Enter to win one of two signed copies of my debut picture book Sour Cakes, illustrated by Anna Kwan and published by Owlkids Books! Told in striking, conceptual illustrations, this story explores empathy, emotional acceptance, mental health, and acknowledging difficult feelings in a warm, accessible way. A 2021 Ontario Library Association Best Bets selection! Visit Goodreads to enter!
April 30 is Canadian Independent Bookstore Day – an initiative from the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association to celebrate our fabulous local indie bookstores. I’ll be spending time at one of my many favourite local booksellers, like Ella Minnow Children’s Bookstore, Book City, and Mabel’s Fables Bookstore.
Did you know that every book purchased from a Canadian indie bookstore on April 30 is worth one entry to win one of three prizes? Books written and/or illustrated by Canadian creators will be worth double. Books can be purchased in-store, online, or by phone. For more info about how to win, check out the contest rules.
And what a great day to pre-order a book! My upcoming picture book One Tiny Bubble, illustrated by Dawn Lo and published by Owlkids Books, is available for pre-order now. It’s a vibrant poetic story of one tiny bubble that sparked all life on Earth – including yours. You can find an indie bookstore near you on IndieBound.
Happy World Read Aloud Day! Today, I’ll be visiting virtually with grade 3 classes at Claremont Elementary School in Ossining, New York, to share my picture book Sour Cakes.
For everyone else, here’s a link to a video I made for another World Read Aloud Day. You can listen to me read from my novel Bog, which won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for Canada in 2015. In Bog, a cave troll with a grudge against humans is forced to confront his own prejudice when he embarks on a quest into human territory. Read on!
It’s cover reveal day! I’m thrilled to share the cover of One Tiny Bubble! This nonfiction picture book is gorgeously illustrated by Dawn Lo, written by me, and published by Owlkids Books! It’s available for pre-sale now and coming to a bookstore near you in September 2022.
One Tiny Bubble is the true story of LUCA - our Last Universal Common Ancestor. Over 3.5 billion years ago, a few ingredients bubbled together to create LUCA. No big deal? Think again! This one-celled being, which was tinier than a cupcake sprinkle, triggered mighty changes on our planet. You and every unique life-form now on Earth share this one relative, making us all part of one LUCA family.
Grounded in science, One Tiny Bubble is a poetic reminder of our fundamental connection to the extraordinary life around us, and perhaps, among the stars.
Dawn and I can’t wait to share this book with readers in the Fall!
Happy news! My debut picture book Sour Cakes has been selected as an Ontario Library Association Top Ten Best Bet for 2022! I’m so proud to share this honor with illustrator Anna Kwan and publisher Owlkids Books! More Owlkids Best Bets are listed here, including Stephanie McLellan, Zoe Si, Marie-Claude Ouellet, Rogé, Deborah Kerbel, and Angela Poon! Congrats to all! The full list will be announced on February 2. Thanks to the Best Bets committee for all the work they do! You can check out past Best Bets lists for fabulous reads.
I’m thrilled with the positive response to my debut picture book Sour Cakes, illustrated by Anna Kwan and published by Owlkids Books. Since its first review in Publishers Weekly, it has received many lovely reviews that point to the same thing: this book provides a wonderful way into conversations about emotional health and acknowledging difficult feelings with compassion.
“This sensitive narrative shows the significance of empathy in meeting people where they’re at.” Publishers Weekly
“An ode to sibling relationships and how, in particular, a sibling can lift you up when you are in the stormiest, heaviest of moods.” Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
“Empathetically acknowledges children’s big feelings and engagingly models emotional health.” Kirkus Reviews
“A wonderful antidote to … toxic positivity…. An uplifting and meaningful story about difficult feelings, the strategies we use to express them, and a reminder that there are supportive people you can turn to.” Canadian Children’s Book News
“By accepting big, negative emotions without condemning them or dismissing them, this book is great for launching discussions about when and how to express moods and feelings.” School Library Journal
[5/5 Stars] “Sour Cakes, a sensitive story, presents a great opportunity for discussing feelings, how we can express them, and the importance of empathy. Highly Recommended.” Canadian Review of Materials
For suggestions on how to use this book as a discussion starter, please see the Discussion Guide and Colouring Pages.
