I just received my copies of Frostbite Hotel today…they look AMAZING! The cover art is soooooo fun and there are all sorts of winter doodles inside. Plus, there’s a soft cover, hard cover and kindle version available – woo hoo!
Please check it out and join Grade 5er Kirby Katz as he tries to make winter recess all about the hotel business (remember snow forts at school? Serious business, right? Right!):
Frostbite Hotel is available at Chapters, McNally Robinson, amazon.ca…grab your copy today!
Check back for details about launches, readings and events. Thanks for stopping by!
This past January and February in Winnipeg was COLD. (Fiction editors will tell you not to overuse ALL CAPS, but I simply can’t write about January/February in any other way than…COLD!). Indoor recess was the name of the game and I think we were all starting to forget what fresh air felt like. Thankfully, at J.B. Mitchell school, we had our creativity to keep us warm, right? Or should I say… “WRITE”?
I had the pleasure of working with the grades 3-6 students and teachers of J.B. Mitchell for four weeks this COLD winter – two weeks at the beginning of January, and two weeks at the end of February. There were nine classes in total and a dizzying array of creative projects going on. In fact, here they are (take a deep breath!):Animal Fables (Grade 3s), Animal Diaries (Grade 3s), Arctic Animal Fables (Grade 4s), Short Stories (Grade 4s), Legends (Grades 4s and 5s), Pourquoi Tales (Grade 5s), Miraculous Memories Stories (Grade 5s), Fractured Fairy Tales (Grade 6). Whew!
In every class, we journeyed along in the writing process together. I showed you how I do it for my novels, and by watching you work, planning with teachers, and immersing ourselves in the forms you were writing the process twisted, turned and meandered according to your particular project. Of course, one of the most important steps in the process of writing a particular kind of story is reading as many stories in that genre as you can – that’s why your teachers and I encouraged you to read and study the art of fables, fairy tales, fractures fairy tales, memoirs, diaries, pourquoi tales, and legends. Reading and writing are like best friends – they go everywhere together and they help each other out. 🙂
Over the course of those first two weeks
, we got started on our stories. There was lots of planning, plotting, reading, dreaming, and brainsparking to do. It was fun to watch your stories begin to come to life even in those first few days. Then, I went off for a few weeks to visit some other schools and do some writing and re
vising of my own. That’s when you and your teachers rolled up your sleeves even further and plunged your hands into your drafts. I don’t have to tell you or your teachers that this was a lot of work,do I? I will tell you that when I came back in February, I was very impressed with what you had accomplished! But, the process wasn’t over, was it?
For our final two weeks, we explored all sorts of techniques to make our writing shine: choosing juicy words; shaping our writing so that we were “showing” more often than we were “telling”; planning the perfect opening hook for our stories, and more. Learning how to revise your own writing and be your own constructive critic is a very important skill, and I was pleased to watch you practice and grow. And of course, through it all we were giving one another positive and constructive feedback.
Your teachers helped you continue the journey toward creating a published piece. This meant MORE hard work by students and teachers alike. (You told me about the technical hurdles to overcome which often happens when so many people are working at once and when technology, designed to make things easier, doesn’t always cooperate Grrr!.) However, you persisted. With patience and dedication, you kept going and – wow! The results spoke of all this effort and truly let the creative aspects of your stories shine!
I was honoured to be able to attend an event at the end of May celebrating all of your creativity and effort. This is what I saw: multimedia, narrated ‘photobook slideshows’ complete with great artwork; bound, printed storybooks complete with original artwork; 3-D clay dioramas in vibrant colours, gorgeous anthologies with photos you collected from relatives and friends; colorful, stunning one-page story posters, and fables accompanied by a key image from your story or a small photo book of story events.
Thank you to the students and teachers of J.B.Mitchell for inviting me along on your creative writing journey, and to celebrate with you at the journey’s end. Of course, it isn’t really an end to your creative writing – I’m hoping it feels more like a ‘hook’ that will keep urging you forward.
Ecole LaVerendrye was where I had my final residency for the 2013-2014 school year – but it felt just as exciting as the first!
