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Last “Photo of the Month”
When I posted Photo of the Month #1 almost two years ago, I had every intention of showcasing one of my photos each month. It hasn’t turned out quite that way. Although this will be my last official “photo of the month”, I’ll still be putting up a photograph from time to time, but I’ll…
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Photo of the Month #2
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…
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Photo of the Month #4
There’s a bit of a disconnect between the mood in this photo and the mood I’m anticipating at the Hackmatack celebrations in Moncton this week, when hundreds of kids from all over New Brunswick will gather to honour the authors of books they have been reading this year. But there is a connection. Both came…
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Every Month is Something Month
February is African History Month. June is Pride Month. April gives us two causes for celebration. In honour of Autism Awareness Month, I offer this guide to internet safety for people with autism. In honour of National Poetry Month, I suggest The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach edited by Behn…
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Photo of the Month #9
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Since the two Sock Fluff posts straddling this one address some of my reading pleasures when I was growing up, I thought it would be fun to post a photo of me taken during that period of my life. Here I am with my dad. I blogged about him in the month of his birthday…
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Photo of the Month #11
I wasn’t crazy about writing when I was a kid, but I did like it when the teacher gave us a picture as a starting point, especially if the picture inspired questions. Who? What? Where? And the best one: Why? What would I have written if she’d given us this photo (which she couldn’t have…
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Photo of the Month #5
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…
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Photo of the Month #7
Is there anything more lovely than a summer sunset over a lake? This photo was taken looking out over Lake Huron on the way to the cottage in 2008. How many summer sunset photos do you have in your collection? 🙂
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Photo of the Month #1
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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…
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Photo of the Month #10
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It’s easy to love the colours of a Caribbean sea, captured during my first ever vacation to a warm place last month. But there’s beauty to be found in the often monochromatic world of a Canadian winter too. On the first day of this winter, I was struck by the bits of ice forming on…
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Photo of the Month #8
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This is my mother dancing with my father in 1974. It’s one of my favourite pictures of her. Sadly my mother passed away in 1996 with COPD, the same condition that took the life of Peter Gzowski. She would have been 86 in a couple of weeks. If you’re still watching over me, Mom –…
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Photo of the Month #12
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…
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Photo of the Month #3
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Of all the photos I shot during a spring river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest a few years ago, my favourites fell into the category of “Doors & Windows”. This one was taken in Miltenberg, when I wandered away from the tour group, as I found I tended to do quite a bit. How about…
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Photo of the Month #6
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I love the colours in this hammock. I love reading in it, too. But although we’re coming into our fourth summer in our current home, we haven’t yet found a place to hang it. Soon I hope, though, now that the heavy-lifting part of the work on my upcoming ya novel is done. (More on that…
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Photo Walking
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It’s been a tough bunch of months. There are more tough months ahead. I know how privileged I am to be having, personally, a “not too bad” pandemic, as far as pandemic experiences go. I’ve been lucky to have writing projects on the go that are engaging my heart and mind. And I enjoy photography…
Read More All My Bags AREN'T Packed
But I am ready to go. To Newfoundland. On Saturday. Or I will be when… Never mind. Talking to a group of Keene teens a few years ago (Keene is near Peterborough, Ontario), I was mentioning how much I enjoy traveling roads I haven’t been on before, as I had that morning, and realized that…
Read More Biography and High Res Photo
Please feel free to use any of these bios verbatim or to combine them, or to adapt them to best suit your purposes. A Short Bio (100 words) Kathy has loved reading all her life but was almost thirty before she discovered she loves writing too. She has become the author of many picture books…
Read More National Landscape Architecture Month
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A couple of weeks ago I received a very excited phonecall from Cornelia Oberlander. She wanted to tell me that April 2008 – the very month my biography about her was being released – had been declared “National Landscape Architecture Month”. The reason? The American Society of Landscape Architects wants to encourage students and parents to “Discover…
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"The Art of the Pattern" — A Photo Assignment
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My passion for Photography, which I wrote about in the fall, continues unabated. I’m now taking my second online class with photographer, Joy Sussman. (Many of her students are taking their fourth or fifth course with her, she’s that good.) I’m also working on completing a draft of a novel. Thus the brevity of this…
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A National Poetry Month Guessing Game
April is National Poetry Month and as it happens, the book I’m reading at the CNIB right now is a novel written in poems, and so is the book I’ll be reading next. The stories in both are told from the points of view of different characters, so it’s been fun trying to match my…
Read More May is Vision Health Month
Because I’m so grateful for my own vision health, and because I love to read aloud (and do it well), I’ve been working as a volunteer reader and technician at the CNIB Recording Studio for the past 6 years. In that time I’ve narrated parts of various magazines and text books and 19 entire books.…
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A Proud Month
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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…
