The Winnowing: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

Join author

Vikki VanSickle

author of

Words that Start with B (Scholastic Canada, 2010)
Love is a Four-Letter Word (Scholastic Canada, 2011)
Days That End in Y (Scholastic Canada, 2013)
Summer Days, Starry Nights (Scholastic Canada, 2013)
If I Had a Gryphon (Tundra, 2016)

for the launch of her newest book

The Winnowing

Written by Vikki VanSickle

Scholastic Canada
978-1443148863
312 pp.
Ages 12+
September 2017

on

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

6:30 - 10 p.m.

at

Supermarket Restaurant and Bar

268 Augusta Avenue
Toronto, Ontario 

M5T 2L9


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There will be:
• a reading
• book sales by Bakka-Phoenix Books
•  book signing
• a trivia game (on 1980s pop culture, science fiction and kids' books) with prizes
and hosted by author Evan Munday

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Here's a bit about the book:

Marivic Stone lives in a small world, and that’s fine with her. Home is with her beloved grandfather in a small town that just happens to be famous for a medical discovery that saved humankind — though not without significant repercussions. Marivic loves her best friend, Saren, and the two of them promise to stick together, through thick and thin, and especially through the uncertain winnowing procedure, a now inevitable — but dangerous — part of adolescence. 

But when tragedy separates the two friends, Marivic is thrust into a world of conspiracy, rebellion and revolution. For the first time in her life, Marivic is forced to think and act big. If she is going to right a decade of wrongs, she will need to trust her own frightening new abilities, even when it means turning her back on everything, and everyone, she’s known and loved. A gripping exploration of growing up, love and loss, The Winnowing is a page-turning adventure that will have readers rooting for their new hero, Marivic Stone, as they unravel the horror and intrigue of a world at once familiar but with a chilling strangeness lurking beneath the everyday.

From https://vikkivansickle.wordpress.com on July 17, 2017.

Come and see Vikki VanSickle at this year's Eden Mills Writers' Festival on Sunday, September 10, 2017 and look for a review soon of The Winnowing.

Junior Sleuth Academy & Book Launch: The Dead Kid Detective Agency, Loyalist to a Fault (Toronto)

Small Print Toronto 

in partnership with Toronto Public Library

presents 

Junior Sleuth Academy

a mystery-writing workshop for writers aged 8-12

with artist-author 

Evan Munday

creator of the widely lauded series
The Dead Kid Detective Agency

on

Sunday, October 18th, 2015

2:30 p.m.

at 

Lillian Smith Library 

239 College St. (at Spadina)

Toronto

Get your free tickets here.

The workshop involves some 

supernatural sleuthing and creating spooky stories 

followed by

the launch 

(with books available for purchase and signing)

of Book 3 in The Dead Kid Detective Agency series

Loyalist To A Fault

by Evan Munday

ECW Press

9781770410749

304 pp.

Ages 9-13

September 2015

If you've kept up with the series, you'll know that October Schwartz made a promise to help solve the mysteries of the deaths of her five dead accomplices: Morna MacIsaac, Cyril Cooper, Tabetha Scott, Kirby LaFlamme, and Derek Running Water.  In Loyalist to a Fault, October looks into the death of Cyril Cooper in 1783, back to the time of the United Empire Loyalists.

Oh My Goth!: Goth Portraits by Evan Munday (Toronto)

Did I mention that October Schwartz, 

of Dead Kid Detective Agency (ECW, 2011) and Dial "M" for Morna (ECW, 2013), 

is goth?

  

Did I mention that author Evan Munday is also an illustrator? 

Did you realize that it's October and Halloween is just around the corner? 

Of course you did. 

So did the good people at Type Books (who brought us the amazing video The Joy of Books).  They've invited Evan Munday, author of The Dead Kid Detective Agency and Dial "M" for Morna, to draw quick goth portraits of customers this weekend. 

This photo of the window display at Type Books was retrieved from Evan Munday's blog, I don't like Mundays

So, if you're feeling a little goth or not, 

visit Type Books

at

883 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON

this weekend

Saturday, October 26, 2013   12 - 5 p.m.

or Sunday, October 27, 2013   12 - 4 p.m.

Drop by and meet Evan Munday, 

pick up a Dead Kid Detective Agency book or two

and

get your goth on!

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Dial "M" for Morna: The Dead Kid Detective Agency, Book 2

Written by Evan Munday
ECW Press
978-1-77041-073-2
296 pp.
Ages 8-13
October, 2013

Dial "M" for Morna and for middle-grade, murder, mystery and for Munday, author Evan Munday, whose first book The Dead Kid Detective Agency (ECW Press, 2011) was shortlisted for the Silver Birch award and Sunburst Award for Young Adult Speculative Fiction.  In this sequel, Evan Munday has October Schwartz starting to make good on her promise to help solve the mysteries of the deaths of her five dead accomplices: Morna MacIsaac, Cyril Cooper,  Tabetha Scott, Kirby LaFlamme, and Derek Running Water.  First up: Morna, who died when she was thirteen years old in 1914 while living with her family at the Crooked Arms boarding house in their town of Sticksville.

With the help of the new history teacher and museum volunteer, Ms. Fenstermacher, October locates the old Crooked Arms and learns the identities and backgrounds of its former residents.  Amongst the MacIsaac's neighbours were an alleged traitor, an inventor, a suffragette, and a doctor, and, with input from a woman who speaks to October through a disconnected old-fashioned phone, the living teen delves into Morna's demise.

Meanwhile, in October's living world, her friends Yumi and Stacey earn a slot deejaying on the school radio station. While they know that Devin McGriff, member of the Phantom Moustache band and boyfriend of queen bee Ashlie Salmons, is enraged for losing out to them, a spate of hostilities couched in racist remarks catches Yumi, Stacey and October by surprise.

Luckily, October is able to breach both worlds to help solve Morna's death and the attacks staged against Yumi.  And, with a couple of surprise connections and revelations, Evan Munday left me (and undoubtedly all other readers) longing to learn more about Mr. Santuzzi and Fairfax Crisparkle and anticipating Book 3 in the series.

Past or present, there are a lot of nasty people around making others' lives miserable, willing to murder for their own needs, and directed by fears, arrogance and greed (and maybe even magic here). But with the Dead Kid Detective Agency (i.e., October and her deceased cohorts), wrongs are righted, the guilty are identified and justice is anticipated.  Evan Munday will draw you in so subtly that you'll be snagged before you realize it.  However, never think that you are just a reader, the vesicle into which words are poured from the page, when reading Dial "M" for Morna.  Evan Munday breaks down the fifth wall, speaking directly to his audience of young readers, enlightening them, reassuring them, humouring them, apologizing, and even hinting at plot developments.

You can expect the same kind of madcap exploits featured in book one – our plucky heroine with a penchant for black eyeliner and her five most deadest BFFs uncovering dark secrets that will rock the quiet town of Sticksville to its secretly rotten core and doing so in the zaniest possible manner. (pg. 11)

Watch for font changes to help determine whether the narrator is October or a third person (a.k.a. Evan Munday). And be prepared to enjoy Evan Munday's dry wit which he doles out generously in his subplots, his action scenes, and the voices and foibles of his characters.  While answers to the big questions i.e., "How did Morna die?" and "Who is harrassing Yumi?" are inevitable, don't expect all plot lines to find closure.  The beginnings of new mysteries, ready to be solved by The Dead Kid Detective Agency, are embedded, leaving clues sure to bear fruitful storylines.