on a desert island? This of course got me to thinking about…

Facebook reminded me recently that one year ago The Man with the Violin won a TD Children’s Literature Award — as if I will ever forget such a fantastic season of celebrations! Tonight I’ll be attending the Awards ceremony again, eager to hear which books will be this year’s winners, and happy to celebrate all the books’ writers, illustrators,…

My sister once wrote a blog post that inspired me to sum up my New Years goals or resolutions in one word. My word for 2016: FOCUS. I don’t think I’ve ever found it as difficult to focus as I have in the last months of this year. So many pleasurable activities have been calling…

Two books I’ve read since my blog post referring to an article “Addicted to Distraction” have helped cement my resolve to sharpen my focus and reduce the stress that comes with living distracted: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr and The Distraction Trap by Frances Booth. Recommended reading…

Today would have been Keisha’s tenth birthday but five weeks ago we learned she had cancer and four weeks ago she visited the vet for the last time. For a week Peter and I together mourned her loss, at home, received condolences from family, friends, and dog-walking acquaintances, and poured over hundreds of photos in…

Did you know that Paul McCartney was 16 years old when he and John Lennon wrote “When I’m Sixty Four”? Paul and Ringo are the only two Beatles who lived to see 64. John was murdered at 40 and George died from lung cancer at 58. When the song was released in 1967, I was…

Labour Day weekend on the south shore of Nova Scotia included happy hours with family and then with beloved writer-friend, Budge Wilson. My first weekend home after a long summer away, I made seeing family here a priority: son, daughter, sister, dad, and attachments where applicable (including this lovely boy I hadn’t seen since July). …

One of my favourite photo editing tools, PicMonkey, recently came out with templates for all kinds of neat photo projects, including one that helped me create this — How many selected significant events, captured here, can you identify? To the first person to list all 9, I’ll send a big e-hug. Oh what the heck.…

Margaret Buffie is a writer-friend I’ve seen far too little of in recent years. Facebook has kept us connected to a limited degree, enough for us to appreciate that we’re both passionate about photography and nature and family and our summer places in northwestern Ontario. (Or is hers in southeastern Manitoba? I’ve been to hers…

My wonderful webmaster who also happens to be my wonderful sister is working on a new website for me. What do you like about what you see here now? What don’t you like? Is there anything you wish was here that isn’t? Anything you wish wasn’t? Answer any of these questions as a Comment on this…