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The Sea Wolves: Living Wild in the Great Bear Rainforest made headlines again last week in a new review from the Globe and Mail.

In her review, Susan Perren wrote, “The authors of this terrific book…have set themselves the task of showing their readers what a ‘bad rap’ wolves have had…An engaging text, and McAllister’s stunning colour photographs of coastal wolves catching salmon and raising pups in their natural habitat, the verdant rain forest and its coastline, provide a compelling case for protection of the rain forest and all its denizens.”

Visit the book’s dedicated website, www.seawolves.ca, to read a sample chapter and view Ian McAllister’s photographs from the book. Are you a teacher or librarian? You’ll also find resources, links and puzzles to use in the classroom. Want to add The Sea Wolves to your classroom collection? You can order it straight from the Orca website.

And speaking of teachers, did you know that the Orca website offers free teachers’ guides? You’ll find downloadable guides with discussion questions and classroom activities for books from five Orca series: Orca Echoes, Orca Young Readers, Orca Currents, Orca Soundings and Rapid Reads. Visit our Teachers section to learn more and download guides.

The Fall books are here and we’re ready to celebrate! Please join us tomorrow evening, November 4, 2010, at a book launch to celebrate our authors’ achievements.

In attendance will be local authors Robin Stevenson, Kristin Butcher, Sara Cassidy, Rachel Dunstan Muller, Alex Van Tol, Sarah N. Harvey, John Wilson and Lou Allin. (Learn more about these authors by visiting our website: www.orcabook.com.)

We’ll have books there so you can get yours hot off the presses! All ages welcome for music, refreshments and book signings. See you there!

Event Details:

Date/Time: Thursday, November 4, 2010, 7:00pm
Location: Victoria Event Centre, 1415 Broad Street, Victoria. See a Map.
Free!

For complete event details, pictures, or to drop us a line, check out the Facebook page for this event.

Nominations for book awards are coming fast and furious this season! Congratulations to all the authors whose excellent books have been recognized so far this fall.

Me, Myself and Ike, by K.L. Denman. Nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award in the Children’s Literature – Text category!
CM Magazine said, “An intensely edgy, first person account of a troubled teen descending into a paranoid, psychotic state…Denman is a responsible, caring, and skilled writer who drops subtle breadcrumbs throughout her story and provides an afterword explaining this mental illness…Denman is to be commended for tackling this issue straight on.”

Branded, by Eric Walters. Nominated for a  Silver Birch award.
CM Magazine said, “Fast-paced and packed with thought-provoking questions as well as humour…The use of social media in organizing events and expressing opinions, as well as their shortcomings, could provoke interesting discussions on etiquette and the Internet…An inspiring and empowering read for youth living in the information age.”

Dunces Anonymous, by Kate Jaimet. Nominated for a  Silver Birch award.
Josh Johnson’s mother wants him to run for class president. Josh just wants to run and hide. If only there were a club to help downtrodden eleven-year-olds escape their parents’ ambitions!

Gordon Korman said, “Loved it. Spot-on plotting, and a great cast of characters.”

The Salmon Bears—Giants of the Great Bear Rainforest, by Ian McAllister and Nicholas Read. Nominated for a  Silver Birch award.
The Globe and Mail said, “This excellent book…[has] a sprightly narrative that takes the reader through a year in the life of a bear…The illustrations for this book, a plentitude of photographs…are nothing short of gorgeous.” Learn more about The Salmon Bears on its dedicated website!

Who would have thought that tough times could be so useful? I often take bits of my life, twist and turn them and after many revisions a book emerges. That was the case with BLOB.

I turned the memory of a miserable summer into this story. Nothing that really happened in my life, happens in the book (except for the weight gain) but the emotions are true to my experiences.

So here’s the story behind BLOB.

When I was 20, I found a summer job in an overnight camp. I was the counselor for a cabin full of thirteen-year-old girls. Most of the girls came from wealthy families and although there were some sweet girls in the bunch there were four snarky, spoiled “brats”. They thought that counselor was just another word for servant. “Pick up my trunk,” one barked the first day. “Get this for me,” ordered another. I felt like Cinderella with four nasty stepsisters. At first I didn’t know how to respond except to feel awful. I wanted the girls to like me so I tried being nice. That didn’t work. It backfired. The snarky girls got snarkier. The bossy girls rolled their eyes and whispered behind my back.

I was devastated. How could I live through a whole summer with this group?  I took long walks to think about what I could do and sometimes just to cry in a quiet spot. On one of my walks I discovered that the camp was not far from a Dairy Queen.  Yes! Salvation! I love chocolate and I love ice cream and nothing cheers me up quite so much as chocolate ice cream.

I soon became a fixture at that Dairy Queen. I escaped there whenever I could. Although my spirits lifted when I ate the ice cream, my mood plummeted when I returned to the bunk from hell. I was also gaining weight fast. I’m not a big person by nature and when I started to blob out, you could really see it. I was soon not only miserable about  my group of four but self-conscious about my weight.

