Mimi Power and Magnifico: an author's blog

April 18, 2013 It's just a few short days before I fly to Terrace to begin the Northern leg of the BC Book Prizes Author on Tour. In other words, there has been a lot of guilt-baking going on in this house over the past week. Husband and girls have had pie, pudding and cookies galore. I need to get out of the kitchen before none of my pants fit. So taking Mimi Power on tour is a blessing in more ways than one. I have a huge debt of gratitude to the BC Book Prizes for naming Mimi as a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and for giving me a spot on the tour. So it may be that this blog is a bit neglected for a time, as I turn my attention to postings for the On Tour blog. I started tonight. Please join me there for the next week, who knows what's in store? http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/tour/archive

April, 2013 No sooner do they meet than young Enza Ravanelli and Ciro Lazzari are separated across what seems to be an insurmountable distance. It is 1912, and 17-year-old Ciro has been banished from his home in the Italian Alps, not for something he has done, writes Adriana Trigiani, but for something he has seen. The Shoemaker's Wife , Trigiani's fourteenth book, finds an epic romance in hard work, loyalty and sacrifice. These are the bonds that bring Trigiani's Ciro and Enza together, and keep them close as they build new lives in America. Enza's talents as a seamstress earn her a place in the wardrobe department of the Metropolitan Opera, while Ciro's entrepreneurialism and skills as a shoemaker elevate him from servitude in a humble Italian convent to eventual prosperity in the America. The Shoemaker's Wife  is filled with the scents and flavours of both Italy and America. Hot pretzels from a street vendor in New York City or a shared slice of ...

March 6, 2013 According to the book jacket for Cold Snap,  children's author Eileen Spinelli "wears her favorite fuzzy brown sweater and cooks pots of three-bean chili" during Pennsylvania cold snaps. She also gets creative. As the the icicle dangling from the statue of General Toby's nose grows longer, the townsfolk of Toby Mills greet a winter cold snap with cheerful frosty-pink cheeks, snowball fights and new "mittens as big as flapjacks". Not to mention plenty of hot chocolate, lemony tea and steamy soup.  But once the fun wears off and the cold slogs on, what's a town to do? As might be expected when the temperature dips even lower, a little whining, complaining and persnicketiness ensues. But the townsfolk of Toby Mills also dig in and, like their author, get creative. There are "bring your own blanket" movies in the chilly theatre, sweater-coats for pets, and, for the mayor, toasty pink bunny slippers and a bathrobe to wear ...

February 24, 2013 As any visitor to those hallowed halls can attest, lining the walls of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. are portraits and sculptures depicting the history of America. Lincoln is there. So is Washington--George, that is, not Booker T. For in fact there is "nary a black face in all of those pretty pictures," says the narrator of  Heart And Soul: The Story of America and African Americans . Kadir Nelson's paintings for Heart and Soul , with their quiet, proud dignity, go as far as any author-illustrator can to right this wrong in a book. Each one of Nelson's powerful pictures is worthy of its own wall in the Capitol's rotunda gallery. As the voice of Heart and Soul , a nameless "Everywoman" recants some of the worst, and finest moments in the history of African Americans. She recalls their early days as slaves, through their service in the Civil War and two World Wars, alongside their long-enduring struggle for freedom an...

February 4, 2013 "No matter how tired I am, I can always read," says Mary Anne Schwalbe to her son while waiting for an appointment with her oncologist in The End of Your Life Book Club. " But maybe that's because of raising three children while working full-time. I think I got used to being tired all the time. If I'd waited until I was well-rested to read. I never would have read anything." "The Club" of two life-long readers--mother Mary Anne and son Will Schwalbe--meets in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's outpatient care centre. In the two years of life remaining to Mary Anne (after her persistent jaundice, weight loss and fatigue were finally diagnosed as symptoms of pancreatic cancer) she and her son, a professional editor and author, discover new writers and rediscover favourite stories, reading "promiscuously" books both great and small. It would be enough if The End were a personal, and finely hone...

