1)Love – I have just returned from a wonderful day at the Reading for the Love of It conference in Toronto.  I’ve always enjoyed attending this conference as a teacher, and I lived my dream being there as a writer!  Sylvia Chan and Pamela Osti, the fabulous publicity queens from Tundra Books, met me at the Tundra booth with cartons of Bird Child and “hot-off-the-press” copies of our new teacher’s guide.   In a whirlwind session, I signed 50 books in 40 minutes for a long line-up of enthusiastic teachers.  I was so happy to meet so many young teachers, many still in teacher’s college, looking fresh-faced and eager.  Everyone was very excited to receive the teacher’s guide, filled with a wide range of curriculum-based activities, and featuring ideas for text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections. (A downloadable version of this will be available in the “parents and teachers” section of this website very soon!)  Between book-buying sessions, I sat in on portions of lectures by the legendary picture book writer, Eve Bunting, and the extraordinarily motivating teacher, Rafe Esquith.  As usual, I left tired and happy, with my heart filled with inspiration and my bags filled with more books than I could comfortably carry home on the train.

2)Happiness – Bird Child is featured in the February issue of Today’s Parent Magazine!  The book was included in the “Our Favourite Books” section of the magazine.  So many friends contacted me to let me know they had seen it.  Apparently, 1.8 million Canadians read this magazine every month.  A happy Canadian boost for Bird Child!

Speaking of Canada, the Olympics start tonight.  Go Canada!