BC Book Prize, Bayside and Beyond

Well, a lot of good news to report! Last week I found out that Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom had been nominated for a 2011 Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Award (the Shining Willow). Then, yesterday evening, the phone rang. I assumed it was a telemarketer – it was just around the time they like to start to call. But no – it was a lovely woman calling to inform me that George has been nominated for a BC Book Prize! It’s the Sheila Egoff award. Fingers crossed for George. And actually, while I’m tooting George’s horn, I don’t think I mentioned that it’s also shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association’s Children’s Book of the Year!

Okay, okay, enough bragging. My real reason for posting today is to give a shout-out to an amazing school I visited last week, Bayside Middle School in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. Their librarian, Vivian Hicks, is awesome. I wish I had a picture of her. This gal somehow managed to get the entire school to read Word Nerd. Most of the classes had it as a read-aloud, so the teachers were also game, and read the book to their students, “naughty bits” and all.I did six presentations to about 100 kids each.

Here is one of my group of five volunteers, acting out a scene from Word Nerd.

And another. (You can see I’m having at least as much fun as the kids).

And this was my all-girl cast playing all-boy characters. One of them even came prepared with an Ambrose-like toque! They were fantastic.This school was really great. I was there for two days, and even taught a writing workshop to a group of aspiring writers. I really enjoyed this (I hope they did, too – it’s the first one I’ve ever taught). Not only did the librarian (the aforementioned Vivian) get the whole school reading the book, other teachers did other thematically-related projects. The art teacher got students to do these beautiful clay “Scrabble” boards:

And another teacher started a new intramural Scrabble tournament!!

Thanks so much for making me feel so welcome.