Half Brother Galley Tour

Do you want to join the Half Brother galley tour?

HarperCollins Canada is sending copies of Half Brother on tour across Canada!

HarperCollins is looking forward to getting them back filled with your comments, photos, and anything else that reveals where they have been in their travels.

As you read the book, put sticky notes, photos—whatever you like— on the pages for others to see along the way.

When you’re finished reading, give the galley to a friend. If you're the 10th person to read the galley, mail it back to the contact name in the galley, and HarperCollins will send you a free book (from the genre of your choice) in exchange for any shipping charges you may incur.

Send me a private facebook message before noon on Monday June 28th and you might be the one to kick-off the galley tour!

HALF BROTHER gets highlighted preview in Quill&Quire

Quill & Quire, the Canadian trade magazine, has given a highlighted preview to my upcoming novel Half Brother.

I am thrilled with the coverage, and delighted to know that "the story will surely be as classy a crowd-pleaser as the Silverwing and Airborn series," but would just like to point out that the main character in the book, Ben Tomlin, is not eight years old, but 13, 14 and 15 through the course of the novel!

More news and info to come as publication date approaches...

HALF BROTHER named "Hot Read" by Globe and Mail

My upcoming novel Half Brother has been included in this weekend's Globe and Mail as one of the "Hot Reads" of the summer. I'm delighted by the mention. The novel will actually be released at the very end of August, and showing up in bookstores the very first week of September.

Advance reader reviews are starting to come in, and I'll try to post some of them here...

Coming Fall 2010

Ben Tomlin was an only child for thirteen years.

Then his parents brought home a baby chimp.

Ben's father, a renowned behavioral scientist, has uprooted the family to pursue his latest research project: a high profile experiment to determine whether chimpanzees can acquire human language. Ben's parents tell him to treat Zan like a little brother. Ben reluctantly agrees. At least now he's not the only one his father's going to scrutinize.

It isn't long before Ben is Zan's favourite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more than just an experiment. His father disagrees. Soon Ben is forced to make a critical choice between what he is told to believe and what he knows to be true -- between obeying his father or protecting his brother from an unimaginable fate.

Half Brother isn't just a story about a boy and a chimp. It's about the way families are made, the way humanity is judged, the way easy choices become hard ones, and how you can't always do right by the people and animals you love.

Barnes and the Brains

The Barnes and the Brains series was inspired by the stories I liked best, growing up. I loved series about groups of kids who had clubs, invented things, and went on fantastic adventures. Enid Blyton's Castle of Adventure introduced me to four English schoolkids who always seemed to be on Easter holidays with obligingly absent relatives, and stumbled into dangerous situations, often involving smuggling. The Danny Dunn books featured kids and a scientist who invented incredible gadgets, including a homework machine.

The Mad Scientist Club books featured a group of kids in Mammoth Falls, Wisconsin. They had a clubhouse, and they too invented things. I remember episodes involving hot air balloons -- and a working submarine! I couldn't get enough of this stuff. I also loved the Great Brain books, in which the young hero, JD, is continually stymied by his older brother JD -- the great brain of the title. Schemes and adventures, some of them quite scary, abounded.

For me, the Barnes and the Brains books were a way of trying to recapture some the humour and sheer fun of my favourite childhood stories. Starting with A Bad Case of Ghosts, these books were written with a 7-9 year old in mind -- kids who are moving away from picture books, but who might not be quite ready for full-length novels.

The main character is Giles Barnes, the new kid in the neighbourhood, who is befriended by Tina and Kevin Quark, self-proclaimed geniuses who run their own business, investigating strange occurences. There are ghosts birds, invisible magicians, and maniacal robots.

There are six books in all, the first three of which have just been re-issued, with fabulous eye-catching covers, in Canada by HarperCollins. The next three will be out this May. Often when I visit schools, teachers tell me they never have enough fun reading material for grades 2-4. So I hope these books find homes, and happy readers, in classrooms across the country!

AIRBORN on "Decade's Best Books" list

I was thrilled and surprised to discover that Quill & Quire magazine has given Airborn an Honourable Mention in its list of "The Decade's Best Books."

Among the fourteen Canadian titles selected were Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness. The only other children's title on the list is Deborah Ellis's The Breadwinner.

Airborn was also named a Best Kid's Book of the Decade by Indigo Books.

It's a great honour to be amongst such illustrious company -- and a great way to head into the New Year of writing...

Starclimber and The King's Taster on the OLA Forest of Reading List!

This isn't actually me in the photo, but it's how I feel after learning that I've been nominated in, not one, but two categories of the Ontario Library Association's fabulous Forest of Reading Awards.

There are all sorts of literary awards for children's books, but possibly the most satisfying for a writer are the readers' choice awards -- the ones where the winners are actually chosen by your real audience -- young readers -- as opposed to adults who decree which books are worthy and important for kids.

The Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading Awards give young readers in Ontario the chance to vote for their favourite books from a shortlist of ten titles. And it's always fascinating, surprising (and, for a writer, eye-opening) to see which book wins.

This year I've been fortunate to be nominated in two categories. First, Starclimber has been nominated for the Red Maple Award (decided on by grade 7-8 students across Ontario.) This is the fifth time I've been nominated (Airborn and Skybreaker won in 2005 and 2006 respectively).

As well, my picture book The King's Taster, illustrated by the wonderful team of Steve Fancher and Lou Johnson, has been nominated for the Blue Spruce Award (chosen by children from kindergarten to Grade Two).

Kids will be reading all through the fall and into the spring, voting at the end of April, with the winners announced in May.