What’s New Wednesday: Book Awards and Celebrations!

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Catherine Austen

The Blue Metropolis Children’s Festival starts today in Montreal! From April 18th through April 23rd, children’s authors will read and perform for young audiences at 55 venues across the city, and all of them ABSOLUTELY FREE!!

I’ll be there on Thursday, April 19th at 10:00 a.m. at the Reginald JP Dawson Library (1967 Graham Blvd.), where I’ll read humourous excerpts from my books and talk to kids about why you need a sense of humour to be a writer (or a kid). If you’re in the city, come out to meet me.

And stick around for a few days to hear all the other children’s writers. (Well, actually, you can’t hear them all because some of them are speaking at the same time in different venues, so unless you can borrow Hermione’s time shifting gizmo, you’ll have to choose favourites.) Find out all the details at the TD-Blue Met Children’s Festival Website or the Blue Met Facebook page.

Ever so nicely timed with my Blue Met reading, my middle-grade comedy, 26 Tips for Surviving Grade 6, has been nominated for a 2012-13 Hackmatack Award – that’s Atlantic Canada’s young readers’ choice award. This means that kids in grades 4-6 all over the East coast will be curled up with my heroines, Becky and Violet, in the months to come. Oh, I love that thought.

And did I mention that my first novel for teens, All Good Children, has won the Canadian Library Association’s 2012 Young Adult Book Award? I don’t think I mentioned that. In fact, “blog about CLA award nomination” was still on my list of things to do when the results were announced. So I don’t have to blog about the nomination; I’ll skip straight to the celebration.

Hurrah! This is a prestigious award here in Canada. (Case in point: Kenneth Oppel’s This Dark Endeavour and Cathy Ostlere’s Karma are the Honour Books for the CLA YA Book Award this year. We’re talking fine writing. And yeah, I double-checked that my win was not a late April Fool’s joke.) There will be a CLA Award Reception at the end of May to celebrate. I’m buying a new dress.

I might as well get all my bragging out in one blog and mention that All Good Children has been nominated for the YALSA 2012 Teens’ Top Ten. Holy smokes, it’s up there with the latest books from Meg Cabot and John Green!

I must come up with a relevant fable for Friday. In the meantime, I hope to see you in Montreal!