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April is Autism Awareness Month
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Autism affects 1 out of every 110 children, 1 of every 70 boys. One of those boys is my grandson Peter. You can listen to the 2010 World Autism Awareness Day message from United Nations Secretaray-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon here. If you missed the Autism Speaks Canada insert in last weekend’s Globe & Mail newspaper,…
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Poetry News & Quotes
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April is National Poetry Month and I have two exciting (at least to me!) bits of news related my poetry to pass along. This month a mentorship I’ve had the good luck to be involved in since the fall is wrapping up. During the program funded by the Writers Union of Canada, the poet Barbara…
Read More As Photographer
As Photographer The first photographs Kathy remembers taking were of Niagara Falls, during a trip there with her family in the early 1960s. She thinks she was using a Brownie. For a long time after that, she didn’t take many pictures, leaving it to her parents to capture most of the important family moments. She does…
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Plans for Another Kathy Stinson Board Book
I was delighted when Annick Press decided to make Red is Best available as a board book, and even moreso when I discovered this photo on flickr. This year Annick decided to make Big or Little? available as a board book, too. I’ve changed some of its words so the book’s very young readers will…
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Kathy Stinson “As Photographer”
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One subject predominates in the photos I’ve taken since last April. A few months before this affectionate ball of fluff’s arrival in our home, I got into the habit of, once a month, going through the previous month’s photos, deleting those undeserving of storage space, and putting 5 of the ‘keepers’ into a “Best of…
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“How terribly strange to be seventy”
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… 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…
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And the winner is…!
Thanks to all who participated in the “Can your dog fly?” photo contest. There is clearly a wonderful assortment of canine companions with prize-worthy aspirations out there. A panel of independent judges has declared the contest winner. Congratulations to Michael Greenlaw, who will receive a signed copy of The Dog Who Wanted To Fly for his photo…
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What You Focus On
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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…
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My Year in Review
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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.…
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Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
The most recent “pin” on my “C is for Causes” Pinterest board links to the website for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. I chose as its cover image a photo from the site that I hope will entice Pinterest browsers to look into it, look around the site, and decide to spread word about the…
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RED Hair & RED Trimmed Pajamas in a RED Room IS BEST!
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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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Another Harry and Walter
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A writer/illustrator/publisher sends a book out into the world. When sales are no longer high enough to justify their taking up storage space in the warehouse, the publisher will declare the book out of print. (Rare is the book, like Red Is Best, that stays in print for decades — 43 years now and counting!)…
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Five Wonderful Writing Conference Surprises
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What a treat it was to see so many people at CANSCAIP’s 40th Packaging Your Imagination conference recently — people I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. Other writers, illustrators, old friends, and new faces too. PYI is always a wonderful mix of all of the above. But five people present were an especially wonderful…
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Have you met any other authors?
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…
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“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” Part 11
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The next excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011… One of the greatest pleasures I know, while driving, is watching my odometer in anticipation of a symmetrical reading. I find beauty in numbers like 010 010 and 088 880. Even 135 351 is lovely, or 075 075. Sometimes I’ll…
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A Successful Retreat and One Happy Writer
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I hereby declare my writing retreat a success. On the morning of my last full day there, I hit Send! I could go home happy. Not only did I accomplish what I’d hoped to with my novel manuscript (my first for adults), I also managed to do some work on a picture book text and…
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More Making Pictures with JoyfullyGreen.com
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So, I thought I’d taken a pretty cool photo of a clam shell on the beach this summer and posted it for the assignment on symmetry in the class I’d been taking the month before. (The “classroom” stays open even when the class is officially over.) The instructor, Joy Sussman, suggested: I think this would…
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"Lead with your heart"
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…
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Another Peek at Where I Write
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Last month I told you about my desk and the wall beside it. The wall behind my desk tells more stories about my life as a writer. The Painting For my first young adult novel, set in Nova Scotia, Thistledown Press hired Iris Hauser, a Saskatchewan artist to create a cover. They knew the setting was…
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Close But No Cigar
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Ever wonder where the expression “Close but no cigar” originated? I had two occasions last month to wonder. This is what I learned. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, players who succeeded at fairground games of strength, accuracy, and skill were commonly awarded a cigar as a prize. The games were notoriously…
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Happy Birthday, Cornelia!
Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander is celebrating her 90th birthday this week, and is finally admitting to her true age. (Not quite true. She’s been far too busy this month for anything as trivial as a birthday, so the big party will not be held until August.) There can’t be many nonagenarians practising their professions…
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How I Spend My Time, Apparently
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My daughter was once babysitting her nephew, my youngest grandson. For his bedtime stories that night, he chose what he called “the violin books” (The Man with the Violin and The Dance of the Violin). K: Do you know who wrote these? D: Who? K: Grandma! D: Yeah, she’s always writing books. Not precisely true…
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Solitude – Not Just for Writers
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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…
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Happy Birthday to Me
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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…
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So You Want to Write a Picture Book
This may be NaNoWriMo but two of my three current writing projects happen to be picture books and that’s where I’m focusing most of my attention this month. I’ll also, in the coming days, be offering practical guidance and (I hope) inspiration to others writing picture books. Tomorrow evening I’m offering a presentation on “Writing…
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7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me
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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…
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More Books About Women
This International Women’s Day post picks up from last month’s post left off, and offers my reaction to a few books by women—fiction and non-fiction—that I’ve rated highly on goodreads so far this year. Pluck: A Memoir of a Newfoundland Childhood and the Raucous, Amazing Journey to Becoming a Novelist by Donna Morrissey As a longtime…
Read More Inspirational Role Models
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…
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A Writer’s Professional Development
The past month has involved me in three events that fall into the category of professional development. The Writers’ Union of Canada offered a Symposium called “Secure Footing in a Shifting Literary Landscape”. Betsy Warland and Ross Laird were two of the speakers. They explored the question of whether this is the best time in…
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Book Groups & Summer Reading
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The last Monday of the month for some years now I’ve been meeting with a group of women to discuss books. My idea for this post was to write about this group, as we’re soon to take a break and embark on the season of summer reading, perhaps mention a book or two we’ve read…
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More “Cheering On” Fellow CANSCAIPers
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Soon after I became President of the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, I wrote a post entitled “We Cheer Each Other On.” This post again features excellent books I’ve read recently by a handful of my CANSCAIP associates. Whether you have or work with youngsters or not, I urge you to check…
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A Peek at 3 Pages of My 2026 Calendar
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JANUARY Many things that make my life enjoyable start up again this month, after the ‘quiet’ month of December: Just Sing choir practices, a new fitness class, and various duties as president of CANSCAIP. I plan to attend CANSCAIP’s Online Writing Retreat on the 10th and a Packaging Your Imagination conference planning meeting on the…
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The Dog Who Wanted To Fly
The Dog Who Wanted to Fly Illustrated by Brandon James Scott Published by Annick Press A dog is determined to fly – to catch a pesky squirrel and to prove to a skeptical friend that she can. Age Level Pre-school to grade 2 Curriculum Connections Dogs, cats, optimism, determination, imagination Activities Imagine you are one kind of…
Read More Where to Buy
Where to Buy At your favourite local bookstore Shop online Photo courtesy of The Bookshelf, my favourite independent bookseller in Guelph, Ontario
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An Ancient Child by Lynn Davies
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Posted here with the poet’s permission: An Ancient Child The doctor’s waiting room, the quiet flip of magazine pages. My daughter’s right lung still crackling, and I wish for recovery and punctual doctors. Looking at the floral patterns of china I’ll never buy, when suddenly my daughter laughs, holds up for me to see spread…
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Tips for Writers
Vicki Grant gave an outstanding presentation at a recent CANSCAIP meeting. Unfortunately, I missed it, but because I am a CANSCAIP member, I was able to enjoy a distillation of her “10 Tips for Writing” and “10 Tips for Mystery Writers” through the minutes of the meeting (one of the great benefits of membership, wherever…
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Why “Genitals”?