I was immediately welcomed into this warm, friendly school by enthusiastic students and teachers. The first thing that struck me was your questions – about the writing process, about my books, about me (blush!). You were so curious and eager to learn. I couldn’t get over how many of you had stories to share about your own ongoing projects and explorations, whether they be in science, technology, sports or the arts. Many of you told me that your parents, family-members and friends are writers, musicians, dancers, visual artists, poets, and more. How exciting and wonderful to be in a place where the arts and all kinds of learning are so very much alive. I felt inspired each and every day at this sparkling school that crackled with character!
In Week 1 with the Grades 4s, 5, and 6s, we plunged into the process of writing short stories. I loved how everyone found a way to connect their writing to something personal to make the process meaningful. That’s the secret, isn’t it? We may not all feel drawn to write at first – but when you view creative writing as a chance to express something important to you (friendship, family, the challenge of sports, world events, the magic of a fantasy world) and a chance to use (or discover!) your own unique voice (funny, poignant, mysterious, dramatic…) – well, let’s just say you’re on to something special. ‘Way to go’ on finding your own original voices, and for collaborating so well when it came to giving and receiving feedback (some of you even collaborated on writing your stories – with impressive results!)
In Week 2 with the Grade 1s, 2s, and 3s we became ‘fabulous fabulists’, creating our own original fables. First, we had to learn what an animal fable was, and I loved how we were able to do this together; by reading, listening, and discussing fables. This is the way writers learn how to write particular kinds of stories, through lots and lots of reading, thinking and observing. In a very short time, you became experts on the different features commonly found in Animal Fables. Then, you applied your scientific knowledge of creatures and critters and lovely landscapes to shape original fables of your own. Some of you chose to put a spin on Aesop’s fables to bring them into the 21st century. I enjoyed how many of you decided to keep the fable’s lesson, but then added a moment where your two creatures – who may have been in conflict throughout the story – became friends (there were even some animals having lavish disco dance parties – love that! 😉 ).
Thank you to students, teachers and staff for making my final residency of the school year just as fresh and fun as the first. I enjoyed meeting all of you and the chance to get creative together. Have a wonderful rest of the year – till we meet again!
In some ways, when I spend time at Ecole Margaret-Underhill, I feel as though I am going back in time in my own life. I loved Grade 3 and 4 at my French Immersion school. The French milieu of EMU takes me back…and makes me determined to practice my francais!
This year at EMU, I was ‘going back in time’ in another sense by re-visiting the school where I had my first Artists in the Schools residency. I was immediately welcomed by the familiar faces of teachers, students, and staff. I knew instantly that my time here would be just as fun, creative and magical as last year.
I was really excited to pilot a new program at EMU – writing original animal fables! I knew that the creative, enthusiastic teachers would run with the idea (thank you!). I was so proud of all the Grade 3’s and 4’s for embracing this project: combining research and imagination in developing your animal characters, studying the genre by reading many fables both together and individually, and then coming up with wonderfully creative story lines or putting a clever twist on Aesop’s thousands-of-years-old plots. Your fables were funny, touching, smart, and sparkled with life! And that was just in our FIRST week together…
In Week 2, we tried something else that I’d never tried before – the FABLE NEWS NETWORK, otherwise known as THE FABLE FREE PRESS. You took your fable characters and stories and created hilarious ‘spoof’ news items: classified ads, movie reviews, ‘Dear Wise Old Owl’ (I am STILL laughing about those, you guys!), Animal-Lympics sports reports. Some of you even took it further with local news stories, fashions reports, and more – all set in the story world of fables. We even made original crossword puzzles – you wrote the clues, then had fun solving the puzzles by filling in the blanks with all of your classmates’ animals. This was a such a terrifically fun week for me, and hope it was for you, too!
My post wouldn’t be complete without listing a few more highlights, such as reading to the school in the gym during EMU’s I Love To Read week, along with the very funny radio D.J., Lloyd the Intern. There was also the fantastic brainstorming done in each and every class – your work on coming up with ‘animal movements’ verbs was out-of-this-world and must break some sort of record somewhere!