Somehow I survived that summer. Things improved with the girls as the summer went on. I bonded with most of my campers but never reached the difficult four. I finally came to terms with the fact that those four in my bunk would continue to treat me with disdain.  There wasn’t much I could do about that so for the rest of the summer, I ignored their rolled eyes, whispers and smart-aleck responses.

Unfortunately the weight gain took longer to address. It took me three years to lose the twenty pounds I put on that summer.  How did I finally lose the weight? I didn’t follow a crazy diet or exercise like mad. Instead I taught myself to eat slowly. Very slowly.  I still adore chocolate ice cream, chocolate bars, chocolate chips, chocolate anything but my weight has stayed pretty steady over the years.  After all, it can take me a half hour to eat just one truffle. But I savour every bit of it.

As for those campers from hell, I bumped into some of them a few years later and they turned out to be approachable and friendly. They were older by then and so was I.

I was also not a BLOB any more—in any way.   —Frieda Wishinsky

Frieda Wishinsky is the Orca Featured Author for the month of July. Learn more about her on Orca’s Featured Author Page

As playgrounds are for kids, so is the cityscape for parkour enthusiasts, otherwise known as traceurs.   Play is theme of this month’s issue of PaperTigers and so I have selected a young adult book that explores the world of parkour.  In parkour, one aims to get to a destination by negotiating with the physical objects of a place by jumping, leaping, running, or doing whatever necessary to clear the ‘obstacle,’ so to speak.   Parkour has become very popular and there are many videos of it to be seen on YouTube.   It is really a way to ‘play’ the city like a child would in a playground.

Anita Daher’s Two Foot Punch (Orca, 2007) has as its heroine, a young fifteen year old traceuse (a female parkour athlete), named Nikki, who has moved to Winnipeg, Canada from Toronto.  She leaves behind a tragic past — the death of her parents — an incident which involved her eighteen year old brother, Derek, also a traceur.   While adjusting to life in a new city with her brother and their new guardian, their Aunt Sylvia who is a judge in the criminal court system, Nikki begins to explore Winnipeg’s colorful downtown district known as The Exchange through parkour.  She makes a friend, Rain, who joins her, and the two of them unwittingly stumble onto an illegal operation taking place in the many empty warehouse spaces of the district.  Nikki’s brother, Derek, is unfortunately involved, and Nikki must take action in order to save him.

Do you have parkour enthusiasts in your city?  Have you noticed young people jumping, leaping, running across and over and up buildings, bike racks, walls in certain parts of town?  It could be a parkour group.  In talking to Anita Daher, I found out that Winnipeg has its own group called Winnipeg Parkour who meet regularly in a downtown location called the Oodena Celebration Circle at the Forks (where the two rivers of the city,  the Assiniboine and the Red, intersect.)  I’ve yet to see them in action, but now with summer on us, I’m sure I’ll catch a glimpse of them sometime soon!   In the meantime, check out this brand new illustration of parkour  at the right by Toronto illustrator David Namisato whose book I reviewed for the PaperTigers website.

As a writer, I spend a very unhealthy amount of time sitting in a chair typing out the words that make my stories, or relaxing in that same chair reading a book or watching TV.

It hadn’t always been this way. At fourteen, I had begun martial arts training, but quit at nineteen. Almost twenty years later I was having a conversation one sunny Vancouver afternoon, while walking on the beach with a friend. I had been looking into various neighbourhood tae kwon do schools, seeking one that was about personal development and low-key training.

I told her the story of how, as a teenager, I had seen a movie called The Karate Kid, and joined the first tae kwon do school I saw. I didn’t do a lot of research—nor did I understand that there are differences not only between the arts, but also in the school’s philosophies. The first school I went to was very rough with the motto, “Kick first before he kicks you.” We were taught takedowns, leg kicks, and finger breaking—and were encouraged to use these techniques while sparring in the school.

The next school I went to was much different. It was about the tenets of tae kwon do—courtesy, integrity, perseverance, indomitable spirit, and self-control—and learning how to respect one another. After two years, I switched (on the advice from a friend) to full-contact kickboxing. This lasted for all of two weeks, when during a sparring match the instructor pointed at me and said, “Someone put that guy down.” It turned out that this kickboxing school had a grudge against the tae kwon do school where I had trained. In order not to get hurt, I had to put my opponent down with a quick kick behind his leg—a move I had learned from the first school.

During this walk on the beach, my friend listened intently to my story. “This should be your next book,” is what she finally told me. I used this as an excuse to push myself to get back into the dojang. I did find a great school here in Coquitlam, Peak Performance, where we have fun and learn how to better ourselves through martial arts.

Thanks to Flying Feet I have gone from being a couch potato, to being an orange belt in tae kwon do. Which is why I call this the book that saved my life.

