The Five-Year-Old Who Loves Feather Brain

I received a wonderful message from a writer about her five-year-old’s reaction to Feather Brain [edited for privacy and to shorten it slightly]:

Just have to let you know that J. is LOVING Feather Brain. Stegosaurus is of course his new favorite dinosaur. It is so completely the right book at the right time for him.

From J: “Thank you for the book. I like it really much. Please write more books like that.” I told him I know the author so I think he thinks it’s a present. That message was a little distraught because he is currently throwing a mini-tantrum at the chapter being over, and wants me to bring the book to the beach!!! So I have a feeling we’ll be finishing it this morning

later:

Must now report that my mother read him the entire book at the beach this morning while K. and I built sandcastles. She says she has never had such a rapt audience, and that he was laughing uproariously at times, and was completely delighted that Kyle’s mother had run off to VANCOUVER.

And then he asked my mother to start over with chapter 1 on the bus-ride back home. So I’m sure I’m going to get a chance to read it too. A HUGE hit. You and Roald Dahl!!!

later still:

While I pack up picnic supper for beach (it’s a 2-beach day) my mother is reading Feather Brain again to J., because ALL HE WANTS TO DO today is read it, and has been going around whining about it whenever we aren’t reading it to him. Seriously, I thought he would like it, but I had NO IDEA how much.

A couple days later:

We are staying with friends and the 6-year-old girl was telling J. about Harry Potter, her new obsession, to which his rejoinder was, “Well have you read a book called FEATHER BRAIN?”

Me: I love kids’ enthusiasm for favourite stories!

Maureen

#5yearoldfavoritebook #FeatherBrain #kidsbooks #readingatthebeach

Marco Polo

A couple of weeks ago I read about someone having a team to help with their creative work. Seperately, I read a blog post by an author who wrote that working as a writer sometimes feels like playing marco polo, writing and calling marco marco marco, waiting for an answer.

And I thought – I want a team, and I loved the idea of playing marco polo. I found myself repeating marco marco marco, calling my team.

In the last two weeks I’ve heard from four different kids who are excited by my books (this is highly unusual, all at the same time).

Maybe the kid universe is better at marco polo. What am I saying? Of course they would be.

Marco. Marco. Marco.

Maureen

#books #kidslovebooks #marcopolo #writing

Adventures in Jasper

We just returned from a brief trip to Jasper, Alberta.

Day one: For me, the first clear sign of being away is – a sign. 153 km to the next gas. It’s like dropping off the edge of the world.

Where the highway winds up and around a mountain and totally freaks out people who aren’t used to mountain driving, especially if they’re in a rented RV, traffic came to a total stop. When we finally reached the site of the delay, we found three goats hanging around. One was sitting just outside the highway railing, enjoying the view. One was grazing along the side of the road.

The third was walking up the road, just having a little fun with those humans, I suspect.

Day two: We drove up to Maligne Lake (after discussing why it was malign, we discovered it’s pronounced ma-leen), and passed three bears, a mama and two cubs. We hiked along the lake just long enough to discover my lungs were not up for much, between the forest fire haze and the high altitude. We forked over for boat tickets, instead, and went on a two-hour trip. It was spectacular.

The lake is 22 km long, and we travelled about 2/3 of the way down, to Spirit Island. The end of the lake is a box canyon, enclosed in a single mountain range that makes two right-angle turns.

This blows my mind. How is this possible? But we looked at a 3-D model later, and indeed, the lake is lined with mountains, with one huge one at the end of the lake. and they are all, reportedly, geologically the same range. They also have glaciers, high and glorious. The guide showed us a hanging valley, carved by a glacier, above the Maligne valley, which was carved by a larger glacier, which is a hanging valley above the Athabasca valley, carved by the Athabasca glacier.

Then we went for high tea in a wonderful old building, and heard about Mary Schaffer, lady adventurer, who discovered the lake (well, for white people), from a description she received from a native man based on stories he’d heard (he’d never been there).

High tea: pots of really good tea, a grand selection of savory and sweet treats, including smoked duck and apple salad chopped fine on a wee bit of rye bread, smoked salmon and caviar, and  the best lemon square I’ve ever had. It was exactly the flavour of lemon butter I used to make when I was a teenager, from an old family recipe. Perfection.

Day three: Early morning wolf howls, and then loon calls, and none of this lonely call thing. These loons were chatty. Later we went rowing on Patricia Lake (clunky, but we all love the motion of rowing). It was fabulous being on the water, sunny and clear with the occasional gust. We landed on a sandy spit (after threading in between rocks and fallen trees). We discovered sand with mud that we sunk into, which we didn’t mind. We did back off when we discovered something crawling up Lia’s calf that looked a lot like a leech. Then we discovered the rowboat was leaking.

It was a slow leak, but required a little bailing as we headed back.

Day four: A morning canoe trip to the end of the lake, accompanied by dragonflies, two loons and a family of ducks. Then a drive back to Calgary, through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

Maureen

Spirit Island on Maligne Lake