Author: Marsha

I write historical fiction, mostly from the perspective of young people who are thrust in the midst of war.

To be considered a Blockbuster Female Author! How nice!

Check out this School Library Journal Teen column!

DanceOfTheBanished_HR_RGB1SKRYPUCH, Marsha Forchuk. Dance of the Banished. 288p. Pajama Press. ISBN 9781927485651. JLG Level: PBH : Paperbacks High (Grades 10 & Up).

Ali leaves his village in Anatolia so that he can earn enough money to bring his fiancé, Zeynep, to Canada. Shortly after his departure, the Young Turk revolutionary forces turn on Zeynep’s Armenian Christian neighbors. While she struggles with trying to save the lives of her friends, Ali is captured and sent to an internment camp. Can they survive the war and reunite from an ocean apart?

For readers without prior knowledge of the Armenian genocide and Canadian internment camps from 1914, a visit to ArmenianGenocide.org provides background, while the Kapuskasing Internment Camp website sheds light on Canadian immigration fears. Fans may read the author’s blog. How do you pronounce her name? TeachingBooks.net has an audio file.

 

 

Call Me Aram

Call Me Aram
Call Me Aram

From the New Beginnings series, comes Call Me Aram, the sequel to Aram’s Choice. Aram Davidian, like his fellow orphaned Armenian refugees, is delighted with his new home on a farm in Georgetown, Ontario. But despite the excitement his new surroundings, Aram worries about his young friend Mgerdich, who was injured on the long trip to Canada and is recovering in France. And what is more worrying is that he and the other boys have been assigned new English names. How will their extended families find them one day if all the boys have new identities? Even when their translator assures them that their hosts want only the best for the boys, Aram cannot accept the name David Adams. When Mgerdich finally arrives at the farm, a relieved Aram finds the courage to lead the boys in a gentle revolt. Together, they must find a way to convince the Canadian adults that the boys, as grateful as they are for their new lives, cannot forget their old ones. Theymust keep their names.

Every incident in Call Me Aram is based on real events from the lives of the Georgetown Boys — from the boys’ reaction to porridge and cameras and weekly showers to their revolt to get their own names back. Marsha spent hundreds of hours listening to taped interviews of the original Georgetown Boys in order to glean these snippets of truth.
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Aram’s Choice

From the New Beginnings series, comes Aram’s Choice, a story that follows the life of a boy who loses his family in the Armenian genocide in Turkey and is exiled in Greece. The book follows Aram while he travels to Canada with forty-seven other Armenian boys in what was Canada’s first international humanitarian effort.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch first heard about the Armenian Genocide seventeen years ago while doing research for a magazine article about the first “Georgetown Boys” — a group of 47 Armenian orphans who were rescued by Canada in 1923 and were housed and schooled at a farm in Georgetown, Ontario.

After interviewing the son of a “Georgetown Boy,” Marsha was left with more questions than answers. For example, why were all of the rescued orphans male? Why were they all between the ages of eight and twelve? What happened to their parents? What happened to their sisters?

After years of research, Marsha was able to write Aram’s Choice. Based on true events, this book gives children a chance to learn about effects of genocide through one that the Turkish government has long denied ever happened.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the author of many books for children, including Silver Threads and Enough as well as her YA novels, The Hunger and Nobody’s Child, which was nominated for the Red Maple Award, the Alberta Rocky Mountain Book Award, and the B.C. Stellar Award.

Muriel Wood has been illustrating books for children since 1964, including the Canadian classic, The Olden Days Coat written by Margaret Laurence. Other books that she has illustrated include Old Bird, and the first two titles from the New Beginnings series, Lizzie’s Storm and Scared Sarah.
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Enough

This story, set during the Famine of the 1930s, tells of a young girl’s attempts to save her village from starvation. Marusia’s ingenuity gives her the opportunity to go on a magical journey to the North American Prairies to find more food for her village. Generosity triumphs over greed in this spirited Ukrainian folktale.
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Silver Threads

Original edition, 1996
2023

Silver Threads is the magical story of Anna and Ivan, two young newly-weds who escape poverty and hardship in Ukraine to start a new life on the Canadian frontier. As they struggle to build their homestead, World War I breaks out. And when Ivan volunteers to fight for his new homeland, tragedy strikes. While Anna works and waits alone, hope comes from an unexpected source. Based on true events, Silver Threads is a stirring lesson in history and a heart-warming tale of love and faith.

Silver Threads was selected by the Ontario Library Association as a Best Bet for 1996.

Ukrainian edition available here.

Reviews:Macleans wrote:

“A classic fable about the power of love.”

Lubomyr Luciuk on Kingston Whig Standard wrote:

“Remarkably, Ms Skrypuch has retrieved an all-but-forgotten indignity in Canadian history without bitterness….This is a book that every Canadian grade school library should own.”

on Edmonton Journal:

“Canadian readers of all stripes like Silver Threads.”

on Ukrainian Weekly:

“It was not at all hard for me to become enthralled, immediately, with ‘Silver Threads.’ ”

 

Dance of the Banished — Winnipeg Free Press review

Thank you, Helen Norrie, for the lovely review:

Brantford, Ont. author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has written a number of books about the Armenian genocide. Dance of the Banished (Pajama Press, 240 pages, $16, paperback) is set just before and during the First World War. It tells the story of two young lovers, Ali and Zetnep, separated by the war — Ali is taken to Canada by an uncle, while Zetnep remains in Anatolia. When war breaks out, Ali is imprisoned in an internment camp as an enemy alien, while Zetnep struggles to survive in a place where neighbours and friends are being massacred as Armenian Christians — and only an acquaintance with the American consul prevents her from being arrested.

The scenes in the internment camp are some of the most interesting parts of Skrypuch’s story, as Ali is forced to cut down trees, which he regards as sacred, in order to construct buildings for the camp. Skrypuch has just been appointed to Canada’s First World War Internment Recognition Endowment Council as a direct descendent of an internee. Written for ages 12 and up.