News and Notes from the Field

Be yourself. But dress how we say to dress. Your school clothes must cover up your shoulders, cleavage, and knees. Your sports uniform is a skimpy little number, but it’s no big deal. A teenage girl’s instructions for how ... Read More  

Happy International Day of Forests! Looking for ways to learn about forests, or raise awareness about all the amazing things they do for the planet? Allow me to suggest some resources: Bimaadiziwin Mitigoog – Trees of Life This set ... Read More  

When the internet first exploded, lo these many moons ago, there was a whole lot of hand-wringing over the death of nonfiction books. Who’d bother reading a book when they could just google the answer? A lot of us, ... Read More  

Because sometimes, laughing is the only way to keep from screaming. Read More  

Freedom to Read Week is a time to remember and preserve our intellectual right to read any book we wish to. But if the book doesn’t exist, how do we know what we don’t know? Since Russia launched its attacks on ... Read More  

Book banning has been accelerating in the USA for several years now, and their National Coalition Against Censorship has some excellent resources that can help Canadians fight for the freedom to read.  Read More  

In July 2025, Alberta’s education minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, issued a ministerial order that threatened to ban hundreds of books from the shelves of school libraries here in Canada. For Julie and I, the alarm bells went off immediately—we had ... Read More  

Ignorance gets a bad rap, because most of us assume there's only one kind. But I have a theory: there are three kinds of ignorance, and one of them is worth cultivating. Read More  

Learning to read is a rite of passage. Achieving this skill lets a child decipher a code that only bigger kids and grownups seem to know, and it opens a door to new worlds of fantasy, adventure, cultures, and ... Read More  

I attended junior high in Yellowknife, which is not the most isolated place in Canada, but definitely felt like it sometimes. Fortunately, the school library was huge, and offered a portal to endless worlds I could visit in my ... Read More  

These days, we’re seeing increasing polarization—it’s becoming hard to even have a discussion with someone who doesn’t share your opinions or values. I wanted to help kids become aware of algorithms and “burst” their information bubble, to broaden their ... Read More  

One reason Antarctica is so unique is because it's been isolated from the rest of the planet for about 20 million years: ever since the Antarctic Circumpolar Current formed. The ACC - you guessed it - is an ocean ... Read More  

Here's a fun thing I just learned: barnacle geese are so named because Medieval scholars believed they hatched from... goose barnacles! Read More  

“Why rats?” The man’s voice was thick with scorn, like he’d just stepped in something disgusting. It was 2017, and the first edition of my young adult novel, The Great & the Small, had just come out. Using dual narratives, ... Read More  

If you're an adult fan of my science books for kids, there's a good chance you enjoy reading science books written for adults, too. Ed Yong's An Immense World is one of the best science books I've ever read... Read More  

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Stephanie Ellen Sy. Take it away, Stephanie! When my pandemic writing group challenged me to try fiction—specifically a children’s story—I knew exactly which ... Read More  

The keeners among you might already be thinking about the year’s best holiday, Iceland’s Jólabókaflóðið, or Book Flood. If you’ve got young readers on your giving list, I got you. I started my MFA in Writing for Children and ... Read More  

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Karen Krossing. Take it away, Karen! Please take a moment to place both your feet flat on the floor. Can you feel the ... Read More