Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Heather Camlot. Take it away, Heather!
A conversation overheard in a cafe. A strange scene down the street. An intriguing object in a friend’s home. Inspiration to stir the imagination is everywhere. We just have to open our eyes, tune our ears, and feel the moments that surround us.
I have written a dozen fiction and nonfiction books and the ideas behind them came about in different ways. Take Beyond Words: The Meaning and Impact of Sign and Symbols (Orca Book Publishers), my nonfiction book coming out this October. It started with a quote in a 2023 issue of The Globe and Mail newspaper: “When we do talk to kids about why they drew swastikas all over the bathroom, inevitably what they say is, ‘I know it’s bad, but I don’t know what it means.’”
Kids are drawing hate symbols and they don’t know what they mean?
I was shocked, sad, angry. I tore the article out of the paper, highlighted the quote by Shari Schwartz-Maltz, a spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board, and began outlining a nonfiction book about hate symbols. Of course a book can’t be just about hate – well it can, but I prefer to foster a better world – so Beyond Words also has chapters about support symbols, protest symbols, and peace symbols.
Back in time
Media also sparked my nonfiction book The Prisoner and the Writer, about the Dreyfus Affair in 1800s France. In this case, it was the 1937 film The Life of Emile Zola – the writer in the title – which I had watched as a teenager! Yes, I’m also astonished by what’s packed inside this brain of mine. The movie’s scenes about the Dreyfus Affair obviously made an indelible impact on me. And if it affected me this much, maybe this moment of historical injustice would speak to other people as well.
Speaking of history, my father-in-law one day randomly began sharing stories of his childhood in 1940s Germany. Fear of what he would reveal pulsed through me, but I still managed to rummage around his apartment for something, anything, with which to take notes. Those notes turned into my novel The Other Side. Did I know that’s what they would be used for? No. But if I didn’t write down his words, they would be lost – to literature, and more importantly to my children.
Here, there and everywhere
Where else can ideas come from? My first nonfiction book, What If Soldiers Fought with Pillows?, was prompted by my son’s nightmares about war; Secret Schools came while researching What If Soldiers; and Have a Bite: How Food Connects Us, coming out this November, was inspired by photos I took of really moldy foods. In my house. Yum.
Ideas are all around us. Watch. Listen. Feel. And write them down before they disappear forever.
Time for a book launch – or three
If you are in the Toronto area, please join Lindsey and me for a middle-grade nonfiction book launch. I will be discussing Beyond Words and Have a Bite. Lindsey will be presenting The Matilda Effect. The launch will take place at Mabel’s Fables (540 Mount Pleasant Road) on Sunday, November 29, 2026, from 10 to 11:45 am. Come for readings, snacks and personalized signed books – perfect gifts for the winter holidays!
HEATHER CAMLOT is an award-winning author of a dozen books for young readers. These include Clutch, One Goal: How Soccer Can Help Save the Planet and the upcoming Have a Bite! and Beyond Words. A journalist for more than 25 years, she has written, edited and translated for Quill & Quire, Owl and Canadian Children’s Book News, among others. Originally from Montreal, she lives in Toronto with her family.
Connect with Heather at heathercamlot.com.