Fantasy’s been having a boom, fueled by everyone’s desire to read something that has absolutely nothing to do with COVID, politics, war, elections, police brutality, or anything else remotely recalling the past year. Well, forget fantasy. MG is where it’s at. In particular, Gordon Korman’s MG. His lightweight, warm writing is the perfect escape from the pandemic.
Continue reading “Review: The Unteachables”Author: nroshak
Review: To Night Owl, From Dogfish
I recently picked up Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer’s 2019 book To Night Owl, From Dogfish. I’m a sucker for alternative formats, and this epistolary novel is told entirely in the form of e-mails between two middle-school girls.
I loved the queer-family representation in this MG book: both girls are in single-parent families headed by a gay father.
Hurricane Child review
I’m perenially catching up on my reading, and just finished Kacen Callender’s 2020 MG debut, Hurricane Child. It was a thoroughly engrossing read. Set in the US Virgin Islands, it delivered a multisensory immersion into the life of a lonely 12-year-old. The main character, Caroline, is friendless and motherless. Her isolation nurtures her unique spirit. Caroline’s not quite like anyone else on the inside, and knows it. She sees spirits, and falls in love with an equally unusual girl.
The book’s structure feels a little messy, but in a way that works. Middle school is messy. For example, Caroline’s questions around her ability to see spirits are left unresolved. But that’s OK. No one’s finished figuring themselves out at 12.
Blue jay
Spring is slowly coming to Ontario, and soon the jays will be building their nests. A side project I’ve been poking at, an urban-naturalist’s ABC, inspired me to draw this jeering bird. Ink on vellum, 2021.
Making Frances Gilbert Laugh
This past Tuesday, I took in a webinar with Frances Gilbert, cheerfully titled “I’ll Acquire Your Book If You Make Me Laugh: Writing Humorous Picture Books”. Frances Gilbert is both an editor at Doubleday Young Readers and the author of several really funny picture books.
Continue reading “Making Frances Gilbert Laugh”2020 Stories
It’s that time of year… time for the annual “What I did with my summer vacation year” post, otherwise known as the annual awards eligibility post — a quick accounting of everything I’ve published this year.
Vürtsi ellu
… is the title of my SF story “The Zest for Life,” in Estonian. It’s live now in Estonian SF magazine algernon.ee, translated by editor Kristjan Sanders. It’s even illustrated, by Anete Lomp!
I’m probably far too excited about being a multilingually published author 😉
HOW TO DRAW EVERYTHING BUNNIES wins CANSCAIP!!
I’m thrilled that my unpublished picture book manuscript, How To Draw Everything Bunnies, WON the 2020 CANSCAIP Writing for Children contest in the PB category!
The problem with near-future SF…
… is that it’s not long before it’s no longer fiction!
My 2019 story The Auditor and the Exorcist included an IoT coffeemaker that was hijacked by a malicious hacker. It’s 2020, and here’s the hacked IoT coffeemaker: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/how-a-hacker-turned-a-250-coffee-maker-into-ransom-machine/
Continue reading “The problem with near-future SF…”HOW TO DRAW EVERYTHING BUNNIES longlisted for CANSCAIP award
Happy to announce my picture book HOW TO DRAW EVERYTHING BUNNIES made it onto the 2020 CANSCAIP Writing for Children contest longlist!!! Congratulations to everyone on the longlist. https://www.canscaip.org/writingforchildren