Sheila Barry, Publisher of Groundwood Books

I cannot read the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child without tearing up at item 3, which begins “You have the right to a name….” I am simply undone to realize that we live in a world where this right has to be articulated, and to realize also that, like the other statements in this declaration, every child’s right to a name remains more a hopeful promise than a firm guarantee. So when I indulge in one of my frequent fantasies about how things would be different around this planet if I were supreme ruler of the universe, I don’t stop at picturing all the world’s children entering light-filled classrooms staffed by well-trained teachers who read to them every day no matter how old they are. I also picture groups of children being given a copy of this book along with an assurance that the adults they encounter, both in school and outside, will work as hard as they can every day of their lives to deliver on the hopeful promises it contains.

I Have the Right to Be a Child By author Alain Serres, illustrated by Aurélia Fronty, translated by Helen Mixter

Laura Repas is the Publicity Director for House of Anansi and Groundwood Books. Photo courtesy Kate McQuaid

For the last month my five-year-old son has been completely obsessed with Canadian astronaut and ISS Commander Chris Hadfield. The librarian at his school has been reading to the kids about the solar system, and they’ve been watching Hadfield’s Youtube videos and learning about the International Space Station. He’s also super into the song Hadfield and Ed Robertson sing, and we play it around the house and strum along and dance.

Hearing about Hadfield’s recent return home reminded me of our excellent book called Out of Orbit by Chris Jones. It’s a true story about the three astronauts who were trapped in orbit after the space shuttle Columbia tragically exploded in 2003. The book chronicles both how the astronauts survived in space for an extended period of time, and how they finally figured out how to get home. I remember the parts of the book that dealt with their harrowing trip back into Earth’s atmosphere in an ancient Soyuz capsule as the most gripping and suspenseful parts of an already immensely readable book, and it made me want to revisit the story. Having now reread it, I feel I have a better understanding of what Commander Hadfield went through yesterday.

— Laura Repas

In honour of Chris Hadfield’s safe return to earth, Out of Orbit is 30% off when you use the code HADFIELD30. Sale ends May 19th.

About the book

In February 2003, American astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin were on a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station. But then the space shuttle Columbia exploded far beneath them. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride back to earth.Out of Orbit chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered mission controls in Houston and Moscow as they worked frantically against the clock, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot. Latched to the side of the space station was a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-1 capsule, the rocket equivalent of a 1976 Gremlin. Despite the inherent danger, the Soyuz became the only hope to return Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit home. Their harrowing journey back to earth is a powerful reminder that space travel remains an incredibly dangerous pursuit.

Now if only Lena could help get the word out that those and several other wonderful Diana Athill books are available for purchase from our website…

Internationally acclaimed author Lisa Moore offers us a remarkable new novel about a man who escapes from prison to embark upon one of the most ambitious pot-smuggling adventures ever attempted.

Available June 2013.
Find out more about CAUGHT.

What do you think of the cover? Let us know in the comments!

Spring 2013 Anansi poets:
Michael Crummey (Under the Keel), Adam Dickison (The Polymers), and Sara Peters (1996)

Wednesday, April 24, 7:00 p.m.
Anansi Poetry in Montreal
Librarie Drawn & Quarterly
211 Bernard Ouest, Montreal, QC

Thursday, April 25, 7:00 p.m.
Anansi Poetry Bash
The Garrison
1197 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON
RSVP on Facebook

Saturday, April 27, 6:30 p.m.
Ottawa Writer’s Festival
Knox Presbyterian Church
120 Lisgar St, Ottawa, ON

Adam Dickison (The Polymers), Sara Peters (1996), and Erin Knight (Chaser)

Friday April 19, 8:00 p.m.
Cobourg Festival of Poetry
Art Gallery of Northumberland in Victoria Hall
55 King Street West, Cobourg, ON

Massey Lectures Rebroadcast Details:

Tune in to CBC Radio One’s Ideas March 25-29 at 9:00 p.m. (9:30 p.m. in NFLD) to catch the rebroadcast of the 2012 Massey Lectures, The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos by world-renowned physicist Neil Turok.

Watch Neil Turok on TVO’s Allan Gregg In Conversation:

(email subscribers, please click through to watch)

Listen now:

(Audio recorded at KRCC Colorado Springs.)

