Category Archives: Uncategorized

Could this be one of Dad’s paintings?

One of the new projects I’m working on is a collaboration with Sylvia Olsen and Jean Jordan. We are researching and writing a biography for children about Elizabeth May, Canada’s first Green Party MP in Ottawa. Elizabeth has a long history of activism and we’ve been reading and discussing which pieces of her story make sense to include in a book for children. As part of that research, I have been re-reading her book Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada. In the section in the middle with photos I came across this one that shows Elizabeth along with a number of others in Speaker’s Chambers in the House of Commons in Ottawa. The photo was taken in 1987 and it’s quite conceivable (there were a number of collectors back east who bought his work, including various on Parliament Hill) that…

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Sometimes when I visit schools students ask me whether I ever read my own books. The thought horrifies me, actually – by the time a book has gone from idea to draft to draft to draft to draft #72 over the course of months or years,  after it has been hacked apart by members of my writing group, helpful friends and family members, an editor (sometimes more than one) and then picked apart and dissected by a copy editor and a proof reader (each iteration requiring me to re-read and sign off – or, rewrite as the case may be) trust me, the LAST thing I would consider reading for entertainment would be something I had written myself. This aversion to reading my own stuff is so deep I rarely read from my books even when I’m supposed to be at a book event where this sort of activity…

While looking for tree quotes that might be suitable for the CIP page of Deep Roots I came across this one by Khalil Gibran who is a pretty quotable guy. I probably won’t use it in the book (I’m leaning toward something from Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell). Another possibility is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that ends with, The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. It turns out plenty of people have lots to say about trees so my challenge is not finding a quote to use but rather sorting through dozens and dozens to find one that works for the image selected for the page (which is not the image above… but of a young woman standing beneath a large tree at the water’s edge. She has one arm extended so it looks  as if she’s holding hands with the tree… a…

Deep Roots:How Trees Sustain Our Planet is back on my desk for a few days. This is part of the Orca Footprints series (Orca Book Publishers) and, like the other books in this series, it looks beeee-u-tee-ful! Jenn at Orca is doing a great job with these titles and it’s so exciting to see things coming together! My next task is to add a few more captions (some of the images have changed) and then provide nitty gritty finishing touches like the dedication and acknowledgements… Soon, soon we will have a book on hand!