OLA Signing/Appearance Schedule

The Ontario Library Association Superconference is always a highlight on my calendar.

This year, I'll be busy busy busy!

Thursday, Feb 2:

Scholastic booth -   11 am - signing copies of Deck the Halls  

Orca booth - 2:30 pm - signing copies of You Can Read, Dirk Daring, Secret Agent, and Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Friday, Feb 3:

Forest of Reading Breakfast - 8 am

Canscaip Forest of Reading Launch - 10:30-11-30

DK Books - 12 pm - Poster signing for Our Great Prime Ministers

Hope to see you there!

Looking ahead to Superconference - Woot!

The Ontario Library Association Superconference is always a highlight on my calendar.

This year, I'll be signing copies of Deck the Halls at the Scholastic booth on Thursday, Feb. 2.

I'll also be signing copies of You Can Read at the Orca booth that same day.

And if you just want to say hi, I'll be at the Forest of Reading Breakfast bright and early on Friday, Feb 3, talking about Worms for Breakfast and Everything: Space, which are both shortlisted for the Silver Birch Award. Expect me to be a bit overexcited, but sleepy-eyed!

Coming soon to a bookshelf near you!!

My latest picture book, You Can Read, will be published by Orca later this month. You can preorder it now at your fave indy bookstore (I'm partial to The Bookkeeper, Mable's Fables, Blue Heron Books and Ella Minnow, among others). It celebrates both literacy and life, and is a very funny. ;)

I'll be signing copies at the Ontario Library Association Superconference at the Orca Booth on Thursday, Feb 2. Come by, say hi, and get a book!

Forest of Reading Lists are Out!

The Forest of Reading, one of North America's largest children's choice award programs, has just announced its 2017 nominees.

I'm proud - and humbled  - to have two books nominated in the nonfiction category this year!

Worms for Breakfast: How to Feed a Zoo (Owlkids) is  a wacky cookbook-style primer packed with facts from experts at zoos and aquariums. Covering everything from regular animal nutrition to feeding babies to mimicking how animals hunt and eat in the wild, this book explores the eating habits of carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, and insectivores. Inside, you’ll also find real-life recipes from zoos around the world for meals like eucalyptus-leaf pesto, kelp tank goulash, and mealworm mush. Beware! You probably don’t want to eat any of it yourself.

Written in a plucky, conversational tone with delightfully wacky illustrations, a glossary, and tips for zoo animal care, this book is bound to appeal to picky readers.

Everything: Space (National Geographic Kids) blasts off into space to explore planets, stars, and beyond! Watch out! Giant swirling nebulae of fun will pull you in like gravity.  Megaparsecs of  facts, reports from explorers, maps and infographics, and more than 100 pictures will send you supernova.

For more information on the Forest of Reading, go here. 

For registration information - if you work in a school, library, community centre, after-school group, etc - you really should register!!! - here. 

Who Is That Masked Avenger?

Who is that masked avenger? I have no idea, but if you want to know who the heck I am, I've just updated my biography.

Here it is.

Helaine Becker is the bestselling writer of more than 50 award-winning children’s and YA books: fiction, non-fiction and verse. Her chapter book series, The Looney Bay All-Stars, has sold over 175,000 copies to date; A Porcupine in a Pine Tree was a Canadian National Bestseller in 2010, and the #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER in 2011. It also received the Libris Picture Book of the Year Award from the C.B.A. She also is a three-time winner of the Silver Birch Award: for Boredom Blasters in 2006, and Secret Agent Y.O.U. in 2008; What's the Big Idea? received the Silver Birch Honour Award in 2011. The Insecto-Files was awarded the first ever Lane Anderson Award for Science Writing for Children – an award that included a $10,000 cash prize. The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea won the Outstanding Youth Book Award from the Canadian Science Writers Association in 2013.