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I love to hear from readers of my books, whether they’re expressing delight in what they’ve read, or questioning some aspect of what they’ve read. In 2019, a reader who liked The Bare Naked Book (the 1986 version) expressed disappointment with the inaccuracy of the “penis” and “vagina” spread. — “Our identity does not always…
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Photographers On Photography
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Here are two of my favourite quotes about photography, superimposed on photos taken at and near my home. Both quotes help explain what I love about indulging my passion for photography. I see things I might not have seen, had I not been looking in the way I do with as a photographer. That can be…
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Can your dog fly?
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The long-awaited The Dog Who Wanted to Fly is now out! Send me a photo of your dog — especially if she or he can fly — for a chance to win a signed copy of the book and a chance to have your dog featured on my blog! Deadline for entries: April 10, 2019
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Winter Photography
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My Instagram profile identifies me as “A writer of kids’ books with a passion for photography.” This blog post offers you a sampling of pics taken so far this winter (all with my iPhone 11 Plus) that I haven’t posted there. One of my favourite subjects in every season is my dog Georgia, who inspired The…
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A Few of My Favourite Things
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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…
Read More Subscribers, did you know…?
There was a glitch in last week’s blog post in that the main photo (the ‘Can your dog fly?’ contest winner!) didn’t appear in your email. Not sure why, but if you click on the Title of the Blog Post in your email, you will see one joyful flying dog. Trashed it already? Click here…
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Organ Donation & A Grateful Heart
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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…
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Celebrating “The Man with the Violin”
In Guelph! Join me and the Suzuki String School of Guelph at the Bookshelf (41 Quebec Street) at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 14. I’ll be reading the book, students will provide the music, and there will even be a chance for you to try a few notes on a string instrument yourself, courtesy of…
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First Book Canada
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Many of the kids in this pic took home their first ever “mine for keeps” books yesterday thanks to First Book Canada. Owning a book is a new concept for some of them. When I handed one boy his copy of The Man with the Violin he asked me, “Do I bring it back tomorrow?”…
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From Idea to Book — 28 Years
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In 1997 I travelled with an aunt and other family to Scotland. Aunt Lois was in her nineties. Once, as we younger people headed off to a beach that was not accessible to her, she urged us, “Bring me back something interesting.” As we walked along the beach, occasionally picking up a stone or feather,…
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Storywalk with The Man with the Violin
Storywalk® is an innovative way to get people of all ages to take a stroll while reading children’s picture books. Pages of a book are transformed into wind-and-rain-proof signs that are then placed on a playground, at a fair or music festival. The project originated in Vermont and Storywalks have now taken place in every…
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Falling Into Autumn
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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,…
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Kathy Stinson & Cornelia Oberlander Visit Crofton House
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Imagine having the chance to meet the author of a biography you were reading, and the person the biography was about, too? That’s what happened for a group of Grade Six students in Vancouver on the last morning of my Book Week tour. When I asked Cornelia Oberlander (about whom I wrote in Love Every Leaf) if…
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Stuff bloggers have said about Me
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“Kathy Blogged” has disappeared from the Author menu on my website. Those words never quite captured what they were trying to say: Here are some blogs where Kathy Stinson is mentioned. But rather than just see some of the neat things bloggers said totally disappear, I decided to put a few of them into a…
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A Celebration of Poetry
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Poetry is not a big part of my reading life, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been important – as evidenced in “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff”, a keynote I delivered at a conference a few years ago. In 2015 Brick Books celebrates 40 years of publishing poetry in Canada with what promises…
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Best Books of 2023
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Book lists abound at this time of year. One of my favourites is Goodreads’ “Your 2023 Year in Books.” The list comes as a display of covers that reminds you visually of some of the titles you rated highest. This photo shows me one summer day early in my reading life. These are some of…
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Do you get along well with your publishers?
Here I am with Margie Wolfe at a party in spring 2006. Her company, Second Story Press, published King of the Castle (for readers of all ages) and 101 Ways to Dance. Margie and I don’t always agree about everything, but we get along famously just the same. (Thanks to Naseem Hrab for permission to use…
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Bringing Robert Frost Home From Newfoundland
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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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“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” Part 14
The last excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011… I rather like it that the last installment of this ‘spectacular’ and ‘inspiring’ Packaging Your Imagination’ keynote is landing at the start of the new year. I hope it will inspire you in whatever your undertakings may be this year……
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Where you'll find me in Autumn 2017
The Eden Mills Writers Festival last weekend marked the beginning of a busy season of “being an author” (as opposed to actually writing, which I hope to be doing a fair bit of too). This photo is the audience for some other authors. My group was a tad younger. Coming up… September 14 – Reading…
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Authors Support Indies Day
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Saturday, May 2 is Authors Support Indies Day. It’s a great chance for readers to meet and chat with some of their favourite authors, who will be hanging out as “guest booksellers” in their local independent bookstores. Says one of Canada’s best known authors, Ann-Marie MacDonald, “Independent bookstores enrich our communities. They provide gathering places…
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Do you love tulips?
