Welcome to STEMinism Sunday! As a former woman in science, I have a deep and enduring interest in the experiences and representation of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). This series will be an opportunity for ... Read More  

The idea for my teen novel, HE MUST LIKE YOU, which comes out on July 14, arrived in a kind of backwards manner. Let me explain: about a year before the #metoo movement took off, there was a high ... Read More  

One of the reasons I started Mad Scientist Mondays was because a lot of people don't actually know any scientists. As a result, cultural depictions of science and scientists - like those in movies and on TV - have ... Read More  

When asked where we get our ideas, writers often joke "The idea store." In an age where we can type "writing prompts" into Google and return literally thousands of starting points for our next masterpieces, it's actually not that ... Read More  

The goal of conservation biology is to maintain the planet’s biological diversity (biodiversity). So basically, it is a science born from the impact that humans have on nature. But it differs somewhat from other biological sciences because it is ... Read More  

In the three years I spent working on The Boreal Forest and preparing to release it into the world, I never in my wildest dreams expected to have to do it during a pandemic. And it's been both harder ... Read More  

I was born in Georgia, USSR and immigrated to Canada when I was four years old. I lived in Toronto, Ontario for the most part of my life. I’ve been married to my husband Esfandiar for over 28 years ... Read More  

Last week we talked about some of the reasons that the boreal forest matters - not just to those of us who live there, but to the entire world. This week, I wanted to draw your attention to some ... Read More  

When I was writing The Boreal Forest, one of my goals was to shine some light on ecological processes - by showing how a forest works, I could hopefully show what a forest is for... by which I mean, ... Read More  

For the last few months, we've been talking about the first two things we must do before we sit down to write: Identify our audience Who are we writing for? Kids, adults, professional peers, our teachers? What does that audience need from ... Read More  

This is the original draft of the final scene in The Boreal Forest: Snow falls from a flat grey sky. It hisses in the steam that rises from a hotspring. A snowshoe hare laps at the warm water. She nibbles ... Read More  

A special treat today: an interview with illustrator June Steube! June's specialty is science and nature illustration, and she's worked for clients as diverse as Canada Post and the Canadian Museum of Nature. She's currently illustrating her first children's ... Read More  

Pages 34-35 of The Boreal Forest show boreal birds migrating south for the winter. That scene originally included this snippet, showing a different winter survival strategy: Red squirrels fill their winter pantries. One hauls a mushroom up a pine, wedging ... Read More  

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children's writers! Today's guest: Farida Mizra. Take it away, Farida! My memories of growing up in pre-digital South East Asia are rich with images of living in extended families, ... Read More  

Today, on Forest Friday, we're going to take a deeper dive behind the scenes into the process of revision. I'm going to share every draft of the first scene in The Boreal Forest (pages 8-9), and explain how the ... Read More  

Happy Star Wars Day, and welcome to my post about the science of this iconic series. Because my scientific expertise is strictly terrestrial, and because I am one of about three people on this planet who isn't really sure ... Read More  

The boreal forest is generally considered a northern forest, because boreal species, like pines and birch and rhododendrons, thrive in cooler climates. But cool climates are also found at high altitudes, so boreal forests extend into mountain ranges along ... Read More  

For the last few months, we've been looking at the purpose of different genres of writing, and the way the purpose of a document affects our approach to the task. Most of those columns focused on academic writing, but ... Read More