Helaine is in high demand as a presenter and performer at schools across North America. She has twice been selected for the Canadian Children’s Book Week Cross Country tour, travelling to both Yukon and Nunavut to present to school children. She has been a featured speaker at the Frye Festival in New Brunswick, Aloud International Children’s Festival in Ontario, Weaving Words Conference in Alberta, Literacy for Life Conference in Saskatchewan, and the Red Cedar Awards in British Columbia. She was also a featured speaker at the 2009 Orange County Children’s Book Festival in Costa Mesa, California and the 2010 Women’s Writers’ Festival in Irvine, California.



Helaine is also a highly motivational speaker and instructor for writers. She has taught seminars for CANSCAIP's annual Packaging Your Imagination Conference in Toronto, Calgary's When Words Collide Conference, and has been invited to speak at the San Diego SCBWI regional chapter next winter. Workshops and seminar topics include:



> Basic Business Skills for Writers. ROI. B2B. Profit Centre. Supply Chain. Qualifying the Customer. If these and other business-related phrases strike fear in your heart, this workshop is for you. Learn the business basics you really need to jumpstart your writing career. Note: This class is NOT about the publishing business. It focuses on the skills you will need as a sole proprietor of a freelance writing business.



> The 17 Celestial Secrets of Writing Nonfiction. The Common Core Curriculum specifically mandates nonfiction books for kids. What makes nonfiction work? How do you pitch and present a nonfiction idea to agents or editors? This all-true workshop gives you the info you need to make the sale. Helaine's published 18+ books of nonfiction for children, many of them multi-award-winning.



> Writing Picture Books. Picture Books are Opera on the page. Your books needs all of the elements an opera has - compelling character, great plot, action and drama, set design, costumes, music and dance - even if features a Pigeon. Learn the basics of how to create a compelling Carmen, a terrific Tosca, and a powerful Pigeon in 32 perfect pages. Helaine has published 9 picture books including the Canadian #1 national bestseller, A Porcupine in a Pine Tree.



> Poetry Primer. You've all heard it - no one buys poetry. It's not true. What they won't buy is BAD poetry. And chances are your poetry isn't up to scratch. In this workshop, you'll learn the common faults most beginners make when writing rhyming verse, and how to make your verse sparkle like a brand new espresso machine (and pack the same punch!) Helaine has published 6 books written in rhyming verse, including the #1 Canadian national bestseller, A Porcupine in a Pine Tree, and the brand new Ode to Underwear.


Helaine is also an active supporter of literacy initiatives. She volunteers regularly for ABC Life Literacy, First Book, Librarians without Borders and the Canadian Institute for the Blind.




A New York native, she has lived happily in Toronto for more than 20 years. She has been on the executive board of CANSCAIP (the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors and Illustrators), and is a member of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, The Writers Union of Canada, SCBWI and the Canadian Science Writers' Association. She is married with two teenage sons and has the cutest dog in the world, Ella.

More about StoryWalk!

Here are two of the signs posted along the "Juba This Juba That" StoryWalk trail in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia. You follow the trail, read the story, and do the activities. How great is that - literacy, exercise and nature all in one!
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For more info on Active Kids, Healthy Kids (one of the sponsors), go to http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/pasr/akhk-intro.asp

How to Get Kids to Read -It's Easy!

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I thought I'd present the single best way to get kids to read. It's so easy it's mindboggling.

Let them pick their own books.

I know it's hard for control-freaky parents to let go of the reins, even a little. And reading-level controlled teachers with nervous administrators and mandatory borrow-a-book programs might even break into a cold sweat at the thought. But when kids pick their own books, voila! They find stuff they like. And then, double voila! They want to keep reading.

It's shocking, I know but true, the books you loved when you were a kid might just not thrill your progeny. My kids can't stand any of the carefully curated collection I built for them from my own childhood faves.

And books that they should read, because they are worthy? Can you say 'kiss o' death?' No devoted reader was ever birthed from a forced encounter with The Stone Angel.

