The Improbable Party on Purple Plum Lane

Autumn descends. Nightfall comes early. Hallowe'en is approaching. And Hallowe'en requires a Hallowe'en tale. The spookier the better.

The Improbable Party on Purple Plum Lane takes Stewart to Mrs. Chairbottom's house for a Haunted House party. Except, there aren't any Haunted House costumes or Haunted House decorations. And no one seems to know when the party will start.

And yet ... strange things are happening in the spooky old house. Things that make you want to hide under the covers until Hallowe'en is over.

The Improbable Party on Purple Plum Lane is Book Three of the Babysitter Out of Control! series of early chapter books.

Reader reviews at Goodreads.com

Available at Chapters and Amazon and as an eBook on Kobo and Kindle.

Carried Away on Licorice Days

Children's authors in Canada are blessed with outstanding children's choice literary awards. What makes these programs so special is that the children themselves do the reading and the voting - truly a win/win situation for both the authors and their young readers.

This year my children's book, Carried Away on Licorice Days, has been nominated for both the 2010/2011 Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award in the Atlantic provinces and the 2011 Rocky Mountain Book Award in Alberta, and the children are reading fervently towards the deadline.

It takes a great deal of organization to make these book award programs a success. To start with, volunteer committees read the many titles submitted, and, after much debate, choose what they consider to be the ten most suitable. Once the libraries and schools have the books in their possession, groups of students meet with a librarian or teacher at regular intervals to bring the books to life through activities and discussion. Children are also able to post reviews online.

This process starts in September after the students start school and finishes in April when the children vote for their favourite books. Before the awards are handed out, the authors go on tour to meet the students and, hopefully, inspire the next generation of authors.

I have been thrilled to have Carried Away on Licorice Days a part of the children's reading experience and would like to thank everyone who has given so selflessly of their time to make the Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award and the Rocky Mountain Book Award such a rewarding experience.

If you'd like to read more about Carried Away on Licorice Days or my other children's books, please click here.

Thank you for being my Facebook Friend

In this week's column, Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente tells her Facebook Friends: "I love you, even if I don't know who you are. But you're really not that interesting. And to be honest, neither am I". She goes on to say that "self-disclosure is highly overrated" and "narcissism is the signature pathology of our time".

Many of my flesh-and-bones friends have these views. In fact, I did too until I asked myself what would make Facebook a valuable experience. For me, it boiled down to being part of a community of fellow writers. They are "Friends" because that's the term Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, gave them, but they might be more correctly termed "fellows", defined as persons in the same position, involved in the same activity, or otherwise associated with one another (Oxford dictionary). Of my Facebook Friends, there are probably fewer than five I know personally, although most I am familiar with professionally. Included in the fellowship are writers of children's books, crime novels, romance novels, and literary fiction. There are broadcasters, columnists, academics, and actors. By and large, their posts have to do with their current project, daily word counts, interesting articles they've come across, and, blessedly, little diversions that bring a smile and help break up the long, solitary hours of writing.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time magazine's Man of the Year for 2010. Margaret Wente makes the observation that Time's circulation has dwindled to 3.4 million while Facebook has 500 million users. Perhaps it would have been more significant if Facebook had made Time its Magazine of the Year. The point Wente makes is that people don't really care what Time has to say any more. They want to know what their Friends have to say.

I am one of those people that finds their Facebook Friends witty, inspiring, and extremely talented. It astounds me to learn what author Jane Yolen can produce in a day, what fantastic dishes Margaret Buffie has come up with this week, what lovely quilts Barbara Haworth-Attard is designing, and the trials and tribulations Giles Blunt is experiencing in his travels. Andrew Pyper and Susan Juby are wickedly funny. Paul Nicholas Mason posts the best YouTube videos. I'm grateful to them. When I was sick for two weeks with laryngitis and a sinus infection, I consoled myself with the Vicar of Dibley, which someone on Facebook introduced me to.

Even though I don't post regularly, I hope that I've passed along a thought or greeting or reference that touched someone. Perhaps, like life itself, Facebook is what you make it. I've enjoyed Margaret Wente's keen observations in her columns and books throughout the years. I think she would be a fascinating Facebook Friend to have, because my Friends are the best.

The Charming Quirks of Others

A helpful thing to know if you're scrounging around the library trying to find Alexander McCall Smith's books, is that the author's last name is not Smith, but McCall Smith, so you need to turn yourself around and head for the McC section.

The Charming Quirks of Others is the seventh instalment of the Isabel Dalhousie series, a comfortable set of books you can read for their philosophical arguments without having to worry about impending distress. There is a little mystery to be solved but it does not involve police departments, S.W.A.T. teams, or the forensic sciences. Everything will be worked out in such a patient, civilized manner that the reader will scarcely be aware of it. In fact, many reviewers have mentioned that in this particular series of McCall Smith's, nothing really happens, and while this is not exactly true, it seems true. Part of this, I think, has to do with McCall Smith's splendid control, piloting the reader down a meandering river on a slow barge, with instructions to take in the sights and relax.

Alexander McCall Smith has been so successful in his writing that he could very well sit back and relax himself, but he maintains a hectic schedule of public appearances, and is, as his appearance at the 2008 National Book Festival demonstrates, a very witty and engaging speaker. This is, indeed, a charming man, with a charming book to sell.

Breakfast at the Exit Cafe: Travels Through America

What happens when you put two of Canada's most accomplished writers in a car and set them off on a road trip through the United States for a couple of months? You get a book. In the case of Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds, you get Breakfast at the Exit Cafe, a fascinating memoir peppered with historical and literary references, not only of the states they travelled in, but of their lives as well.