Peter Behrens

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The Role of Energy, Narrative, and Dream in Writing The Girl of the Wish Garden

I’ve always been interested in what drives a story — where the energy comes from within the pages and how it manages to connect with the interest, curiosity, and energy of a reader. What is it that drives that, especially in a picture book? I’m always looking for that, for a moment of engagement that occurs when you absorb text or image or when some emotional response arises from some space in between text and image. Sometimes it occurs in the action of the page turn. Sometimes it’s a surprise, sometimes it’s pleasurably predictable, and sometimes it’s both at once.

In many ways this was a dream project for me, being invited to write text in response to Nasrin Khosravi’s beautiful pictures. I approached it, oddly enough, by writing nothing at all in the beginning. Nan Froman (Groundwood’s Senior Editor) had sent me scans of the 1999 Farsi edition, Dokhtare Baghe Arezoo.  I read the Erik Haugaard translation of the original Thumbelina story, and about a hundred other Andersen tales in Haugaard’s Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. I read the 1872 H.P. Paull translation. I read an English translation of the Farsi book. By that time, my head was swimming, so I ended up just putting the pictures up in my office and looking at them for a really long time. Several months, as I recall.

Over time, I began to feel as if I was absorbing the colors and shapes in those beautiful images. They were beginning to be part of my visual consciousness.

There’s a physiologically grounded explanation for dreams called the activation-synthesis model, which suggests that during REM  sleep there are circuits in the brain stem that get activated. These in turn stimulate areas of the limbic system that have to do with emotions, sensations, and memories. So we may be asleep but there’s all this activity going on, with the brain trying to create meaning from a whole range of suddenly freed-up stimuli. Therefore, we dream. Makes sense, no?

In a way, at its best, crafting a story should feel a bit like dreaming. The story emerges only when I can get my active, managerial, daily self out of the way. But I experienced a rather more direct example of activation-synthesis toward the end of my work on this project. Nasrin’s pictures feature a host of little animal figures that occur throughout. They almost seem to inhabit a kind of parallel world beneath the story’s surface. One night I went to sleep thinking of those little figures, troubled by the fact that my text didn’t address them at all. I awoke the next morning still not knowing how to fix that, but with a vivid dream in my mind in which those rock art-like figures were running. I felt compelled to take yet another look at the pictures.

When I did, I stopped at this image:

I knew where I needed to place a very small reference to these magical creatures. I am convinced that my sleeping mind sorted this out for me. I love Lina’s energy here, and the playfulness of chasing the “small ghost creatures/ That skittered through the undergrowth.”

For this story, narrative depended on giving Lina agency, making her the one whose actions drive the story. I remember at one point when I was trying desperately to stay true to the Andersen story, and grossly overplotting the whole thing as a result, Patsy Aldana (Groundwood’s founder and former Publisher) wrote this to me: “The writing here is beautiful but it doesn’t fit the pictures.” Of course. It was the permission I needed to let go my reteller’s mindset and draw once again from the art.

The most amazing thing about the pictures is their otherworldly, dream-like quality. It feels fitting that an actual dream might have played a role in writing some small part of the text.

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Our thanks to  Uma Krishnaswami for this very thoughtful post. The Girl of the Wish Garden is available now in fine bookstores and online.

Enter to win HERE

Contest closes February 28, 2013.

More Lisa Moore news:

> Read a chapter of Lisa Moore’s forthcoming novel Caught in the eBook version of February!

> Signed paperback copies of February are available for purchase from our website. While supplies last.

> Lisa Moore’s Alligator is our Weekly Deal! Until February 24, use the coupon code WKLYDEAL to get 30% off Alligator.

> Stay tuned as we reveal the cover image for Caught soon! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to be the first to see this highly anticipated cover reveal.

OLA Best Bets:

Middle of Nowhere by Caroline Adderson
Summer in the City by Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel
Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, Detectives Extraordinaire by Polly Horvath
A Few Bites by Cybele Young

USBBY Outstanding International Book honour list:

Out of the Way! Out of the Way! by Uma Krishnaswami and Uma Krishnaswamy
I Have the Right to be a Child by Alain Serres and Aurelia Fronty
La Malinche by Francisco Serrano and Pablo Serrano
My Name is Parvana by Deborah Ellis
Kids of Kabul by Deborah Ellis
Nobody Knows by Shelly Tanaka

Congratulations to all the authors and illustrators!