Some of you even continued brainstorming on your own! (There really is a whole world of words out there – or, shall I say – UNIVERSE of words!). Remember how many times I had to erase the board so that we had room for your NEXT set of words. WHEW!
Thank you all for another year of memories, and for the gorgeous gift you presented to me at the end of our time together – it means so much to me to have a keepsake from each one of you. I wish each and every one of you the best as you continue your journey of reading and writing, and all kinds of learning and adventures.
I had the great pleasure of spending a whole week at Isaac Brock School in January (besides the incredible students and staff, what an intriguing building – 100+ years old!).
This residency was unique (just the way I like ’em! 🙂 ) in several ways. First, I ‘rolled into town’ at the revision stage of the writing process with the students of Room 2 – quite often I’m there before your stories have even been sparked. Not this time – you’d already been hard at work developing your plots and drafts, so we got to zig-zag back through the process like I always do as a writer (revision is like retracing your steps, only you ‘notice more’ as you journey a second, third, fourth time along your story path…). We created character webs based on characters we’d already developed, to see if we could give them more depth (and you sure did); we paid a lot of attention to story world and descriptive language to bring our ideas to life in our readers’ minds; and we even did a “reverse story board” where you charted your plots on a story board to see if there were any holes to plug and places to go further (there were! you did!). You worked so very hard, and our sharing afternoon on the last day knocked my socks off. I didn’t realize that you were incredible voice actors as well as writers (the drama and expression with which you read was awesome – showed you were passionate about your stories, too!)
In Room 8, it was another ‘first’ for me: you were working on historical fiction. Personally, this was very exciting since I was in the middle of a historical fiction kick (specifically reading anything about historical situations circa 17th century England). You delved into Canadian history by choosing a person or a symbol, doing research, and then bringing them to life in a fictional piece. Some took great care in developing descriptive pieces that touched all of our senses; others recreated a famous event inviting us to respond with our hearts and minds; still others put a historical person they’d ‘gotten to know’ in their research into a fictitious situation, imagining how he or she would face obstacles and challenges. You did terrific work and I was especially impressed with how you gave and received feedback to one another and were willing to shape your drafts into polished gems. Way to go!
Thank you to the wonderful teachers and students at Isaac Brock for spending a week with me, sharing your creativity, and working really hard at projects that were very challenging. I learned a lot, too!
I’ve spent a great deal of time in early years schools. George Waters School was the first middle years school where I’ve been in residency. (It absolutely ‘brought me back’ – there were lockers!! 🙂 ). For three weeks, I enjoyed working with Grade 6, Grade 7, and Grade 8 students – and learned so much along the way!
First, is there any better way to learn about your own craft than to be asked interesting, thought-provoking questions? Every day, you made me think about why I do what I do, how I decide to approach my writing, and why certain ‘rules’ in writing are effective (like ‘more show, less tell’). And it wasn’t just the questions. As middle years students, many of you have been doing creative writing on your own for years and have a lot to say about how you write, and what it means to you. I was both fascinated and inspired.
Next, there were the iPads. This was really unique – every student in school had been issued an iPad. I must admit, it took some getting used to, seeing so much work done right on the device (“Where are the paper and pencils?” I sometimes wondered). But then you showed me the apps for making character webs, developing your story worlds, even making story boards – so cool. Now, this isn’t to say we didn’t use paper and pencils, but you helped open my eyes to other methods and possibilities. (*I’m very aware that this post will probably look really old-fashioned in a few years when everyone is working with who-knows-what latest technology to learn and create. Hopefully not while dressed in one-piece silver suits, but that’s another discussion…)
I want to commend you all on your courage for trying new things – especially those of you who may not have been crazy about the idea of doing creative writing at first. You see, I think it’s a myth that you are either a writer, or you’re not. Now, it may be true that some people are more drawn to the act of writing than others, but I believe that everyone can try and learn, and more often than not when they do, they discover that they do indeed have something to say. Anyway, so many of you did this – and I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at this: I’m glad we had to the opportunity to explore the writing process together and create some memorable stories!
Thank you to the enthusiastic students of George Waters, and the welcoming teachers who generously shared their strategies and answered all my questions as we worked together. All the best throughout the year – till next time!
