OLA Super Conference 2013

This past week the Ontario Library Association held its annual conference in Toronto.  Known as Super Conference for the past nineteen years, the conference provides an opportunity for library professionals and those who contribute to library collections, technology, etc.  Several sessions in which I was involved might be of interest to readers of youngCanLit.

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Authors' Showcase

Rebecca Bender, Jan Andrews, Kevin Sylvester, Kenneth Oppel, Maxim Cyr and Cindy Watson

Some of the 2012 Forest of Reading award-winning authors and illustrators attended an Authors' Showcase at Super Conference.  Each author shared anecdotes and views about their awards and the Forest of Reading, and answered questions from the audience.  These are the authors/illustrators that attended with the title of the book that won a Forest of Reading award in 2012, as well as any additional notes I could remember from the session:

Rebecca Bender

author and illustrator of Blue Spruce award winner for Giraffe and Bird (Dancing Cat Books)

Jan Andrews
author of Silver Birch Express winner When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew: Tales of Ti-Jean (Groundwood Books)

Kevin Sylvester
illustrator of Silver Birch Non-Fiction award winner Don't Touch that Toad and Other Strange Things Adults Tell You (Kids Can Press)

Kenneth Oppel
author of Red Maple winning title Half Brother (HarperCollins Canada)

Maxim Cyr 
illustrator of Le Prix Tamarac Express winning book Les Dragouilles: Les Rouges de Tokyo (Éditions Michel Quintin)

Cindy Watson
author of Golden Oak award winner Out of the Darkness: The Jeff Healey Story (Dundurn)
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Seven: The Series

Helen Kubiw with Seven authors (L to R) Shane Peacock, Ted Staunton, Richard Scrimger, Eric Walters and Sigmund Brouwer February 1, 2013

Five of the seven authors of Orca's Seven: The Series came together to share the flavour of their books with a rapt audience and entertain us with clever repartee, humour, and even music. 

The big news reveal was the announcement that Seven: The Series will have a sequel series.  Eric Walters shared an excerpt that has five of the grandsons at their grandfather's cottage discovering a hidden cache which includes American, Canadian, British and Russian money and a bag of golfballs. There's even been interest in bringing Seven to film!

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Authors in Attendance

Based only on who I noticed or knew about, here is a partial but impressive list of youngCanLit authors who attended Super Conference and made themselves available to talk with delegates (and fans!), as well as sign books:

Jan Andrews
When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew: Tales of Ti-Jean
upcoming: The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley

Kelley Armstrong

The Gathering; The Calling

upcoming: The Rising; Shards and Ashes

 
Rebecca Bender
Giraffe and Bird; Don't Laugh at Giraffe

Helene Boudreau

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings; Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath

upcoming: Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels; I Dare You Not to Yawn

Sigmund Brouwer
Devil's Pass
upcoming: Dead Man's Switch; Justine McKeen, Eat Your Beets

Lena Coakley

Witchlanders

Maxim Cyr
Les Dragouilles: Les Rouges de Tokyo


 




Heather Hartt-Sussman
Here Comes Hortense!
upcoming: Nana's Summer Surprise; Nona is Nervous

 Monica Kulling

Lumpito and the Artist from Spain, In the Bag

upcoming:  Mister Dash and the Cupcake Calamity

 
Dennis Lee

Alligator Pie Classic Edition
upcoming: The Cat and the Wizard

Sylvia McNicoll

crush.candy.corpse

upcoming: Dying to Go Viral

Mireille Messier

Chapeau Charlotte!; Fatima et les voleurs de clémentines

Evan Munday

The Dead Kid Detective Agency

 
Mahtab Narsimhan

The Tiffin

Kenneth Oppel

Half Brother; This Dark Endeavour

Karen Patkau

Who Needs a Swamp?; Who Needs an Iceberg?; Who Needs A Jungle?; A Good Trade

 
Shane Peacock

Last Message; The Dragon Turn; Becoming Holmes

Karen Reszuch
(whose last name I will finally remember is pronounced ray-check)
Loon

