click for larger image Kari-Lynn Winters is the 2010 winner of the Surrey Board of Trade Special Achievement Award. Unable to attend this morning, her agent, Sally Harding, accepted the award, on her behalf, from SBOT President, Nigel Watkinson.
Special Achievement Award at SIWC
Friday Oct. 22, 2010
Dr. Kari-Lynn Winters won the Surrey Board of Trade Special Achievement Award at this year’s Surrey International Writers’ Conference. The purpose of the award is to honor writers who have made a significant achievement in their writing careers during the past year.
Dr. Winters has achieved significant literary and academic achievement. She is a gifted writer, teacher and performer, and not only did she publish three books, but one of them, ‘On My Walk’ was short listed for the 2010 Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Book B.C. Book Prize award. In addition to a year of publishing triumphs she was hired as an assistant professor at Brock University. In fact she was hired for the position even before she defended her doctoral dissertation in Language and Literacy Education from UBC. At her graduation in June 2010, she delivered the convocation speech on behalf of her fellow graduate students. In addition, she has presented at various academic conferences and has made presentations as a children’ book author at literary and literacy events across North America.
November 13, 2009
Children’s Book Week
Communities, Cultural Affairs and Labour
The Hon. Carolyn Bertram, Minister of Communities Cultural Affairs and Labour, is inviting Islanders to visit a provincial library and take part in the many activities planned as part of TD Canadian Children’s Book Week, November 14-21. This year’s theme is Gold Medal Reading! Des lectures en or!
TD Canadian Children’s Book Week is the largest national celebration of Canadian children’s books. Since 1977 this touring program sends authors, illustrators and storytellers to communities throughout Canada to share with their audiences the delights of Canadian children’s books. The program is organized by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, a national not-for-profit organization that promotes the reading, writing and illustrating of Canadian children’s books for young readers.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to encourage young Islanders to be active readers. I commend the staff in our provincial libraries who work throughout the year to deliver programs and services in Island communities,” said Minister Bertram. “I encourage Islanders to visit a provincial library this week and participate in TD Canadian Children’s Book Week activities.”
Visiting author Kari-Lynn Winters from Vancouver, BC, will be hand at the Confederation Centre Public Library on Monday, November 16 from 3:15 to 4:15 to officially launch TD Canadian Children’s Book Week. Throughout the week Ms. Winter will be visiting four public libraries – The Confederation Centre Public Library, Summerside Rotary Library, Alberton Public Library and Montague Public Library – and 12 elementary schools to meet and share stories with students. All library events are free of charge and open to the public.
The Canadian Children’s Book Centre is again giving a free Canadian children’s book to every Grade 1 child in the country. This is made possible through sponsorship of the TD Bank Financial Group. This year’s book is Let’s Go! The Story of Getting From There to Here by Lizann Flatt, illustrated by Scot Richie and published by Maple Tree Press. Students in Grade 1 French and Grade 1 French Immersion receive the French translation, On y va! A pied, a cheval et en voiture…
The Fall Programming Guide of the Provincial Library Service is available at your local public library or online at www.gov.pe.ca/go/library.
BACKGROUNDER
Kari-Lynn Winters is an award-winning picture book author, playwright, and performer who enjoys being in the classroom in any of these capacities. She recently accepted a position at Brock University as a professor of drama-in-education and literacy. Her graduate work, which was completed at the University of British Columbia, focused on combining the arts with reading and writing.
When Kari-Lynn began to write children’s picture book manuscripts and submit them to publishers about eight years ago, people often shook their heads, advising her to write novels instead.
“It is so difficult to get picture books published in these times,” they said.
But Kari-Lynn persisted, continuing to collect, read, research, and write picture books. Her persistence paid off. Today, nine picture books that Kari-Lynn wrote—including Jeffrey and Sloth, aRHYTHMetic: a book and a half of poetry about math, Runaway Alphabet, On My Walk, When Chickens Fly, PunctuACTION, Mathical Creatures, Stinky Skunk Mel, and Just Be-a—have been accepted for publication by Orca Book Publishers, Simply Read Books, Tradewind Books, and Gumboot Books. In addition, she has had poetry and non-fiction pieces accepted for publication in KNOW Magazine for Curious Kids, Fandangle, and ChickaDEE and academic chapters and articles about student literacy published by Heinemann and in The Reading Teacher.
Kari-Lynn says the best thing about writing for children is that she can share silly ideas in funny and interactive ways and that she can talk to children about their own experiences as young authors. She currently lives in Vancouver with her husband, two kids, and two cats. To learn more about Kari-Lynn please see her website, www.kariwinters.com.
