Book Me for Book Week 2014

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Catherine Austen

All the cool birds hang out in Nova Scotia.

I will be touring Nova Scotia during the 2014 TD Canadian Children’s Book Week. I am thrilled to be part of this annual week-long celebration of children’s literature. It’s my first time; I’ve been told to expect exhilaration, exhaustion, and excitement. I can’t wait. But I’ll have to:

Book Week will take place May 3rd to 10th, 2014.

While I have months of time to hone my hilarious and engaging presentation skills, if you are a school or library in Nova Scotia who wants to see me on my tour, you only have a few weeks left to book me. The deadline to apply as a host is December 31, 2013. And you know you have all that Christmas shopping and celebrating to do between now and then, so you should make your booking now. I’m only there for a week, after all.

Not sure your classes want to see me? Well, I did win the Hackmatack — Atlantic Canada’s children’s choice award — for English fiction in 2012-13. And the New Brunswick kids loved my Hackmatack author tour last year. Just sayin’.

And I do have another middle-grade comedy coming out in time for Book Week:

28 Tricks for a Fearless Grade 6 will be published by Lorimer in Spring 2014, and I’ll bring some copies on my tour. You know your kids will want to read it. (My kids want to read it, and they’ve already read it twice.)

If you follow my blog you may be thinking, “Hmm, didn’t she say she had a book coming out called Dave Davidson: 6th Grade Fear-slayer? Does she have two books coming out with Lorimer this spring?”

No. It’s the same book with a brand-new title. The new title just happens to sound very similar to my award-winning comedy, 26 Tips for Surviving Grade 6. But it’s not like we’re trying to capitalize on the success of that last book or anything. Nope, it’s pure coincidence that the titles are so similar. And the cover designs. And the setting. And the way the stories are told in small funny episodes.

If you’re not in Nova Scotia, please don’t feel obliged to move there mid-term just to hear me talk for an hour. There are twenty-eight other children’s authors, illustrators, and storytellers touring the country during Book Week 2014. There are wonderful Book Week Coordinators located in every province and territory to liaise between guest speakers and hosts. You can find someone to come to your school, library, community centre or local bookstore, no matter where you are.

The CCBC logo.

The TD Canadian Children’s Book Week is put together by the always awesome Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) — which you should support if you love books and Canada. (Book Week is funded by TD — hence the “TD” at the beginning of the week’s title — with support from many other sponsors.) They’ve been putting together Book Week for years – since 1977! – and they really know what they’re doing. They make it easy on authors. Come springtime, all I have to do is show up.

I’m very excited that the place I get to show up in is Nova Scotia. My mom and at least two of my siblings were born on Cape Breton Island. (I’m a little hazy on my family history.) When I was 10, we took a family trip in our VW camper van from Kingston to Sydney. (I slept on the canvas hammock that hung over the front seats. I still have the travel journal I wrote back then; it wasn’t kind to my older sister.) Then when I was 30, I took another family trip, this time with my husband and 5-month-old baby, in another VW camper van, from Aylmer to the Cabot Trail and back. (I got to sleep on the bed that time. I still have the journal I wrote on that trip, too; it wasn’t especially kind to my husband. I’m thinking I should travel alone, for the sake of my loved ones.)

This is me in Nova Scotia - see how happy I am? — This is me in Nova Scotia – see how happy I am?

But both journals were awfully kind to Nova Scotia. I love that province. Nova Scotians are a card-playing people, and that is my kind of people. I have since been back a few times, and I have loved it every time.

So if you could book my visit for an outdoor venue, perhaps with crab cakes involved in some way, and maybe a game of Hearts and a Matt Mays concert, that would be ideal. Thanks. See you there.