{"id":10,"date":"2016-02-05T02:54:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T02:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress2\/?page_id=10"},"modified":"2026-04-15T21:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T21:40:53","slug":"about-marsha","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/about-marsha\/","title":{"rendered":"About Marsha"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Skrypuch?!<\/p>\n

How do you pronounce that in English? Like this: SKRIP-ick. Would you like to hear Marsha pronounce her own name? Listen\u00a0<\/span>here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shortest bio: <\/strong>Marsha Skrypuch is an internationally bestselling children\u2019s author whose books span a century of wars from a kid’s view, concentrating on those stories that have been erased by oppressive regimes. Her best-known book is Making Bombs for Hitler<\/i>. Her most recent is the\u00a0Kidnapped from Ukraine<\/i>\u00a0trilogy. She has received death threats and honours for her writing. Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario, and you can visit her online at\u00a0calla.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Shortish bio: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the author of 28 books for young people, yet she didn\u2019t read until age 9. She now considers dyslexia to be a gift. Her scrupulously researched historical fiction and narrative non-fiction focuses on refugees and war from a young person\u2019s perspective. Her books have won many honors, but her favorites are readers\u2019 choice awards, of which she\u2019s won many. Marsha has a Master of Library Science<\/a> degree and worked as a librarian for the federal government before she began writing books. She considers herself a librarian-detective (and also a princess, but that\u2019s another story).
\nHer best-known book is Making Bombs for Hitler. Her newest is Still Alive<\/em>, book #3 of her Kidnapped from Ukraine<\/em> trilogy. And yes, she’s in the midst of writing another book.<\/p>\n

Shorter bio:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is a Canadian author of Ukrainian heritage acclaimed for her nonfiction and historical fiction for young people, including Making Bombs for Hitler<\/em>,\u00a0Winterkill, <\/em>and Adrift at Sea<\/em>. Her newest work is the\u00a0Kidnapped from Ukraine<\/em>\u00a0trilogy. She was awarded the Order of Princess Olha in 2010 by the President of Ukraine for writing books that broke through Russian disinformation. In 2022, Russia banned her for life for the same. Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario, and you can visit her online at calla.com<\/p>\n

Longer bio:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marsha tricked her teachers into thinking she knew how to read until it all caught up with her in grade 4 when she failed the provincial reading exam. Adding insult to injury, they made her repeat the whole year.<\/p>\n

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Marsha’s grade 4 report card<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Marsha with her mom the year she failed 4th grade.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the tallest and oldest kid in the class, she didn\u2019t want to be seen learning to read with little skinny books, so she taught herself how to read by taking out the fattest book in the children\u2019s section of the Brantford Public Library \u2014 Oliver Twist. She kept on renewing it for a whole year.<\/p>\n

Reading that book was a turning point in her life. She decided that she loved reading big fat fiction, and wanted to write it too. She devoured novels by the gallon.<\/p>\n

Her grade 10 English teacher sent her to the vice principal\u2019s office because she asked too many questions in class.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Marsha in 10th grade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She was placed in enriched English as punishment and loved every minute of it. She took a degree in English at Western University in London Ontario. She needed a language option to complete her degree but she wasn\u2019t very good in French so she stupidly signed up for Russian. Everyone else in Russian class was a native speaker and Marsha didn\u2019t even know the alphabet. She made herself flash cards and practiced each morning on the bus as she went to school. She got the lowest mark in the class, but she did pass!<\/p>\n

Upon graduating, she backpacked around Europe, and then took the first job she could get when she got home: selling industrial supplies. She was the first woman in Canada to sell industrial supplies. Marsha taught herself how to design grinding wheels, recommend drills and so on and gained the reputation of being “the cutting tool expert of Southwestern Ontario.”<\/p>\n

While selling industrial supplies was interesting, Marsha never forgot her first dream, which was to become an author. She went back to school and got her Master\u2019s degree in library science from Western University in London Ontario Canada, figuring this would help her with research techniques. She worked as a librarian for a brief time, but then turned her hand to writing.<\/p>\n

She wrote a big fat novel and got 100 rejections for it. She set that book aside and wrote Silver Threads. Expecting to be rejected 100 times as well, she sent it out a dozen publishers all at once. Within two weeks, three publishers had already approached her.<\/p>\n

That book was published in 1996.<\/p>\n

A year later, she went back to that big fat 100-times rejected novel, tore it apart, and rewrote it bit by bit. It ultimately became five separate books: The Hunger (Dundurn, 1999), Nobody\u2019s Child (Dundurn, 2003), Daughter of War (Fitzhenry & Whiteside 2008), Aram\u2019s Choice (Fitzhenry & Whiteside 2006) and Call Me Aram (Fitzhenry & Whiteside 2009).<\/p>\n

Marsha\u2019s had a book out pretty much every year since 1996. Her books seem to follow a general theme — they’re nearly all about young people plunged in the midst of war or oppression. She is best known for her two WWII trilogies: Stolen Girl<\/a> (originally published as Stolen Child), Making Bombs for Hitler<\/a>, and The War Below<\/a> (originally published as Underground Soldier) comprise the first; and Don’t Tell the Nazis<\/a> (originally published as Don’t Tell the Enemy, Trapped in Hitler’s Web<\/a> and Traitors Among Us<\/a> comprise the second. Her 2022 novel is Winterkill<\/a>, set during the Holodomor in 1930s Ukraine, the Stalin-induced famine-genocide. Her newest is Standoff<\/em>, book #2 of her Kidnapped from Ukraine<\/em> trilogy, which is set during the first two years of Russia’s current war on Ukraine. These books are available in many countries, have been translated into different languages and have won lots of awards.<\/p>\n

Would you like to learn more?<\/p>\n

View awards and honours<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s<\/a>\u00a0my Amazon page in your country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skrypuch?! How do you pronounce that in English? Like this: SKRIP-ick. Would you like to hear Marsha pronounce her own name? Listen\u00a0here. Shortest bio: Marsha Skrypuch is an internationally bestselling children\u2019s author whose books span a century of wars from a kid’s view, concentrating on those stories that have been erased by oppressive regimes. Her … Continue reading “About Marsha”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10856,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions\/10856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}