Nature / Writing

Today would have been Jean Craighead George's 100th birthday. She passed away in 2012 at the age of 92, but even if she didn't make it into the triple digits, her booklist did. George was a prolific author, writing over a hundred books - mostly for kids and mostly about nature and animals.  As a child, animal books were all I ever wanted to read. E.B. White's stories were an early favourite and still sit on my shelf, alongside titles like The Wilds of Whip-Poor-Will Farm, Misty of Chincoteague, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, Beautiful Joe, and Where the Red Fern Grows. When most girls my age were reading The Babysitter's Club series - well, I was reading those too, but I was also devoted to The Saddle Club . I went through a Jim Kjelgaard phase and a James Herriot phase, accidentally learning a lot about the American wilderness of the 40s and 50s and life in rural England in the process.  

Yay book in the mail! Excited to check out this poetry collection for kids about space and aliens from @theemmapress . And I love the bonus bookmark! #kidlit #kidspoetry #indiepress #uk #inthemail #toread A post shared by Marilyn Anne Campbell (@marilyn.cam) on Nov 14, 2017 at 4:24pm PST And it turned out my excitement over the arrival of this anthology from the UK was warranted. Watcher of the Skies: Poems about Space and Aliens  is a fantastic poetry collection for kids - playful and insightful and sure to spark the imagination of young writers and explorers alike. The collection pairs the poems with notes and suggested connections (presumably) supplied by editors Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright, along with related facts by Rachel Cochrane, a PhD student from the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Astronomy. This is a wonderful way to put the book together, as it means the poems can rise to any level of whimsy, with the kid-friendly "footnotes" ...

Sunday March 20th, 2016 Yesterday I read a fun article on The Varsity Newspaper website that reviews the contents of several Little Free Library boxes in Toronto . Writer Lisa Power wonders what the box contents tell us about Torontonians, but of course as Power herself admits, the contents could really just indicate which books the locals most wanted to get rid of. So when we took a nice Sunday walk in the park (this was the International Day of Happiness, after all), we checked in at a local Little Free Library  to see what the contents had to say. Which was mostly that it's time for me to round up a few contributions! Maybe this says we love our books too much to give away? I don't know if most people really do use Little Free Libraries to read-and-return, or if they tend to keep what they like and leave other books to replace them (or maybe never return OR replace, based on these shelves). We do a little mix of both - I've definitely read and returned, and r...

Sunday May 19, 2013 Last week, Open Book Toronto posted an article in which Canadian author Susan Hughes worried about the lack of poetry being published for kids . As she says: "Sure, poetry for all ages suffers from a small readership, in Canada or any country, but I have this sense that kids' poetry books had a heyday in Canada — maybe 30 or 40 years ago, when Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie was first published — and since then have declined in number. Probably books of poetry for kids just don't generate the sales necessary to make them viable. But why is that? Why don't we buy Canadian poetry for our kids to read?" Hughes also got a publisher, an editor, an author, and a teacher-librarian to weigh in, and the article makes for an interesting read . It's also a great place to find the names of some recently published poetry books worth a look! "You'd better be planning on feeding me pie..." Photo © Marilyn Anne Campbell ...

Sunday September 25, 2011 Today was the annual Word on the Street (WOTS) National Book & Magazine Festival , which here in Toronto takes over Queen's Park.  Steve and I went out to enjoy some of our favourite things - literature, being outside, and food that isn't terribly good for us.  Here's what I came home with:   I'm pretty excited to now own both The Barracuda and The Armadillo , which are anthologies of teen writing that were created as part of the NOW HEAR THIS! literacy program.  But the truly serendipitous find was First In, Last Out - The RCAF, Women's Division and Nursing Sisters in World War Two, as this book is the perfect thing to help me research a play I've been working on. Plus, I even got it signed by the author! Oh, and on a less literary note, we also saw this bit of hilarity: I just hope no one gets confused about which porta-boxes are for withdrawals and which ones are for deposits...

 Sunday September 19, 2010 Just finished reading Fauna by Alissa York, which I loved.  My Goodreads review is below: Fauna by Alissa York My rating: 4 of 5 stars I knew I was likely to love the content of this book before I even started reading - it's set in Toronto right where I used to live, and focuses on the intersections between the lives of people and urban animals, which I love. But this is also the first book I've read by Alissa York and now I can also say that style-wise, she's fantastic. Both her human and non-human characters show distinction and depth. She also has a great sense of when incredibly well-researched details about the everyday actions of her characters will add to the story, ranging from what it's like to operate a car crusher to what wildlife officers face during a search - or what a raccoon faces during a search for food. Just an all-around great book that's one of my new favourites. View all my reviews

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White This book was a landmark in my development as a young reader. It was the first time I recognized that if I liked one book by a certain author, I would probably enjoy their other books as well (next up was The Trumpet of the Swan ). It was also the first book I remember reading that prompted me to consider the characters as actual individuals, and not just as character types. (Oh Templeton, are you the reason I love pet rats?) Read about my long-standing error regarding the gender of E.B. White on my blog . Green Grass, Running Water by Tom King Altering the linear nature of a narrative is commonplace in visual media, but in this novel King's method of telling is as playful as the story itself. Engrossing, socially relevant, chock full of cultural references and funny as hell this book is layered like few others. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" a poem by T.S. Eliot There's something addictive about the rhy...