February 16, 2013 "That's one of the things books can do. They help us talk. But they also give us something to talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves."--Will Schwalbe in The End of Your Life Book Club

February 2, 2013 At a recent visit to  The Lyceum in Vancouver, one of the Book Bandits asked me, "Is Waby's Bunny Jim real?" Which is a very good question. Especially when it comes to stuffy rabbits of the "Velveteen" variety. Sorting out what's real, and what only happened in my imagination is some of the best fun of sharing Mimi . Well, to start, Bunny Jim was clearly real enough to another Bandit, Harnoor, who drew the picture above, and just like Marc Mongeau, made him come to life. But truth be told, Bunny Jim (who's name is  play on the Sunny Jim peanut butter we had in our house growing up) is "Teddy", a fine brown bear stuffy, who was waiting in Waby's crib for her to be born, and has only ever accidentally (and briefly, thank heavens!) been parted from her in the eight years since. Thank you, Harnoor, for the wonderful drawing (above). Looks pretty real to me! :-)

January 14, 2013 It's a fine day, because I'm happy to say, "Ta da!" Now available through fine booksellers nationwide: Mimi Power and the I-don't-know-what .  Artist, animal lover and would-be swimming sensation Mimi Power knows what it's like to live under the tyranny of a three-year-old sister. Things have never been the same in the Power house since "The Waby" arrived. Finding creative space in all the chaos is getting harder by the minute for Mimi. But with the school art show looming and a prize too-good-to-give-up-on at stake, Mimi comes up with a plan that's three-year-old foolproof. Or is it? To know for sure, Mimi will have to tap into her big sister power and find her own little piece of the sky.

One of the best things about book blogging is the "backstage pass" it can create for tapping into an author's motivation. After reading Roll On: Rick Hansen Wheels Around the World , Daughter #2 and I were impressed. Instead of another sports hero story about the agonies of a champion athlete on an epic journey (though there's just the right dose of that in the mix), Roll On introduced us to what can happen when you're on the road to reaching your dream. And what is remembered afterwards, what matters, is not so much about the aches and pains, but the people met along the way.   This made us think, and we came to the conclusion we had a few questions for author Ainslie Manson. Why did you want to do a sequel to Boy in Motion ? This year is the 25th anniversary of Rick's around the world journey in his wheelchair.  To mark this occasion, Rick requested a second book, carrying on where my earlier book, Boy in Motion left off, and telling the story of...

Any day now...

I've lived a long time, a very long time, 101 years, and I'm still here. I'm done with the doubts and struggles and insecurities of youth. I'm finished with loss and guilt and regret. I'm very old, and nothing is expected of me. Now, provided good health continues, I can do what I want. I can write my memoirs. I can edit my works for a future eBooks. I can even do nothing--what a luxury that is! I have new priorities and a new appreciation of time. I enjoy my family more than ever, and also a sunny day and a comfortable bed. I keep up my interest in books and theatre and people, and when I'm tired, I rest. My former students write to me and visit me. I had many problems and disasters in my life; fortunately, at my age, I don't remember what they were. I'm glad I am 101. --Bel Kaufman to Robert Sullivan in "Test of Time", p. 82, VOGUE, August 2012

September 30, 2012 Apart from a five-bedroom Georgian home in Surrey (England), a volunteer career in church bell ringing/flower arranging and an easily inflenced parrot named Darcy, Constance Harding has one great gift: the ability to see things as they aren’t. A husband who neglects her, an incompetent housekeeper whose knickers tend to nest in said-husband’s study, a bell-ringing buddy with a mysterious crush on a very married woman, a son with a secret that Mummy definitely doesn’t want to hear… oh, it’s just so much easier, and funnier to rise above it all. What Constance does see is that there’s nothing wrong with a little well-meant meddling on behalf of those she loves best--until it starts backfire without the back-up of reality. A Surrey State of Affairs has one eye-opener after another in store for Ceri Radford’s dotty heroine. And Constance, when the chips are down, has a bit more backbone than even she could predict. There’s no escaping reality for E...

"Most things in life start small, and get bigger," funeral director and educator Todd Van Beck once said. "Except grief. Grief starts big." And if you don't deal with it, it stays that way.  The further one travels along The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry , the clearer it becomes just how big a grief can be. So big, in fact that it will take something utterly momentous to bring it down to size. If one were to place bets on the chances that a retiree who never walks further than the car could cross the length of England, by foot, in a pair of deck shoes, one would probably not place all ones chips on Harold Fry. And yet from the moment he passes the first postbox on his way north to the bedside of a long-lost and loyal friend, there's nothing we want more for this gentle, thoughtful man than that he succeed--and buy a good pair of walking boots along the way. One of these he does. What starts as "unlikely" because Harold is so p...