Catherine Rondina

Don't Touch That Toad and Other Strange Things That Adults Tell You; Lighting Our World: A Year of Celebrations

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Puckster's First Hockey Tournament
upcoming: Forward Pass

Richard Scrimger

Ink Me

upcoming: Zomboy

Valerie Sherrard
Testify; Accomplice

Gail Sidonie Sobat

(who sang in her CANSCAIP presentation)

Not With a Bang

 

Marsha Skrypuch
Making Bombs for Hitler; Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War
upcoming: The Best Gifts

Ted Staunton

Jump Cut

Bill Swan
Real Justice: Fourteen and Sentenced to Death
upcoming: Real Justice: Convicted for Being Mi'kmaq: The Story of Donald Marshall Jr.

Kevin Sylvester

Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse; Neil Flambé and the Tokyo Treasure; Don't Touch That Toad and Other Strange Things Adults Tell You; Splinters

upcoming: Follow Your Money: Who Gets It, Who Spends It, Where Does It Go?; Showtime: Meet the People Behind the Scenes

Teresa Toten
The Taming
upcoming: The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

Rebecca Upjohn

The Last Loon; The Secret of the Village Fool

 
Vikki VanSickle 
(who had the honour of accompanying Gruffalo on a walk around the Expo)
Love is a Four-Letter Word
upcoming: Days That End in Y

Eric Walters

Between Heaven and Earth; The Matatu

upcoming: Power Play

Cindy Watson
Out of the Darkness: The Jeff Healey Story

 
Janet Wilson

Shannen and the Dream for a School

upcoming: Our Rights: How Kids Are Changing the World

Frieda Wishinsky
Explorers Who Made It...Or Died Trying; No Frogs for Dinner








Although Canadian authors are rarely recognizable, perhaps they should be, or at least their names should be.  With these authors in attendance at Super Conference, I thought it would be a good place to start promoting their names so they become recognizable to all readers of children's literature.

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For the past month, I had the image at the left, indicating that I would be speaking at the OLA Super Conference.  On Friday, February 1, 2013, I presented a talk called Be Fair: Using CanLit to Embed Social Justice.  My audience was attentive and complimentary and I appreciated their feedback and kind words.  In a series of posts, I will share some of youngCanLit titles that I have selected as useful for helping to teach social justice issues.

Stained: Upcoming release from Cheryl Rainfield

On November 19, 2013, 

  STAINED 

the newest young adult novel

 from author Cheryl Rainfield 

and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

will be released.  

Cheryl Rainfield,

author of the heart-wrenching, trauma-ridden YA fiction

Scars

 Westside Books

248 pp.

Ages 14+

2010

Hunted

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

316 pp.

Ages 13+

2012 

 

Parallel Visions

A Teen Psychic Novel Book 1

Rain and Sun Press

146 pp.

Ages 13+

2012  

brings readers another compelling read

STAINED

In this heart-wrenching and suspenseful teen thriller, sixteen-year-old Sarah Meadows longs for "normal." Born with a port-wine stain covering half her face, all her life she’s been plagued by stares, giggles, bullying, and disgust. But when she’s abducted on the way home from school, Sarah is forced to uncover the courage she never knew she had, become a hero rather than a victim, and learn to look beyond her face to find the beauty and strength she has inside. It’s that—or succumb to a killer.

Sometimes you have to be your own hero

(cover tag line)

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Cheryl Rainfield writes about her upcoming book:

Like I did with SCARS and HUNTED, I drew on some of my own experiences of bullying, abuse, and trauma to write STAINED and to give it greater emotional depth. Like Sarah in STAINED, I experienced abduction, imprisonment, periods of forced starvation, mind control, and having my life threatened. And like Sarah, I tried hard to fight against my abuser, keep my own sense of self, and escape. I hope readers will see Sarah's strength and courage, and appreciate her emotional growth as she reclaims herself.

