Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Mahtab Narsimhan. Take it away, Mahtab! Who is the tree in your life? And whom will you be a tree to? There are many people in our lives, family, friends, teachers, and mentors, who nurture us and make us...

Continue reading

Science Literacy Week is almost over – almost, but not quite! There’s still time to get some free science-y goodness in your life, so hop on over to the Science Literacy Week website to learn about last-minute events happening near you. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, today marks another ending… it’s the...

Continue reading

It’s the most, wonderful tiiiiiime of the year – at least, if you’re a science person! It’s Science Literacy Week! If you’re not familiar, Science Literacy Week is an annual, national celebration of all things science. Universities, libraries, and other organizations all across Canada are offering FREE STEM EVENTS for all ages. Hop on over...

Continue reading

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! People who write historical fiction generally love research. We have a reverence for minutiae and often find ourselves spending many hours reading about things that have nothing whatsoever to do with our...

Continue reading

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Lea Beddia. Take it away, Lea! What are the first words you think of when you read Teenagers are…? Did the words resourceful, hard-working, or resilient come to mind? We’ve all heard negative stereotypes about how today’s generation have...

Continue reading

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Frieda Wishinsky. Take it away, Frieda! I’ve always been fascinated by the story behind a book.  What sparks an idea or theme? My latest picture book, A Flower is a Friend with luminous art by Karen Patkau, published by...

Continue reading

Mr. Peanut is a better gardener than I am… About 5 years ago, Tech Support and I moved to Ontario. We live in a relatively new neighbourhood, and the first year, there were lawns but no trees. The second year, scattered shrubs and the occasional sapling. Now, almost every house on the block has a...

Continue reading

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Karen Krossing. Take it away, Karen! I’ve loved playing with words and making up stories ever since I was a child. Back then, I drank imaginary tea and served it to my imaginary guests. I pretended a goblin lived...

Continue reading

It’s Arctic Sea Ice Day, which means the internet is about to be covered in polar bears. Don’t get me wrong – polar bears are awesome, and I would dearly love to snuggle me a bear cub, because they are nature’s plushies. But there are so many other animals that rely on sea ice, in...

Continue reading

Hi all! This post was scheduled to publish while I was away on a well-earned holiday. I returned to discover that the tech gods were also on holiday that week. Oh well, better late than never. It’s International Day of the Celebration of the Solstice, a rather clunky name which is almost as long as...

Continue reading