Is there anything worse for a reader than finishing the last book in a beloved series? We wouldn't mind so much, if only more books for young readers showed the same care and attention to words and pictures that Monika Bang-Campbell and Molly Bang do together in  Little Rat . After all the big sighs, Daughter Number Two still had a few questions about our new favourite furry heroine. So, with a little help, she posed them in an email to the author herself. Here is what we heard back.  Why did Pee Wee chase the cat? Pee Wee does NOT chase cats, he is scared of cats. All horses are scared of sudden movements they don't understand, because they are "prey" animals - in other words, they don't chase after other animals to eat them but instead are eaten by creatures like wolves and coyotes and jaguars and lions and bears and . . . So they are scared by things we feel are very safe, like a running little cat or an umbrella suddenly opening  up. Was Pee Wee a...

June 21, 2012 Never underestimate the power of a pageant promise. Especially when the world is watching. If you ask Wikipedia the meaning of the name “Nazanin” you will find it cited as a common Persian female first name, meaning “lovely”, “beautiful” and the like. And below this definition are listed, by way of example, three Nazanins: Nazanin Boniadi, an actress and spokesperson for Amnesty International, Nazanin Afshin-Jam , a human rights activist and Miss World Canada in 2003 and Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi a 17 year-old girl sentenced to death for stabbing a man in self-defense. It is the latter two Nazanins who form, in alternating chapters, The Tale of Two Nazanins by Nazanin Afshin-Jam and Susan McLellan. “Nazanin” is a fitting, perhaps even prophetic, name for a Canadian beauty queen with a close and loving family and a host of freedoms and possibilities before her. But “Nazanin” is a woefully ironic choice for an impoverished, Khurdish–Iranian ...

Like the characters in Helen Simonsen's outstanding first novel, sometimes you have to leave your senses to come to them. I rashly abandoned the 14-day loan to linger over a copy of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand from the library, and am unrepentent. This, and Middlemarch , are the best books I have read all year. I lived in Middlemarch for summer vacation; Pettigrew was with me for the Christmas holidays. For everyone who loves England, a cure-all cup of tea, and believes simple happy endings are as possible as people are complicated. http://majorpettigrew.com/

"I felt a keen sense of responsibility to only use material that I felt was illuminating, but not damaging. As my father always said, be honest, but be kind." --Kari Herbert, author of Polar Wives

North and South meets A Visit from the Goon Squad Kindly step aside, Mr. Darcy, for Mr. John Thornton of Middleton. Sorry, John Who? If Jane Austen's Darcy marks the measure of romantic hero, Elizabeth Gaskell’s John Thornton may well be his superior: a self-made, socially-conscious business leader with a mind for higher learning and a true, unwavering heart. His lower profile is a little ironic, since Gaskell orginally wrote him into a serial for Charles Dicken's Household Words . But perhaps Darcy is just a little less complex and easier to adore—nobly-born and not caught up in the mess of tensions between working class men, and those who employed them, that is Thornton’s reality in 1855. “Master” was the word in Gaskell’s day, and is Thornton’s role as a cotton mill owner in the city of Middleton--Gaskell’s fictional interpretation of Manchester at the time.  The romantic tension between Thornton and Miss Margaret Hale, newly arrived in Middleton from the bucolic So...

Let's be honest here. There are times, when helping a seven-year-old practice her reading, that you just long for the book to be over. It can be a long, slow ordeal with more than a few mix-ups on the way to the last page, and a sigh of relief when you finally arrive at the end. Not so with Harley , Star Livingstone's tribute to a llama in eastern Massachusetts with a knack for shepherding and a mind of his own. Livingstone's simple sentences and vocabulary knit together a series of episodes in the life of Harley the guard llama--from chasing off coyotes to making friends with a gristley old ram--that has one wishing for a sequel. If a Grade Two reader takes her time with Harley , it's for good reason, Molly Bang's illustrations of long-lashed Harley, and the gentle sheep he guards are lovely to look at and breath contentment into a story of a once ornery animal who finds his true calling and his rightful place in the farm field.

There are no Candidos named in Lynne Bowen's historical tribute to the first generations of Italians who helped build Canada. But they are there all the same. In the smelters of Trail, in the dry grasslands of Kamloops, in the burgeoning days of early Vancouver...  Whoever Gives Us Bread  traces the trails of Italian Canadians and in doing so,  fills in the sketches we have of part of my family's early history in Canada. "Among the Italians who were offending the sensibilites of middle-class Vancouverites," writes Bowen, "were men from Friuli, a region that had exported over fifty thousand of its people in that one year of 1913." My great grandfather, around about that time, was one of them. Leaving the slow starvation of a country that couldn't afford to feed them, Canada offered opportunity for those willing to get their hands, and their lungs, dirty. My great grandfather made his first stop in Trail, to work in the smelter. As my father says: ...