Are you looking for a book to read or give as a gift? SCBWI BookStop to the rescue! You can check out my debut picture book Sour Cakes (illustrated by Anna Kwan), plus so many more books to love!
Happy book birthday to Sour Cakes! Today, I’m celebrating with a lemon curd cake. My hope for this book is that it will reach those who need to read it. May Sour Cakes spark conversations about big emotions that are both sweet and sour.
You can read a BookFlap post titled Sweet & Sour Siblings, where illustrator Anna Kwan and I talk about creating Sour Cakes. BookFlap has fabulous kid-lit content to love and explore. Please check it out and subscribe!
Thanks to author L.E. Carmichael, you can also read a Cantastic Authorpalooza post about the book: Sparking Conversations About Emotions with Sour Cakes. Please also check out other posts in the Cantastic Authorpalooza series, plus Lindsey’s excellent books!
Many thanks to Owlkids for producing such a beautiful book! May it find its way in the world!
In a few weeks, my debut picture book will be published by Owlkids Books. I’m counting the days!
It’s a journey that began years ago, when I first fell in love with picture books as a child and, later, when I fell in love again as I read them aloud with my daughters. I adore how picture books are kind of like poetry—simple and short, yet layered and deep. How they’re a read-aloud delight of rhythm and patterns, repetition and humour, colour and wonder. How they’re a way to connect to a child reader, heart to heart, with great authenticity and emotion.
I began my quest to become a picture-book writer by analyzing picture books I adore. How did they work their magic? Later, I started critiquing the manuscripts of friends, applying what I was learning to understand how they were written. I’m grateful, in particular, to Frieda Wishinsky, who patiently taught me much during our coffee dates. Finally, I began to write my own tentative picture-book manuscripts, celebrating my messy experiments and learning from trial and error.
I became more and more excited by the possibilities of the picture-book format, so excited that I enrolled in an MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA). My first semester was a Picture Book Intensive with wonderful faculty advisor Liz Garton Scanlon, and it was an explosion of growth and learning.
I read and analyzed over 220 picture books during that semester, and I wrote critical essays to gain more insights. You can read my articles on “How to Revise a Picture Book” (Part 1 and Part 2), which I first wrote at VCFA and later published in CANSCAIP newsletters.
And I wrote and revised 12 picture books during my first semester, including metafiction, fiction, narrative nonfiction, concept books, rhythmic/lyrical, dark/difficult topics, and wordless. I explored how to limit my words so that the illustrations could take up more space in the story. How to set up highly illustratable moments with my text. How to build a frame for my story that supports the characters and plot. How to hold a manuscript lightly so it can grow and change into what it wants to be. How to write narrative nonfiction using fiction techniques. How to rewrite a single spread twenty or thirty times until I found what works. How to play with strong verbs, rhythm, and repetition. How to cut, cut, cut words to distill my manuscript into its essence.
One of my manuscripts during this semester was titled If I Wrote You a Poem, and it went on to become Sour Cakes, wonderfully illustrated by Anna Kwan.
This manuscript began as a collision of two ideas: writing about creativity and a sibling who supports another during a low time. When I let go of it being a manuscript about creativity, it became a conversation between the siblings. I wrote the first six lines and had to let it sit. Then I wrote the next twelve lines and let it sit. Then the whole story emerged. I needed to respect the creative process, not force it to be about a theme I’d predetermined, and I needed to find the characters’ voices. I did plenty of exploratory writing on the characters so I could deepen the story.
It’s been an honour to collaborate with Owlkids and Anna Kwan on Sour Cakes. It’s become all I’d hoped for when I first typed my tentative words into a blank file – a conversation between two siblings, a big one who wants to play and a little one who feels sour. Sour Cakes is told only in dialogue as Big and Little navigate how to acknowledge one’s difficult emotions and how to support someone who’s feeling those big feels. It springs from my family experiences with mental-health challenges, and it’s a deeply personal book.
I look forward to writing picture-book manuscripts for years to come, some that will find a publishing home and some that will not. In fact, I have two more picture books under contract, which I’m excited to share. Still, it’s the writing journey that calls to me. The open-hearted wildness of writing in this format that I treasure for a child audience who I value.
Illustrator Anna Kwan and I are delighted with this first review of Sour Cakes from Publishers Weekly. Coming October 15 from Owlkids Books and available for pre-order now!
