My First Published Work

Although I am trying to reform, I am a bit of a pack rat. But, in my defense, I think I come by that honestly. My father is an archivist and my mother, well, she keeps the best things. I was just home for a few days and I promised my soon-to-graduate daughter, A, that I would find my high school grad photos. Well, lo and behold, I also found two of my first attempts at writing, which were published in the Doncaster Gazette (or something like that; I can't find the original student publication although I'm sure it's stored away somewhere). So here, for your reading pleasure (or not), is my first story, The Story of a Elephant and a Canary.



As you can probably tell, we must have been studying Aesop's Fables in my grade one class (with my beloved Miss Little and her beautiful mini beehive). I think this must have been a riff on Androcles and the Lion (or maybe it was The Lion and the Mouse?)You can see how I sort of forget half way through and change the elephant to a lion? Where was the editor? Anyhow, this cracks me up every time I read it.

Here is Miss Little and her circa mid-1960s not-quite-as-much-as-a-beehive-as-I-thought:


And here is moi in the same era:

Atwood on Librarians

In this blog I often go on about librarians and how integral they are to schools and communities. Today, I'll let Margaret Atwood have her say.

Kwisitis Interpretive Centre

Over the past few years I've had the pleasure of doing some writing, research and editing work for the newly redesigned interpretive centre for Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The Wickaninnish Interpretive Centre is being re-named and has re-opened as the Kwisitis Interpretive Centre. The overall design of the centre was done by Donald Gunn, along with park staff of course, and the panels were designed "in house" at Parks Canada by Shouresh Jalili and Guy Parsons. Here are a few of the panels I worked on. This was a great project to work on and the first one that was trilingual — English, French, and Nuu-chah-nulth.

I will post some more photos of the exhibits after the grand opening, which will happen in a few weeks. For now, here is a brief blurb about re-design.

Canadian Science Writers Unite!

A group of science writers who write for children have joined together to start a blog. You can find it here. I did my first post today. Hope you enjoy it and keep checking back. There is a slew of writers in the line up, getting ready to post.

Letter to the Tooth Fairy

Once upon a time, I wrote the tooth fairy and she answered.



It is very faded, so this is what it says (with spelling intact):

Dear fairy cod
you draw a Picture
of yourself and
your name.
From Adrienne

your name [The tooth fairy wrote "Twinkle" in this space.]

picture [with arrow pointing down]

The tooth fairy drew a self-portrait in red crayon.