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Happy Bird Child News

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:07:25 -0500

I received wonderful Bird-news today from Tundra Books!

1) The OLA Best Bets Committee has chosen Bird Child as one of their top ten Canadian Children’s Picture Books! The Best Bets Books will be presented at the OLA Super Conference in Toronto next week.

2) Bird Child has been nominated for the 2010 Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Award as a Shining Willow book! These awards allow over 10,000 students and young adults to read and vote for their favorite books. I love imagining all these sweet kids in Saskatchewan reading Bird Child in their classrooms and libraries. For more info on the SYRCA Willow Awards, you may visit www.willowawards.ca.

February Love and Happiness

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:40:31 -0500

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!

Happy Holidays!

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:52:25 -0500

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Christmas Update

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:50:33 -0500

I was watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the kids the other night, and was suddenly struck by the fact that poor little Rudolph was bullied by the others. Those nasty reindeer! And here we always thought they were so cute and cuddly!
Not only did they call him names because of his physical differences, but “they never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.” Many kids associate bullying with physical aggression, but exclusion is a powerful weapon used by bullies to ostracize and alienate children. We need to encourage children to seek out those kids who need a friend and speak up when someone is excluding them. There are many children out in the schoolyard, who, like Lainey in Bird Child, need someone to give them wings to fly.

Updates

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 11:20:06 -0500

I have had a busy couple of weeks of readings for Bird Child. After the McNally Robinson event on November 14th, I had a reading at the Toronto Public Library for Canadian Children’s Book Week on November 17th, and at the Elmira Public Library on November 19th. Yesterday, I was at Chapter’s in Waterloo, where I had a wonderful time meeting the students from Ms Murphy’s class at N.A. MacEachern School. I was touched to receive my very first author letter, complete with gold bubble letters! Thanks Josh!
I wrote a guest blog for the Elmira reading on the Tundra Books blog. You can see the picture of me with Miss Betty, along with the lovely festive wreath she made for me at:
http://tundrabooks.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/guest-post-nan-forler-2/