James McCann will launch Flying Feet at the Cameron Rec Centre in Burnaby, BC, on Sunday, June 13. For all the details, check out the event invitation.

Erin Thomas launched her first Orca title, Boarder Patrol, on Saturday, May 15 at Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Ontario. All this week, she is sharing tips for planning a fantastic book launch. Yesterday she discussed the importance of knowing your crowd and supporting  local businesses. This is Part 4.

Last weekend I celebrated the launch of Boarder Patrol, my first book with Orca. The launch was a success, despite a few twists in the planning process. More than fifty people filled the bookstore and bought or ordered seventy-some books. We had too much food, not enough books, and lots of fun. Here’s what I learned.

Be Flexible

Things go wrong. The night before my book launch, I received a phone call from Shelley Macbeth at Blue Heron Books. “I have some bad news,” she said. “Are you sitting down?”

After an ominous start like that, I was ready to hear that the store had burned down, or that Uxbridge had vanished into a great, gaping hole in the Earth. So when she told me that the books hadn’t arrived for my launch, it didn’t seem so bad.

We came up with Plan B: pre-orders. Between us, we scrounged and managed to get our hands on sixteen copies of the book. Those, we decided, would go to the people who had driven the farthest, or whom I was less likely to see. Uxbridge natives who came to the book launch who didn’t actually know me also got dibs on real copies. I trusted that my family and friends, and the people I saw in writing classes and through writing groups, would understand.

I put together a small poster explaining the situation, and an order form with a place for people to ask for an inscription. Shelley sold book orders instead of books, and last week, when the books came in, I started the process of signing and distributing the books to the people who ordered them at the launch.

Because of all the running around required to get “Plan B” off the ground, a few last-minute things that I had planned to do didn’t get done. None of them were deal breakers. Maybe a book launch is a little bit like a wedding, in that things probably aren’t going to smoothly, and most likely, it’s going to be all right anyhow. At the end of the day, it’s just an interesting story to tell: the bookless book launch.

Follow Up

In my case, part of the follow-up means delivering the signed copies of the books, as promised. I’m on it. With most book launches, this will already have been done.

I’m also writing thank you notes to as many as possible of the people who attended. There were a few there whom I didn’t know, but most are people that I have some way of getting in touch with. Many of them drove a long way to show their support for me and for my book, and I want them to know that I appreciate it.  And of course, the people who brought food or helped with the planning and preparation deserve special thank you’s.

Holding a successful book launch takes a lot of work, before, during and afterwards. But on the day of, it’s a great feeling when people come out to help you celebrate your book.

Erin Thomas launched her first Orca title, Boarder Patrol, on Saturday, May 15 at Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Ontario. All this week, she is sharing tips for planning a book launch. Yesterday she described the process of finding the right venue. This is Part 2.

Last weekend I celebrated the launch of Boarder Patrol, my first book with Orca. The launch was a success, despite a few twists in the planning process. More than fifty people filled the bookstore and bought or ordered seventy-some books. We had too much food, not enough books, and lots of fun. Here’s what I learned.

Spread the Word

I created a spreadsheet with names and addresses of family and friends to invite, marking off which ones were best reached by email and which were best reached by snail mail. I stood up at CANSCAIP and WCDR meetings to talk about the upcoming book launch; I even wore a toque at the WCDR meeting, to go with the snowboarding theme, because it’s that kind of crowd. I invited everyone in both of the night classes that I was taking at the time. Self-promoting isn’t always something that comes easily to writers, but with practice, standing up in front of people gets easier.

By the time the invitations were mailed out in April, most of the people on my list already knew about the event. I had sent out a “save the date” email far in advance… before the date change, actually. So the date change was a good reason to email people again. I also used my Facebook status as a way to let people know the book launch date had been set and then changed, and a week or two before the event, I created a Facebook event for the book launch.

I “tweeted” about the launch, too, but not being very Twitter-prolific, I’m not sure that it made a difference. Still, as Orca pointed out, even if people can’t come to the book launch, it doesn’t hurt to remind them of the existence of the book.

Photo by: MORTIS Photography (www.mortisphotography.com)

Again, I have a big family. They’re very supportive. If you don’t have a large family, though, maybe you have friends who might like to help. You don’t have to do everything by yourself.

My mom baked the cake and decorated it with a picture of the book cover. Edible ink… go figure. (By the way, if you are looking for a printout of your book cover for your own book launch, try searching on eBay for “custom edible icing”.)

Mom also made several book bags and bookmarks as door prizes. Friends and family brought food to the book launch. Shelley from Blue Heron donated some delicious cupcakes from a local bakery, arranged and iced to look like a snow-covered mountain. Orca donated books to be used as door prizes. You’ll probably find that people are willing to help you, but you do have to ask.

Check back tomorrow for How t