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I do. I also love photography and playing with filters. Early this spring, impatient for tulip season, I found a photo from a year previous and played. Do you like these? Please follow me on Instagram!
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Feeling Stressed?
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Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes with me in the past month or so has probably heard me raving about two books that I’ve found illuminating and inspiring. The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity by Melanie Greenberg, PhD A Love Affair with the Unknown: Leaning into…
Read More What is it about me and titles?
Some months ago the subtitle on my biography manuscript had to be changed (and essentially, therefore, the whole title). Someone else had beat me to The Art of the Possible for their handbook about political activism. One of the working titles attached to my young adult novel-in-progress this year was Fault Lines. And didn’t Nancy…
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One Book, Two Books
Torontonians have been reading and discussing The Cellist of Sarajevo this month as part of TPL’s “One Book” program. The novel is set during the siege of Sarajevo when a cellist chose to play his cello in the street to mourn the deaths of 22 citizens shot while lining up to buy bread. It is,…
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My Daughter “On Family & Friends”
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The little girl who insisted on wearing her red stockings 37 years ago — thereby inspiring “a Canadian classic” — celebrated her 40th birthday this month. Her brother and his wife hosted a party in her honour. Among the guests were women Kelly has been friends with since high school (and some even longer), her…
Read More FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions About the Author Why did you want to be a writer? I’ve loved reading books for longer than I can remember. As an adult I started to wonder if I would like writing books too. I wondered if I could write something that people who didn’t know me would enjoy reading. (I…
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Home
Pre-order now! A rollicking tale that speaks to urgent issues, inspired by Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” Learn more The Books The Author Most Recent Blog Post Featured Posts Visit the blog to see more, in the order they were posted. The Red Rule of Photography Sep 25, 2019 | 8 Comments Hard…
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Fool’s Paradise, Here I Come!
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Following the death of landscape painter Doris McCarthy in 2010, the Ontario Heritage Trust established the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence Centre, at her request, on the property where she had lived for over 60 years. Her mother did not approve of her purchase of the land in 1939 and referred to the property as “that fool’s…
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Books and Violins and Music in General
Don’t you love this display at Vancouver Kids Books? Clever thinking on the part of its designer. Good news for The Man with the Violin continues to roll in. It has already being reprinted. Starred reviews and others it’s attracted are lovely. It’s fabulous that the book is being made available at Joshua Bell’s North…
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Writing Communities
At this month’s CANSCAIP meeting, a former participant at the Seaside Writing Workshop/Retreat that my partner and I offer in Nova Scotia each summer announced that we are now accepting applications for this years workshop/retreat. Since it involves living and working with five other participants (plus Peter and me), a lovely sense of community tends to…
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A Volunteer-Reader’s Anniversary
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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,…
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Getting to Know Maud Lewis
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In contrast to the often bleak landscape and harsh climate of rural Nova Scotia that formed the backdrop of her life, Maud’s paintings brim with vivid, joyous colour. Was she escaping the miseries of her life through her painting? Or was she simply adept at seeing the beauty in the world and expressing it through…
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Losing Weight in the New Year
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…
Read More Summer Reading
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Today’s the day I decide which books to take to the cottage. Despite having a growing stack that includes Scotch River by Linda Little and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Saffan Foer, I’ve taken a couple of books by Chris Bohjalian out of the library, having very much enjoyed his Midwives a few years…
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Congratulations, You’re #10,995!
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This month Amazon added a “new feature” to “make it easy for readers to discover the best-selling authors”. Excuse me, but is there a literate person on Earth who needs Amazon to tell them that the Twilight series sells more books than the Our Canadian Girl series, or that R.L. Stine sells more books than…
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Do You Love Giraffes?
