writes about war from a young person's view #bannedbyrussia
Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with 300 students in 7th grade at J.L. Simpson in Leesburg Virginia over the course of 6 virtual sessions. Jeannine, their media specialist extraordinaire cobbled together grants from the Nora Roberts Foundation and HREC ED to make this happen and also to purchase copies of Winterkill for the students. The planning had been in the works since April of 2023! Students asked great questions, and look at the notes they took!
This is me with librarian Lisa Sousa at St. Marguerite in Oakville. Had a GREAT visit today with her students!!! Ms Sousa is in the midst of reading Winterkill to the students and so the questions were about disinformation, history that’s hidden, the bullying by dictators and more. Since there are Ukrainians at this school, I also donated a Ukrainian editions each of Stolen Girl and Making Bombs for Hitler.
Tiffanie from Roberts Elementary always lifts me up. After our author visit last week she emailed this feedback:
WOW! WOW! WOW!
You have a magical way of engaging our students sparking curiosity that lasts way beyond your visit! You answered their questions with such grace, care, and honesty. We loved it!
I had a wonderful visit with Roberts Elementary in Gwinnett County, Georgia last week. I’ve been virtually visiting students at this school for a number of years and have such respect for their media specialist, Tiffanie, who has an infectiously positive and generous perspective on life. I also love how her students come up with the BEST questions. There were about 9 classes participating in the session and each one had 3 questions. My favorite question from yesterday was, if you could tell your younger self something, what would it be? My answer: that the people who told me I was a slow learner were wrong. I was a different learner, and that would ultimately be a gift.
Have to say, meeting with students is one of the most wonderful aspects of being a writer.
Tiffanie made my day when she emailed this after the session: WOW! WOW! WOW!
You have a magical way of engaging our students sparking curiosity that lasts way beyond your visit! You answered their questions with such grace, care, and honesty. We loved it!
Thank you, Ryan Boyko and the Shevchenko Foundation, for creating this interview about the inspiration for Winterkill. This was filmed at Firefly & Fox, a great independent bookstore in Simcoe Ontario.
Thank you, Tiffney, for your well-considered questions. I enjoyed our discussion!
Eleven of my twelve World-Read-Aloud-Day donated virtual visits were claimed by American schools, but one I gave to Melita School in Manitoba, and it came about when two grade 8 students, Chaz and Zander, were doing a project on one of my books and asked to meet with me virtually. Normally, I would have had to say no, but World Read Aloud Day was coming up, so I suggested we meet on that day, with their whole class. It was a wonderful visit with Ms Anderson and her students! Here are some pics.
Thank you, J.P. Antonacci for this wonderful story in the Hamilton Spectator, titled, “A writer’s promise to her young readers — to tell the truth.”
It was a six degrees of separation kind of day yesterday. I had lunch with Robin Baird Lewis, Brantford born and raised like me, and a book person. She’s the illustrator of the iconic picture book Red is Best, written by Kathy Stinson.
Robin was in town for a few days and emailed to see if we could get together. She had something for me: a book by another fellow book person, Valentina Gal, author of Philipovna a novel/memoir of the Holodomor, which is the same topic as my latest novel, Winterkill. Robin and Valentina are in the same knitting group!
I read Philipovna and LOVED it. I was thrilled to get a hard copy of the book from the author herself as I only had the e-edition, and it is such a powerful book. But also, I wanted to share with her, through Robin, another connection that we had, that both of our books had been discussed in Mateusz Świetlicki‘s groundbreaking work on Ukrainian Canadian historical literature for young people. I brought the book to our lunch to show Robin, and will be sending snaps of the pertinent pages so that Robin can read them to Valentina. How nifty is that?
It was an honour to be invited to speak at KUMPF gallery, and it was so nice to catch up with old friends and to chat with many young readers. I loved presenting amidst Bohdan Holowacki’s vast talent — see those paintings on the wall? His artwork will be exhibited until Dec 23! Thanks to Uliana Hlynchak for organizing, and thanks to Sonia Bodnar for reading the same selection from «Викрадене дитя» as I read in the original English edition of Stolen Girl. Yulia Lyubka is a brilliant translator, as everyone in the audience witnessed. It was a particularly emotional reading, as my husband was in the audience and the scene was based on his late mother’s escape from the Nazis. Lidia would have loved to hear this, especially in Ukrainian. Here is a FB video from the event.
