writes about war from a young person's view #bannedbyrussia
Many thanks to The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, thanks to Tania Sunak and Olya Grod of the UCC National Education Council and @InternmentCda for funding a special edition of Prisoners in the Promised Land for senior students at TDCSB Ukrainian language schools. Thank you to Scholastic Canada for making this possible. Thank you Josyf Cardinal Slipyj TCDSB for sending these wonderful pics!
Congratulations to Mateusz Świetlicki on the publication of this groundbreaking work. Ukrainian historical themes have been sadly absent in most popular literature, including literature for young people. This book is a comprehensive and perceptive examination of Canadian works tackling the topic, including my own.
I’ve started a new manuscript and to keep on track, I need to write a minimum of 3,000 words a week. This week, I had written 3648 words by Friday, so on the weekend I rewarded myself by writing 5 extra-small pysanky. Did 440 words yesterday … tick, tick, tick…
Thank you, Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki, for this thorough examination of Winterkill, particularly in terms of historical veracity and how the novel gives needed context to the Russian Federation’s current genocidal war against the Ukrainian nation and culture. This paper is a great resource for educators who are doing a novel study with Winterkill. Here’s the link.
Some really great questions about the Holodomor and Winterkill, particularly about individual characters in the book and what their lives looked like after the book was over. But my favorite question of the virtual session was, “What’s it like to be over 60 years old?” I told him that inside, I still feel 12 years old. Another student asked if I would ever work with an illustrator to make one of my books into a graphic novel and I said that was a great idea and would love to see it happen with Making Bombs for Hitler. I showed them Five Stalks of Grain by Adrian Lysenko and Ivanka Galadza and suggested they would like it. I also showed them Sylvia McNicholl’s What the Dog Knows when asked about my current fave book. Thank you, HREC ED, for funding this presentation.
Very pleased to have a teachers’ guide for Winterkill that is freely available for use. Thank you, HREC ED, for funding it, and thank you Kristen Davison for creating it.
It was so nice to visit with 6th to 8th grade students from Bentonville Arkansas. We talked about my WWII novels and the real people behind the stories as well as what it’s like to be dyslexic and to write books. Middle School Student council members fielded the questions and did the introductions. Very well organized and great questions. There were 140 students participating and Sarah the librarian got this snap of one of the classes. Thank you so much for the invitation, Sarah!
It was a pleasure meeting with educators on Friday in Edmonton at the GETCA conference. This was my first in-person out-of-Ontario presentation since the spring of 2020. My topic was “How to talk to kids about the war in Ukraine”. I used the opportunity to dialogue with educators rather than me being a talking head. I feel that it’s important to honor everyone’s expertise and educators have been dealing with a crush of refugees in their classrooms as well as an influx of questions about the war. The discussion was illuminating, with teachers of varied grade ranges sharing situations that came up in their classes and giving suggestions to each other. My background as a writer of war books for kids means that I’ve spoken to young people on the topic of war for as long as I’ve written books and this gives me a sense of what various maturity levels can and cannot handle. As research, I’ve interviewed war refugees of all ages. This too gives me a different kind of insight.
One topic of discussion was propaganda and how to educate young people that all news sources are not equal. I referred them to my fellow children’s author Joyce Grant and the work she’s been doing to help young people be discerning about their news sources, plus that she’s involved in a kids’ news website called Teaching Kids News.
Joyce’s book, Can You Believe It is a great resource.
We also spoke about how art and writing projects can help refugee kids share their stories and how those same projects can help kids who haven’t fled war gain empathy as they imagine themselves in the same situation. I shared with them the #KidsFleeWar project.
Here are some pics from the Audrey’s Bookstore’s booth at the conference. Pretty nifty! I signed them all (okay, not all, only the books I wrote!)
