My love affair...

... with the librarians and teacher-librarians in Ontario is hot hot hot. (Ha! Got you with that title, didn't I Leslie!)

But seriously, I just love the way those librarians in Ontario support my work. Over the years four of my books have been nominated for the Ontario-based White Pine Award (a reader's choice award) and Dancing Naked actually won it the first year it was awarded . Gotcha! has been nominated for it this year, 2009, and Sun Signs and Kat's Fall each had their years, too. Kat's Fall was an honour book, or runner-up in its year. Today I found out that Gotcha! is one of the YA fiction selections on the Ontario Library Association’s (OLA) 2008 Best Bets Lists for Children and for Young Adults (top 10 Canadian books of the year in various categories). What's not to love about those wonderful librarians? They have such good taste in books. :)

My love affair with the organizers of the Surrey International Writer's Festival is hot too. This past fall I was the recipient of the 2008 Surrey Board of Trade Special Achievement Award, which honours a writer who has made a significant achievement in their writing career during the past year. I felt truly honoured to be recognized for this award.

When I think back to my early days of writing, all I ever wanted was to get a book published. Once I did have a published book, the stakes went up. I wanted to write a book worthy of being nominated for an award. Once that happened, I wanted to write a book worthy of actually winning an award, or being put on a notable list such as the one Gotcha! has just been added to. That said, I have been a juror for numerous book awards myself, and I know first hand how subjective the final decision can be. Simply receiving an award nomination is a huge honour. In most cases, any one of the nominated books is award-worthy.

Author Orville Prescott wrote: "Few children learn to love books for themselves. Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word: someone has to show them the way." I want to publicly thank librarians and teacher-librarians everywhere for being the ones to 'lure children to books', for showing them the way (especially the librarians in Ontario!). Without them, writers of children's books would be without work.