The subject of my latest book, The Girl Who Loved Giraffes — Anne Innis Dagg — wants to share her life-long love of giraffes. If you’re 7-17 years old, you can meet with her and other young giraffe lovers from around the world online every month by joining the Junior Giraffe Club, set up by…
Read More Progress?
I just finished a marathon, a marathon of reading — through 220 pages of notes, single-spaced, on my current novel project. They date back as far as February 2001! Lots of despair in there. One note says: I hate having a vision in my mind’s eye of what this novel should be, but feeling with…
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September Weekends
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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). …
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November Beauty
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I’ve often thought of November as an ugly month. It’s cold compared to what’s come before and it promises colder to come. Leaves that offered brilliant colour to the landscape have fallen and are likely blowing around in a raw wind or else lying sodden on the ground. I’d once have said “November beauty” is…
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Announcing Levi’s Gift
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This month sees the release of my 20th picture book, Levi’s Gift, which captures the beginning of a cross-generational, cross-cultural friendship between an old man and a young girl. It’s also about the healing power of music. I’ve always had a soft spot for stories about friendships between children and old people, and although I’ve…
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“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff”
“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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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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Claire Mackay, 1930-2013
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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…
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Liberia Lingers
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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…
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Congratulations to my Online Profile Developer!
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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…
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Books about Kids & Divorce
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As timely as ever… One Year Commencing — published in 1997, but would having to decide which parent you want to live with be any easier now than it was then? Thistledown Press doesn’t think so. This book and 4 more YA titles are on sale for 30% off this week, through their website only.…
Read More South Africa
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I’d been told to expect elephants, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, and more. And I suspected that if we did, it would be fun. But I had no idea how exciting it would be. For fifteen years my husband’s cousin John and his wife Veda urged us to visit them in South Africa. When we finally went…
Read More Kathy Stinson as Editor and Mentor
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I’ve done plenty of ‘shameless self-promotion’ here and would like to devote today’s post to the books of other authors I have had the pleasure to work with. Rough Magic by Caryl Cude Mullin is not the kind of young adult novel I would ordinarily pick up and read, but when the managing editor at…
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When A Pet Dies
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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…
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Red is Still Best
There have been 37 printings of Red is Best in Canada since it was first published back in 1982. That doesn’t count the many foreign editions and reprints this “classic” has enjoyed. A month rarely goes by that I don’t hear from someone who loved the book as a child. But that’s not the end…
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Announcing The Rock and the Butterfly
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Anne Innis Dagg, the giraffe scientist I had the great privilege to get to know and introduce to readers through The Girl Who Loved Giraffes, died last month at the age of 91. She was to travel with her daughter to South Africa this summer. Now her daughter will instead take Anne’s ashes to mix with…
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Five ‘My Life in Poetry’ Updates
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As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I’d like to tell you what’s been happening in the poetry corner of my life recently. This winter CV2 published “After the Phone Call”. It started with an exercise in The Practice of Poetry, which suggested “Write a poem about your mother’s kitchen. Put the oven in…
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Writers’ Blogs I Like Reading
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Sometimes after a lengthy interruption to one’s writing life, it’s hard to get back in the groove. Whether time away from a project is for holiday celebrations, vacation, tending to the needs of family or friends, or for work that’s sure to put bread on the table next month, there’s an inevitable break in any…
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“Green 15”
Sometimes when it was my husband’s turn to drive this summer, I read aloud from William Trevor’s Selected Stories to help pass the miles. We often marveled at how compelling a story was for how much Trevor left out of its telling. I was reminded of one of my (many) favourite quotes about writing, which…
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Summer Reading Excerpt #3
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This week’s summer reading excerpt is taken from One Year Commencing. In Chapter 4, Al is trying to figure a way out of doing what a court order has said she has to do – stay at her dad’s for a year, and after that decide whether to stay with him or go back out…
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A Passion as Strong as Writing? Really?
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I’ve found a passion that rivals writing. For me, that’s saying a lot. I’m not new to photography. I think I took my first pictures, black and white, with a Brownie camera during a visit to Niagara Falls when I was ten or eleven, and have continued shooting with various cameras throughout my adult life.…
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Endings & Beginnings
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Last night, my husband, Peter Carver, marked the end of his 25-year career in teaching ‘Writing for Children’ by launching – at his retirement party – his first book, So You Want to Write a Children’s Book. Joining the students from across the years who gathered to honour him were: Peggy Needham, Peter’s much loved…
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