They set out from Vancouver on December 21st, 2006 after Simonds' three-month term as writer-in-residence at the University of British Columbia expired. Home is a small town near Kingston, Ontario. They figured they could escape Canada's treacherous winter driving, take a languid break from their prolific writing careers, and experience American culture firsthand, by taking the southern route. It didn't work out exactly as planned. Canada enjoyed unseasonably balmy weather while bizarre climate-change patterns wreaked havoc on American roads; far from leaving writing behind, a book, this book, started taking shape; and culturally, discovering whether there is any "steak" at the heart of the infamous American "sizzle", proved to be a meaty exercise.

Grady and Simonds' trip takes place during Bush's second term in office. "Shock and awe" has proven expensive beyond even the wildest estimates. Having stripped its own coffers, the administration is borrowing heavily from China, and while the economy's official collapse is a couple of years away, grassroots' America is already as depleted as the soil on the Southern plantations. Eventually the electorate will take the keys away from the guy who wrecked the car, but at this point it is a mere speck of optimism on the horizon.

It is in this setting that Grady and Simonds travel the country as curious outsiders, assessing the state of the union, one American at a time. The pair are comfortable bedfellows, committed and tolerant of each other despite their dichotomies. Undeniably though, the Canada/U.S. marriage is more complicated, with Canadians prone to offer unbidden directions to the driver from the back seat of the car, and Americans, distracted and disinterested. Sometimes it truly is the steak that is sizzling, sometimes not.

Like all journeys, all good stories do come to an end, as, regrettably, Breakfast at the Exit Cafe does. But perhaps Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds could be persuaded to take another trip somewhere, someday, and let us all ride along in the back seat once again.

Changing My Mind

When you are mentally ill, escape is on your mind most of the time. To escape the thoughts in your mind, to escape the people, the way they look at you, to escape the unhappiness of your life.

So writes Margaret Trudeau in Changing My Mind, a chronicle of escapes tempered with the reasons behind them. There are apologies for bad behaviour and hurts caused; recognition of two failed marriages and bewildered children; an inability to cope. When the history of your life has been dished out over the years in largely snide and snippy journalism, a book is a chance to tell your side of the story.

Surprisingly, Pierre and Margaret Trudeau were together only nine years. Margaret married too young; Pierre, too old. They were polar opposites trying to operate in a pressure-cooker environment. Postpartum depression from a rapid succession of babies went unheeded. A spell had been cast over the enchanted kingdom. Fortunately for Margaret, a couple of brave souls along the way had the temerity to suggest that she might have bipolar disorder. This gentle steering had a positive effect, even if treatment options were primitive in the beginning.

By no means is Changing My Mind the complete story. The husbands left behind in the escapes end up raising the children. Margaret's second husband, Fried Kemper, is dismissed very lightly. The years when Sacha and Justin brought wives and children of their own into the picture are dropped in almost as afterthoughts. In a book heavy with the retelling of Beyond Reason and Consequences, it is too bad. I'd already read those books. I wanted to see how the present was working out. Ironically, it isn't until the anecdotes in the Afterward that the book takes on a certain charm. And then, abruptly, it is over. Hopefully there is a follow-up piece in the making.

With Wings Like Eagles

On June 18th, 1940, four days before France surrendered to Germany, Churchill announced to the British people: "... the battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin." As a result, the period from July to mid-September, when Hitler tried to crush the Royal Air Force and bring the British people to their knees by bombing them to smithereens, became termed, "The Battle of Britain".

With Wings Like Eagles is Michael Korda's account of how 1,000 RAF fighter pilots and a population as pugnacious and stubborn as its leader, fought back under relentless day and night bombing attacks.

Huge areas of London including Buckingham Palace, the Parliament Buildings, Westminster Abbey, the East End docks, the area around St. Paul's Cathedral (except, miraculously for the Cathedral itself), blocks of office buildings and residences, airfields, radar stations, factories, and fuel storage depots, were pummelled. Although the cities of Southampton, Liverpool, Manchester, Swansea, Cardiff, and Bristol were also hit, London was bombed for 76 consecutive days. By the time it was over, 23,000 civilians were dead and 32,000 were wounded.

Author Vita Sackville-West and her husband, MP Harold Nicolson, watched the aerial combat above their heads from their famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. They, like the rest of the population of England, grew accustomed to seeing things fall out of the sky: airmen, empty cartridge cases, downed planes. RAF pilots would be shot down in the morning and be back in the air by afternoon. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding would not let his pilots fly over the Channel because he had no way of retrieving them before they died of hypothermia if they were shot down. At least if they came down over land, they could be put back into action. Heavily outnumbered in both planes and pilots by the Germans, the RAF could not afford to lose even one. Downed Spitfires were quickly patched and put back into service or salvaged for their metal.

It was a different world from the one we live in today. Linda Lear reports in her biography of Beatrix Potter that electricity arrived at Potter's Lake District farm in 1936, just three years before the war started. Television had not been invented. There was no penicillin yet. Radar was brand new but pilots didn't have it in their planes at the beginning, and what was eventually installed was rudimentary.

By September 1940, Hitler realized that the British were not going to surrender and the storms in the Channel were now too fierce for him to launch an invasion. The Battle of Britain ended. Although bombs continued to fall on Britain for the remainder of the war, nothing like those relentless bombing raids would occur again. In a speech to the House of Commons, Churchill acknowledged his country's debt to the RAF by saying, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." No mean writer himself, Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his account of the war.

In With Wings Like Eagles, Michael Korda makes the Battle of Britain come alive, with all the excitement, fear, and courage that was its trademark. Korda, who was once the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and is the author of many books, has an easy and engaging style.