- Cheryl Rainfield -

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On January 21, 2013, Cheryl Rainfield uploaded the following book trailer for STAINED 

Published on January 21, 2013 by Cheryl Rainfield on YouTube 

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So time to mark your calendar:
 November 19, 2013
 for
STAINED
by Cheryl Rainfield

Young adult suspense is just a few months away

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Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster

978-1-4424-2005-2

400 pp.

Ages 12+

2011

The border between the Witchlands, the home of the Witchlanders, and the Bitterlands, the home of the Baen, seems inconsequential compared to the hostility between the two peoples.  While the fair-haired people who honour the Goddess and the twin prophets Aata and Aayse pay tithes to the witches of the coven, the Baens (reviled as "blackhairs") honour Ka and revere the black magicians, all male.  And now, regardless of the treaty between the Witchlanders and the Baen, a war is brewing.

In the Witchlands, Mabis, mother of Ryder and his younger sisters Skyla and Pima, is known for throwing the bones and using maiden's woe to assist her with visions.  Though she speaks of an assassin coming from across the border (but tells the coven that a monster would come out of the ground and swallow whole farms), Mabis cannot summon the witches to action.   In fact, when human-like monsters made of dirt destroy their farm, and the witches blame Mabis, Ryder is determined to cross the border and find the Baen who has started the troubles. 

Meanwhile, in the Bitterlands, another young man, Falpian, has been sent away by his father instead of preparing for battle with the other men.  Though he is told to continue his mourning for his twin brother Farien and prepare himself for a mission detailed in a scroll, Falpian suspects it has more to do with Father's disappointment in his inability to work magic with song.  Surprisingly, Falpian locates an ancient stone from which he is able to sing, ostensibly harmonizing with his echo, and make magic.

When Falpian discovers an unconscious Ryder, the two young men attempt to resolve the discrepancy between what they each know of the other's people and their affinity to each other.  This discrepancy continues to spur Falpian and Ryder through assassination attempts, deceptions, attacks by the dirt monsters, capture, rescue and confusion, learning that all is not what it seems or has been portrayed.

Lena Coakley has created a phantasmagorical world of people rife with prejudices and bitterness borne of history and manipulation.  Although magic is created with harmonizing song, their land growing hicca and maiden's woe, and their societies based on unique features, the characters are sadly familiar to our own.  And, even though Falpian finally relents that "There are no sides" (pg. 377), the nature of the conflict in Witchlanders unravels and regenerates both in familiar and unexpected ways.  Though Lena Coakley has not confirmed a sequel to Witchlanders, its final scene serves to achieve a gratifying conclusion while setting up the premise upon which a promising sequel can build.

A great book trailer for Witchlanders uploaded by Lena Coakley to YouTube on July 12, 2011 can be seen on CanLit for LittleCanadians Book Trailers here.

The New Normal

by Ashley Little

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459-80074-8

222 pp.

Ages 12+

Release date March 2013

Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy

This is my reality.  I was sixteen and being hunted by a drug dealer.  My hair was falling out and my sisters were dead and my parents were broken and there wasn't a goddam thing I could do about any of it. (pg. 28)

This is The New Normal for teen Tamar.  And the drug dealer bit is the very least of her worries. Really. She can handle that and she does.  But the other repercussions of her twin sisters' deaths (in a car accident while driving with drunk boys who played road chicken) - her hair and her damaged parents - are not as easy to handle.

It's only been a few months since the death of her younger sisters and Tamar and her family have been falling apart.  Neither of "the parents" have worked since the accident.  Mom throws herself into yoga and more yoga.  Dad spends a lot of time in his bathrobe on the couch. And Tamar has been losing her body hair, in clumps, while she sleeps, on towels.  Though she keeps up her routines, attending school and playing with the chess club, false eyelashes and hats or bandanas are now part of her style.  Keeping it a secret has been manageable; her dad hasn't even noticed and her mom knows but tosses it off.   But when her friend Roy Lee, a Grade 12 student in the chess club, pulls at her bandana and reveals her lack of hair (luckily this happens away from school), Tamar tells him of her mysterious hair loss.  Fortunately Roy who cares for Tamar is more concerned about her health than her appearance.

