With all the foreign editions of Red is Best already published, the announcement of more to come from the Sales & Rights Manager at Annick Press last week came as quite a surprise. Also, it’s now 30 years since the book’s first publication!
But this year will see the addition of two new French versions, one through Editions de L’Ecole/ Pastel in France and another (as a board book) through Editions Scholastic in North America.
However you choose to say it, it seems that red really is best!
All across Canada, each school year, thousands of students read books that appear on “tree award” lists and, come spring, vote on their favourites. I’ve been lucky enough to have had several of my books nominated over the years:
My most recent – Highway of Heroes – is on three tree award lists this year, in the non-fiction category: the Hackmatack (for grades 4 to 6), the Silver Birch (for grades 3 to 6), and the Golden Oak (for readers in adult literacy programs).
It pleases me, of course, that my book will in the coming months be finding itself in the hands of lots of readers – of all ages. But as Remembrance Day nears, I can’t help but recall meeting people in New Brunswick a year ago who were grateful to me for writing Highway of Heroes because they’d had to travel that Highway with their loved ones. And honestly, much as a tree award nomination is nice, it’s hard to imagine any greater prize for writing what I did than a hug from the mother of a fallen soldier.
Let us remember them.
I don’t pick the illustrator for my books. The publisher does. They may ask for my opinion about the work of illustrators they’re considering, but the decision is ultimately up to them.
I’ve been lucky to have illustrators who have brought wonderful visual ideas to the books, ideas that I would never have thought of.
I’ve also had the chance to see rough illustrations and have sometimes suggested changes that the illustrator was usually only too happy to make. Not all publishers give a writer this opportunity.
To her long list of awards recognizing her achievements, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander can add the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award – the highest honor in her profession. The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) presented the award to Cornelia in Zurich in June.
Cornelia first set her sights on becoming a landscape architect when she was eleven years old. She was one of the first women to graduate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
IFLA’s press release announcing Cornelia as the winner of its “premier award” says:
Ms Oberlander has been producing designs for a greener future for six decades. Working initially with low-income communities, her attention has broadened to include playgrounds and parks, and latterly to more global perspectives. She has shown a deep commitment to environmental sustainability…
Ms Oberlander continues to make significant contributions featuring collaboration with architects and engineers on projects of international recognition. Her ability to work creatively as a member of an inter-disciplinary team with architects and engineers, basing all projects on design concepts and finding technical solutions through research, is demonstrated in her long list of built projects. She has achieved an uncommonly high level of respect and recognition from members of landscape architecture’s related professions of architecture, planning and engineering.
I first met Cornelia in 2004, and began then to get acquainted with her work. Right away, I wanted to know more – about her work and about her. When I asked her if anyone had ever written her biography, she responded by challenging me to write it. And I did!
Find out more about this fascinating woman and her wonderful career in Love Every Leaf: the life of landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.
Yes!
Keisha is a golden doodle. She’s practically famous because the illustrator of A Pocket Can Have A Treasure In It used Keisha as a model for the puppy in the story.
Never heard of a golden doodle?
Check out www.goldendoodles.com for more info and pictures of lots more doodles.
I’m going to let you figure that out. Matthew (inspiration for Big Or Little?) was born in 1975 and Kelly (inspiration for Red Is Best and “Babysitting Helen“) was born in 1978.
This picture of my kids was taken at Matt’s wedding in 2001.
I also have two stepdaughters born in 1967 and 1968 and five grandchildren born in 1997, 1999, 2002, 2002, and 2003.
Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander is celebrating her 90th birthday this week, and is finally admitting to her true age. (Not quite true. She’s been far too busy this month for anything as trivial as a birthday, so the big party will not be held until August.)
There can’t be many nonagenarians practising their professions with as much passion and energy as she is. Love Every Leaf: the life of landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander does a great job of describing her career and what drives her to keep on working to bring nature into cities in Canada, the States, and abroad, but last month there was another wonderful tribute paid to her.
At the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver (a fine example of her work), a new film about Cornelia’s amazing career was premiered. It’s part of the Washington-based Cultural Landscape Foundation Oral History Project, which has documented six important “Pioneers of Landscape Design in North America”.
Whether you have read Love Every Leaf or haven’t yet managed to get around to it, you’ll want to see and hear Cornelia speak for herself about her background, early career, and environmentally responsible designs in her segment of the CLF’s Oral History Project.
Every writer knows the old saw about ‘killing your darlings’ – deleting favourite phrases, sentences, characters, scenes, etc., from a work as it evolves. I often reassure writers I work with that out-takes from one project can sometimes be used in another project down the road.
I hadn’t yet killed the ‘Hannah as a teen mom’ thread from my current novel-in-progress, when I was approached by someone looking for submissions to consider for a high school anthology of short stories or unpublished novel excerpts. But I must have known that the moment would come. I remember thinking when the excerpt from my novel was accepted, that having the story ‘out there’ in that form would soften the blow, if I did have to cut that thread from the story.
The main character in ‘Baby Love’, recently published in Reality Imagined: Stories of Identity and Change (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), is no longer Hannah. The novel-in-progress in which Hannah is still a character now ends a few years earlier than it used to, and how it ends now means that becoming a teen mom is no longer a likelihood in Hannah`s future. But it is Chelsea`s reality.
Click on the image to read an excerpt from Chelsea’s story:
As I near the completion of a draft of the original story in which Hannah appears – one that’s almost ready to submit to a publisher (she says optimistically) – I doubt that I’ll ever have what it takes to actually write Chelsea’s novel. (But of course I doubt it. I found it hard to contemplate having another baby while I was still in the delivery room, too!)
Whether I ever tell Chelsea`s full story or not, it`s nice to know that at least readers of Reality Imagined will know this “killed darling” of mine to some extent anyway.
You can purchase personally autographed copies of many of my titles directly from me.
Most titles are also available from Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.
You can also visit your local bookstore. If they’re out of stock, they’re usually happy to order what you’re after.
I’ve blogged before about different ways Canadians have honoured fallen soldiers. But this winter I learned of another, after a neighbour attending a woodworking show with her husband came upon a display of portraits of Canadian soldiers who have fallen in Afghanistan.
Stephen Gaebel describes the first time his paintings were exhibited publicly - on Remembrance Day in 2008:
What really struck me that morning was meeting members of the Canadian Armed Forces, individuals who had served with and personally knew some of the guys in the paintings. One of the most touching things that day was watching as these men and women silently filed past the row of portaits, paying tribute to a comrade and friend by removing the poppies they wore and placing them along the portraits.
Until that day, he hadn’t really thought about what he was going to do with the portraits he’d been painting, but when he met the mother of Trooper Mark Wilson, it became obvious. You can read about ‘A brilliant shining moment’ for Stephen on his blog.
“Looking into these faces,” says Stephen, “I’ve never felt more proud or more humble to be Canadian.” His love of his country comes through clearly in the landscapes he paints – landscapes he sells prints of in order to support The Fallen Canadian Soldier Project.
“A landscape or a portrait, they are one and the same. The fire and the fury, the north wind’s blast, the morning mist mirrored in the stillness of a lake – these things that shape the face of the landscape have also shaped us.”
My neighbour told Stephen about Highway of Heroes. He insisted on sending me a print, in recognition of my way of honouring our fallen, and I’ve sent him a copy of the book in return. I hope the students I met with in Scarborough last week, and those students who will read Highway of Heroes as part of the Hackmatack Award program in the coming school year will be inspired to give some thought to how they might pay tribute to those they consider heroes, whether they’re soldiers or otherwise.
