Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Karen Autio. Take it away, Karen! The most important tip for having a playdate with a child with developmental disabilities is just to have [a playdate]. —Sarah Lyons, freelance writer and mother of six Playdates at our home got...

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Alison Lohans. Take it away, Alison! Creating new things. Sometimes beautiful things. We rarely know the deep origins, or why a particular “something” begins to wiggle, and then morph into a new creative work. Ever since high school, already...

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Autumn is creeping up on me. It’s getting dark earlier and there are more cloudy days, neither of which my light-sensitive brain is very happy about. But as things get a little greyer, I’ve been gifted two enormous reasons to celebrate. Polar has just won the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award! The...

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Lana Button. Take it away, Lana! My new picture book is best served with Sprite in a fancy glass and my Grammie’s scotch cake cookies. So set your oven to 325F and mix: 1 pound of soft butter 1...

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Heather Stemp. Take it away, Heather! I began writing Amelia & Me, the first book in the Ginny Ross Series, when Amelia Earhart dropped into my family history. The convergence of Amelia’s history with my own was an opportunity...

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So apparently it’s the middle of July already? The backyard menagerie doesn’t seem surprised by this news. The first clutch of robins has fledged, and a pair of goldfinches have set up house in a tree just over the neighbour’s fence, so we get to watch them swoop past our deck on their supply runs....

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Sheryl McFarlane. Take it away, Sheryl! Hi, I’m Sheryl McFarlane and I’m so excited to share my new picture book, The Blue Canoe. It’s published by Familius and beautifully illustrated by Laurel Aylesworth. Every cabin day is a paddle-on-the-lake...

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Apparently Science Rendezvous Kingston was SIX WEEKS ago, and I haven’t posted about it yet?! In my defence, COVID took up two of those weeks. I’d managed to avoid catching it up to this point, but after getting up close and personal with literally thousands of children during Book Week and Science Rendezvous, it was...

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Rochelle Strauss. Take it away, Rochelle! Take a deep breath in. Now hold it. You probably know that you have the trees to thank for that breath you just took. Trees and other plants provide the oxygen that makes...

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Amanda West Lewis. Take it away, Amanda! For most of my life, I’ve actively avoided writing poetry. There are SO MANY bad poems in the world. But poetry has always been a huge part of my life. I studied...

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