What if they choose books that are above their reading level? Won't that hurt their confidence? Perhaps, but that's just as it should be. Junior may learn that he doesn't exactly know everything yet, and the world doesn't shine out of his ass. The world will thank you for this. Besides, if the book is really interesting (and maybe even has dirty pictures), well, the motivation to improve one's reading skills is right there, and the means to develop them right at hand. Literacy 101 and Citizenship 101 at one easy go.

If you must must must feel compelled to choose books for your kids, at least pick books that kids are known to like. The good folks over at Sympatico have put together a short list of their top ten kid-tested and kid-worthy reads. I'm pleased to see my own Hilarious History of Hockey made this list (but of course it would- it has pucks made out of frozen cow poo in it, and you can't get more kid-friendly than that).

So buy em all, and leave all ten top titles scattered around for your kids to find. They'll be reading like fiends before you know it.

Is Reading Fun?

Is reading fun? As a confirmed bookworm, I can reply with only one answer - of course it is. But that's not true for everyone - especially today's kids.  Even while literacy scores have been improving, we've managed to create a new generation of non-readers. According to an article in this week's National Post, fewer kids today report that they enjoy reading than they did a decade ago, despite an overall increase in literacy. 

My ultra-articulate response to this story is, "No duh." For at least the last decade, it's been obvious to those of us who care about literacy and reading that literacy education has been hijacked by the bureaucrats - functionaries who see the ability to read strictly as a job skill useful for future worker bees. Their view is that kids need to be taught to read - to decode written symbols - in order to produce valuable output - data entry, form-filling, ticking off of boxes on a customer satisfaction survey. The practical skill called literacy is completely divorced from what I would call true literacy - the ability to gather information from written sources of all kinds as a way to independently satisfy any curiosity.


In the reading-as-job-skill world view, reading for pleasure is beside the point, a distraction that interferes with measurable outcomes. So teacher-librarians, who spend their day encouraging kids to waste their time  - and tax payers' dollars  - giggling over books instead of building those black and white test scores, become redundant. And those expensive obsolete print collections called school libraries?  Frills. Let's put in a computer lab instead and call our job done. 

That has to be the thinking. Otherwise, how could politicians and educators spout the importance of literacy ad nauseum  while simultaneously gutting school libraries and eliminating school librarians?


With this week's news story, at last, the other shoe drops. Because of course you can't separate the love of reading from true literacy, any more than you can separate melody from music appreciation. There needs to be a reason to read, one that is meaningful to the reader, and not the bureaucrat, to drive true literacy. That reason comes when one discovers for one's self how books - and comics and magazines and DVDs -  open the world in unexpected ways, and how they can take you on a unique and highly personal journey.

Let's hope this new study gets the pendulum swinging back in the right direction. Let's put literacy education back into the hands of book lovers, people who revere the written world and respect children enough to let them come to the love of reading the only way possible - through old-fashioned discovery. And let's support - by funding AND through an appreciation of the critical role they play - the teacher-librarians in our schools.

They are the beating heart at the centre of any truly literate school community.

Storywalk for Juba? #fb #kidlit

Portland, Maine, is the home of a wonderful project called Storywalk. Text from a picture book is spread out on several signposts along a park's path. Families walk the path, read the story, and do accompanying actions tied to the book and to the location. The idea is to get kids reading and exercising, all at once!

Here's a photo of the Portland Storywalk, featuring the book, "And Here's to You!" by David Elliott (Candlewick Press) (photo courtesy Bangor Daily News)

When I returned from holiday, I got the good news that Bridgetown, Nova Scotia's public library is considering installing a similar storywalk in that town - featuring Juba This, Juba That! It does seem to be a perfect match up, both because the book reflects the historic roots of the city, and the because of the active nature of the story itself, which would be an ideal read-and-do adventure.

So thrilling to think about!!!

It's not a done deal yet, so keep your fingers crossed!