Some writerly advice

I did a great tour through the schools and libraries in Innisfil, Ontario last year.

They were running a writer's contest and they asked me for some of my advice.

Still valid (I think) for anyone who is taking part in NaNoWriMo.

Smiles all around!

I just got back from an amazing trip to Windsor for the Windsor book festival. I asked Margaret Atwood a question about genre fiction (which she dodged!)

(Here's a nice pic from the crew at the Public Library. A nice blog post about my visit is here.)

I had dinner (and was on stage) with one of my heroes, Ken Oppel, and we were joined by recent Man Booker winner Eleanor Catton for dinner on friday. Her dad was a philosophy prof too!

Then I got home and there was a very nice package from my publisher, Simon and Schuster, waiting for me.

Now I'm back in my attic in my grungy sweats and Sabres sweatshirt, and getting back to work.
But I'm smiling.

Great Kids, Great Reads Podcast

I've started something a little new, trying to combine my love of radio with my love of books.

So I'm launching a new podcast. Great Kids, Great Reads (click here to hear #1)

GKGR features interviews with my fave booksellers and I get their picks for must-read books - picture book, middle-grade and YA.

The amazing Melissa Bourdon-King and Michelle Gram from Mabel's Fables Bookstore are my guides for the first few episodes. Podcast #1 features some of their spooky book nods.

There's also a Facebook page for the podcast, where we will post the books (feel free to LIKE)!

And stay tuned for more!

Where have you gone Jackie Robinson?

So, now that the big TD awards are behind us (List of amazing winners here), it's time to turn our attention back to baseball.

The World Series starts tonight. (Why the teams needed 5 days off to rest, I do NOT understand. Kind of eradicates the idea of playoff conditioning. I mean, each team is now rested and can start whomever they want as a pitcher.)

Anyway, I'm working on a book about baseball and numbers so I'm thinking about the little things in the game right now, and the not so little things.

One thing struck me as I was looking at the rosters of Boston and St. Louis. They are almost exclusively white players. This is definitely true of the starting pitching, and mostly true of the starting lineups in general.

This is worth noting, because it signals a trend in baseball, that baseball itself is trying to address - the decline of African-American players. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig launched a task force at the beginning of this season to look at the causes and some possible solutions.

When Jackie Robinson joined Brooklyn in 1947 he ushered in an era of integration. The percentage of African-American players in the game peaked around 30 years later, which is now around 30 years ago. It was about 19%. Now it's closer to 7%. (The folks at SABR have a great analysis of the numbers here. It is worth noting that there is a rise in players from Latin America and Asia.)

I won't get into all the reasons why this is important. Let's just say if baseball is "America's pastime", it needs to better reflect "America's demographics."

Excited!

Tonight is the BIG awards night for Kids Lit in Canada.

The TD Book Awards. (Full disclosure, Neil Flambe #4 is up for the John Spray Mystery Award! I'll be wearing my lucky snoopy tie.)

As my friend Helaine Becker points out, there's more money handed out tonight than at any other Canadian book awards night. I sincerely hope the media reports the results tonight and tomorrow. (hint, hint)

Will the winner of the big $30,000 TD award be mentioned/interviewed on national radio? Fingers are crossed.

I'm always perplexed by the lack of attention Canadian authors get at home, compared to children's authors in other countries. When I was hosting CBC Radio Q a few weeks back, I opened with an essay praising the incredible depth of the Canadian scene. (Full text is here)

The Canadian scene is as strong as any in the world. The quality of writing, the excellence of the images, the strength of our editors, publishers, booksellers and librarians (this is a team effort) is unrivalled, but hampered (perhaps) by the term "Canadian."

Time to jettison the idea that the term limits us. That it means we only tell stories for Canadian kids, or (worse) that we only get published here because we are Canadian. We publish and sell everywhere, and names such as Oppel, Gay, Klassen, Ellis, Nielsen, (and so many more) are debated in school yards and reading clubs around the world. (Oh, yeah, did I forget Franklin, Munsch and Scaredy Squirrel?)

Alice Munro's Nobel win proves that you can find the universal in the local. It also proves the rest of the world recognizes what we've got here.

This isn't an "us vs. them" rant about kids writers vs. adult writers. I'll be hosting the Giller Lite Bash in a couple of weeks and just like good writing, wherever it exits. We are all separate parts of an incredibly rich world.

So, time to celebrate all of us!

Bearded Bosox

I'm not a huge fan of the Red Sox, but I love those beards!