I was very intrigued when the teachers at Gray Academy proposed doing a writing project based on the novel “Stargirl” by Jerry Spinelli. Not only was this going to be a new adventure for me since I hadn’t approached a project this way before, the creative ideas that flowed from that meeting got me very excited to be working at this school. The novel turned out to be one of the best books that I read over the summer, and I was looking forward to my residency more than ever!
Students read, studied, and discussed Stargirl together prior to my arrival. That in itself was lots of fun since we were able to chat about the characters and their adventures as though they were old friends! Then, we went on a creative journey together, imagining what these various “friends” lives would be like in the future – in other words, the stories beyond the story. We created character webs for the characters as they were in the book, then added ‘future’ details to our webs. Some characters changed quite a bit while others followed a path deeper into traits we had already seen in the story. In each case, students had to stretch their minds in one of the most important aspects of fiction writing – thinking like your character.
Not only were the early stages of character development a thrill to watch unfold, the teachers and I put our heads together and came up with a “High School Reunion” concept to end the residency. Students “became” their characters, and mingled, catching up with long lost friends. It was creative, fun, and quite often hilarious – especially when multiple versions of a character got together (we decided to pretend that a time machine allowed for this to happen. Why not? We were getting creative! 🙂 )
I was very impressed with the dedication that students showed throughout the project, diligently taking home their work each night and preparing a new, revised draft. It was a lot of hard work, but, as I was so glad to read in your feedback to me, many of you enjoyed seeing your writing evolve from day to day as you applied the revision techniques we discussed in class. Revision is a HUGE part of writing, and, as I hope you’ve experienced, can be just as creative as the initial dreaming, planning and drafting stages.
I have to make a special mention of the incredibly moving Remembrance Day Assembly that I was invited to attend.The Grade 6 students read, recited, and sang from the heart using the power of words for its most important purposes: to remember, to teach, and to imagine a better world. At the end of the assembly, the entire group of students, teachers, staff and guests spontaneously joined together in song; it’s a moment I will not forget and feel blessed to have been a part of. Thank you!
Thank you also to students and teachers for preparing an inspiring book of notes written to me about our writing journey. It’s right by my desk and I read through it often! (there was also a tote bag of thoughtful treats and keepsakes – thank you for your generosity and making me feel so welcome!)
I wish you all a great year and hope to meet again soon!
I sure love visiting Arthur E. Wright school. I’ve been doing so ever since “Lights! Curtains! Cows!” hit the shelves to read, do mini-writing workshops, and meet the awesome students of this fantastic school!
I was thrilled when I learned that I would be in residency at Arthur E. Wright for a WHOLE WEEK – hurray! I worked with four amazing classes in total, each one developing a unique creative writing project.
Among the Grade 6’s, one class was working on a picture book manuscript based on a wonderful book about facing one’s fears – the metaphors and imagery that you students came up with to bring your writing to life was breathtaking. Furnaces became fire-breathing monsters, loud noises were compared to the eggs of large prehistoric animals cracking in two – yep! You fired my imagination every day!
In another class, we worked on original short stories. Of course, some of you decided to begin writing novels, with intriguing prologues and shocking twists – to which I say, way to go! This was the classroom where, in collaboration with your very creative teacher, we decided to try story boards. Let me tell you – not only did this class do an amazing job plotting and planning, this activity has become a favourite activity in residencies since – so I thank you for embracing this technique and giving me some great ideas along the way.
Among the Grade 4/5’s were more short stories – of epic imaginative proportions! This group impressed me with amazing powers of concentration and focus – incredibly important skills for creative writing. You could hear the pencils scratching against the paper – I think I even heard the snap and crackle of your imaginations while you were hard at work (or, maybe that was just my breakfast cereal…hahaha!). This group was also terrific at helping one another out, and giving one another encouragement and helpful feedback. Always a pleasure to join you each day!
