Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s writers! Today’s guest: Karen Autio. Take it away, Karen! What inspired you to write your new sea otter chapter book Kah-Lan and the Stink-Ink? It all began at the Vancouver Aquarium where the instant I first saw sea otters, I was smitten! Cuteness overload! Especially when they linked paws! But it got even better. I was amazed to learn that in the wild,…

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YOU GUYS. The Boreal Forest has been nominated for a YELLOW CEDAR AWARD in the FOREST OF READING. Kermit GIF from Kermit GIFs If you’re not familiar, the Forest of Reading is the largest recreational reading program in Canada. Kids across the country can register to read the nominated books and vote for their favourites – last year, more than 270,000 kids took part. It’s a great way to get kids reading books, thinking about…

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Welcome to Teach Write! This column draws on my 20 years’ experience teaching writing to kids, university students, and adult learners. It includes ideas and exercises that teachers and students can use in the classroom, and creative writers can use to level up their process. Last time we compared primary and secondary sources and talked about how to use them when researching writing assignments or creative projects. Today, we’re getting a bit more practical, with…

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s writers! Today’s guest: Lydia Lukidis. Take it away, Lydia! Once upon a time, I had a dream: I wanted to write nonfiction. Keep in mind, this was many years ago, and I came from a poetry and fiction background. I had been writing poetry since I was six, and also composed fictional stories. When I began my journey in the world of kidlit,…

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All these kids’ science books are autographed and ready to give away to young readers this week! Welcome to Mad Science Mondays, where we talk about depictions of science in movies, TV shows, books, and the media. We dissect the good, the bad, the comical and the outright irresponsible. Who says learning about science can’t be fun? It’s Science Literacy Week!  *Fires cannons full of biodegradable confetti* The brainchild of Jesse Hildebrand, Science Literacy Week…

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Welcome to Teach Write! This column draws on my 20 years’ experience teaching writing to kids, university students, and adult learners. It includes ideas and exercises that teachers and students can use in the classroom, and creative writers can use to level up their process. It’s September, which means school, which means writing assignments, which (often) means research. Research is a key part of the preparation phase for many writing assignments, not to mention for…

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To learn more about Nidhi Kamra, visit her website. Welcome to STEMinism Sunday! As a former woman in science, I have a deep and enduring interest in the experiences and representation of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). This series will be an opportunity for me – and you – to learn more about these intellectual badasses. Today, we have the second of two guest posts from Nidhi Kamra. To read Part…

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Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s writers! Today’s guest: Charis Cotter. Take it away, Charis! Ghost. That one word has a strange power. All I have to do is announce that I’m going to tell a ghost story and children sharpen to attention. Grownups too. It seems that we are all touched by ghosts, whether or not we believe in them. I’m often asked why I write about ghosts.…

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This lovely image courtesy of CC MacKenzie via Flickr It’s been almost six months since the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since then, the world’s turned upside down… and as much as we’d all like to think that things will “go back to normal,” I think the best we can hope for is a new sense of safety and stability. Particularly since, every time we check the news, a brand new, civilization-upending crisis seems…

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Welcome to Teach Write! This column draws on my 20 years’ experience teaching writing to kids, university students, and adult learners. It includes ideas and exercises that teachers and students can use in the classroom, and creative writers can use to level up their process. School is starting soon (however strange and remote it may be), which means… writing assignments! Today on Teach Write, we are talking about coming up with ideas for writing on…

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