Tamar continues to find ways to manage: looking for a job to help pay for a wig;  auditioning for the school production of The Wizard of Oz and earning the role of Auntie Em; starting to go out on dates with Roy; and working at the Cruisy Chicken.  Of course, she can't predict that the play's Dorothy would bully her about her sisters and tell Tamar she's not good enough for Roy, then pull off her wig and get Tamar suspended from school.  Or that Dad would fall off the roof and injury himself and need extra care.  Or that Mom would decide to take off for six weeks to study yoga and meditation at a retreat on an island off the BC coast.  But Tamar has a good head on her shoulders (even if it is becoming hairless), recognizing that, after an especially terrifying situation,

"the whole experience had made me feel lucky to be alive, and I hadn't felt that way in a long, long time." (pg. 213)

Even though Tamar and Roy are in their mid-teens, The New Normal is a great middle-grade novel, having less of the urgency and edginess of young adult novels.  Ashley Little has found the means to knit the grief of loss with the innocence of first love, both times of confusion.  With that first love, Tamar doesn't even realize that she's starting to care for Roy, that he has asked her out, or that there are others who see them as a couple.  Similarly, Tamar isn't sure about expressing her grief.  She continues to have flashes of memories, tender or nasty, of her sisters, but in many respects she is suppressing that grief, unlike the parents who are inundated with it.  For Tamar, that grief can only come out as a physical symptom, but it allows her to see her sisters' deaths in a different context and as part of a bigger picture.  It goes beyond the sadness and anger and lets her continue to live.  She might not embrace The New Normal but she knows it is what it is and doesn't try to make it otherwise.  Her parents should have paid attention to her a little sooner. 

International Holocaust Memorial Day: Book List II

To commemorate the International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, CanLit for LittleCanadians has compiled a list of picture books, novels, young adult fiction, and non-fiction that focus on the victimization of millions of people during World War II.  This second book list includes only non-fiction related to the Holocaust.  As stated in the previous book list, let us support this very simple but profound intent:

 
   Never again  

Non-fiction

Faces of Courage: Young Heroes of World War II
Written by Sally M. Rogow
Granville Island Publishing
162 pp.
Ages 11-15
2003

Resistance

Faye the Freedom Fighter
Written by Sharon Jennings
Second Story Press
200 pp.
Ages 9-15
2011

Poland, resistance

Hana's Suitcase
Written by Karen Levine
Second Story Press
120 pp.
Ages 9-12
2002

Terezin, Auschwitz, Holocaust education, Hana Brady

 
Hana's Suitcase Anniversary Album (A Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers)
Written by Karen Levine
Second Story Press
176 pp.
Ages 9-13
2012

Hiding Edith: A True Story (A Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers) 
Written by Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press
151 pp.
Ages 9-11
2006

Escape, France

Rescuing the Children: The Story of the Kindertransport
Written by Deborah Hodge
Tundra Books
64 pages
Ages 10+
2012

Kindertransport, rescue


To Hope and Back: The Journey of the St. Louis (A Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers) 
Written by Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press
204 pp.
Ages 9-13
2011

Refugees

The Underground Reporters (A Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers) 
Written by Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press
155 pp.
Ages 9-13
2004

Czech Republic, underground newspapers, ghettos

 

What is the Pink Triangle?
Written by Ken Setterington
Second Story Press
196 pp.
April, 2013

Persecution

Whispers from the Camps
Written by Kathy Kacer and Sharon E. MacKay
Puffin Canada
151 pp.
Ages 10-15
2009

Narratives, survivors

Whispers from the Ghettos
Written by Kathy Kacer and Sharon E. MacKay
Puffin Canada
134 pp.
Ages 11+
2009

Narratives, survivors living in Canada, ghettos

Whispers in Hiding
Written by Kathy Kacer and Sharon E. MacKay
Puffin Canada
173 pp.
Ages 11+
2009

Narratives, survivors living in Canada