Last but certainly not least, a group of Grade 4’s knocked my socks off with their stories based on the “Diary of A…” series. If you don’t know this book series, it’s not only super-funny, it’s based on real-life animal research. Well…let’s just say these students had a knack for coming up with super-funny events for their animal characters, and…THEY LOVED DOING RESEARCH – not only in class, but at home, too! I can still see the pages and pages of notes you brought in from home to bring your character webs to life. You all did a wonderful job, and I encourage you to keep that love of research and investigation alive along with your creative writing skills. How wonderful to have such a thirst for knowledge!
I had a wonderful time at Arthur E. Wright – thank you to teachers, staff and students for an excellent residency. I wish you all a great year. Keep on reading and writing!
One thing I know for sure is that the students I met at Elwick School at the end of September loved diving into their writing! I can’t tell you how many times I’d walk into a class – or sometimes just into the school first thing in the morning – and a student would come up to me and ask “can we please write today?”. I have seen students at all the schools I’ve worked with get deeply involved in each step of the writing process, but I was really impressed with how both the grade 4/5 and grade 6 classes I worked with genuinely wanted to work on the draft stage and independently tackle the actual writing. Here’s a little secret – I actually had more activities planned than we did together, but I was SO thrilled that you wanted to write instead. Whenever that happens, I say “WRITE ON!”. 🙂
I learned a few other things about my Elwick friends. The grade 4/5’s are champs at character webs! I could have used a whole other whiteboard for all the things we came up with for characters – hobbies, personality, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, jobs, pets, family, friends, dreams, hopes, fears….. This is excellent because, as we learned together, the more you ‘know’ your fictional character, the more real and authentic your character will seem to your readers. They will talk, walk, and act like they should in your story. Way to go on those webs (once I figure out how to upload the picture I took of your awesome webs I will do so. For some reason my phone is having an argument with my website! 🙂 ). I also loved the range of characters you came up with – from superheroes to whimsical animals and fantasy characters to artists, mothers, fathers, world-traveling teenagers, and more… Many of you chose to write about characters older than yourselves meaning that you were working your imaginations overtime to create believable characters. And you did! It’s one of the things I love most about writing and reading – getting to live inside someone else’s head and heart and shoes for a while. I hope you continue to work on your writing, and please don’t be afraid to revise…it doesn’t mean your drafts aren’t good. It just means you care enough to take the time to turn your good writing into great writing (with all those juicy words you showed me you know)! Keep it up!
The grade 6’s, also diligent writers, kicked off our week together by asking amazing questions about the writing process and about literature – for instance, like “do all stories have a meaning?”. WOW! That and your other deep questions sure made me think! I hope you feel as I do that we discovered some things about writing together! You also had a knack for ‘hooks’, not just for starting your story with one, but for trying out different approaches for your stories. I think you really ‘got’ the idea of not having to start your story with ‘one day’ or ‘there once was’. Instead, as a writer, you can plunge your reader right into the story with a great opening scene. Several of you tried not just one way but two, three, even four ways of starting your story until you felt you began in a way that captured the right mood or presented a gripping plot point. That’s fantastic, for, as you know from that great big pile of revisions of mine that I showed you, writing doesn’t happen in one sitting – it takes more than one attempt to get it right. I was also very impressed by the small group feedback session we did on our last day together for those who had brought their writing to a ‘shareable’ point. Sharing your writing in front of others isn’t easy at all – in fact, some adults I know are waaayyyyyy too shy to do it. And that’s okay – sometimes we write to sort out our stories, thoughts and feelings just for ourselves. However, I wanted to say that I was excited for and and proud of everyone who found the courage to share their writing and the respect to listen to the others in the group and give feedback. It was an awesome session and I enjoyed being a part of it!
I could keep going on and on about my time at Elwick (on and on and on like those wonderfully huge character webs!), but should wrap it up so you can stop reading this and keep up with your writing! 🙂 I do want to say a huge thank you to your supportive, enthusiastic and helpful teachers. I also wanted to note how special it was to participate in the incredible dancing showcase that took place near the end of my residency. It was inspiring, energizing, and gorgeous to watch. I can still hear and feel the beating of the drum. There are so many creative things to do at Elwick and I hope that each of you explores the activity that call to your own heart…
Thank you for a wonderful welcome and week of work at Elwick. Till we meet again!