National Council of Teachers of English 2006 press release (PDF) for Kari’s panel session “Engaging Readers through Performance and Folklore,” November 19 2006
Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 From: Office of the Dean at UBC [edited for brevity] We are delighted to announce this year’s winners of the Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Awards. All three students are to be commended for their excellent contributions to teaching and to our Faculty. Recipients of the UBC Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Awards: Kari-Lynn Winters, Department of Language and Literacy Education Kari-Lynn is a very passionate educator who draws on her extensive background in theatre and literacy to inform her instruction. She is knowledgeable in her subject areas and continually finds creative ways of fostering student learning. She comes to classes well prepared, yet at the same time readjusts her plan if necessary to follow the energy and flow of the students. She builds from her experience as a classroom teacher to bring her subject matter to life, which authenticates her work with pre-service teachers. She establishes strong rapport with her students and has inspired future teachers. Kari-Lynn’s accomplishments were highly praised by both faculty members and students. She is a highly deserving recipient of a UBC Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Award.
2005 LLRC Master’s Research Award
Congratulations to the 2005 Winners of the LLRC Master’s Research Award The recipient of the 2005 Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada Masters Research Award is Kari-Lynn Winters of UBC. Kari’s thesis, Developing an Arts-Integrated Reading Comprehension Program for Less Proficient Grade Three and Four Students, was selected from a pool of 17 submissions representing all the regions of Canada. She was unable to attend the award presentation, but UBC’s Dr. Rob Tierney accepted the award on her behalf at the LLRC Annual General Meeting held on May 28th at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Tierney spoke warmly about the richness of research and about Kari’s commitment to the field both as a researcher and as a literacy educator. Congratulations to Kari and to Marlene McKay of Brandon University and Tara-Lynn Scheffel of the University of Western Ontario whose names were also shortlisted for the award. [see pdf]
Bio for media use
A short bio is available for media use and may be copied without formal request. Click here.
St Thomas Times Journal, August 2011 (read online)
“All abuzz at area Bee Olympics”
By Nick Lypaczewski
AYLMER — There was a familiar buzz north of Aylmer last weekend at Clovermead Bees and Honey, site of the seventh annual Bee Olympics.
The bee-themed events included differentiating honeys, bee hive guessing games and fastest person to get a beekeeper suit on.
“I don’t know why we did it originally. It was just to build awareness of bees,” explained Chris Hiemstra, Clovermead’s co-owner.
“It was a crazy thing we did seven years ago and we . People kind of expect it out of us now.”
The main event, however, was the annual bee beard competition, where brave volunteers attract hundreds of bees to their faces while the queen dangles from necks.
“(Judges) are looking for shape and form and also how you’re playing up to the audience, how you act on the catwalk . . . so its kind of a combined score.”
Participants are also weighed before and after donning the beard to see how heavy their quasi-facial hair is.
The volunteers are members of Ontario’s beekeeping industry.
Hiemstra himself puts on a bee beard every Saturday in September in another Clovermead attraction. He says the feeling is much like a regular beard except that it moves around.
“It’s very warm. It’s very tickly. If you think about six legs all holding on and then there’s some more bees on top of those bees holding on and they’re crawling around. They walk by your nose and up by your eyes.”
Added to this year’s event was a beekeeper fashion show, where models put on an element of the beekeeper suit and couple it with their best evening, winter, casual or summer wear.
Children were also making use of an extensive playground that featured miniature farm vehicles to ride on. The attractions remain open until October.
Every year, Clovermead donates 100% of proceeds to a different charity. This year, the money is earmarked for the YWCA.
“We put (the event) on out of pocket. Like today, we will spend more money than we make, but our sales in store will be a little higher . . . but it’s a charitable thing,” Hiemstra said.
Children’s book author Kari-Lynn Winters was at the Bee Olympics, taking photos and doing research for a book she’s working on.
“My publisher asked me if I could write a book about bees and so the more I’ve looked into it, the more interesting it has become for me . . .
“I know quite a bit about bees but I’ve never been to a bee beard competition. I’m doing research today (for) a book called The Buzz About Bees. It’s a non-fiction book about bees and it’s about the disappearance of bees mostly,” she said.
Winters said she hoped she could come back to Clovermead once the book is ready to hit shelves.
“Hopefully we’ll do the launch here. I always do book launches in (the area) because I’m from here.”
For Brian Cahill, not only was it his first time at Clovermead, it was his first time in Aylmer.
Visiting with his grandson from London, Cahill said he was impressed with the fun he was having.
“I think it’s great. There’s enough for (the kids) to be self-entertained. I’m sure I’m going to see a lot more of this area.”
Clovermead is home to about 1,000 bee hives, with roughly 40,000 bees per hive. Most of the honey is sold at their store on site, but some is distributed to a variety of markets and retail outlets.
Christina Leist presented a group of Grade 2 students her book Jack the Bear and talked about her creative process and how she illustrated her own book.
“Cobblestone students, guests celebrate their love for reading”
By Sylvie Berry
There were cheers and applause for reading last Thursday at Cobblestone Elementary School.
Nearly 200 students from Grades 1 and 2 at Cobblestone, Agnes Hodge and Burford elementary schools gathered to engage in a series of activities and presentations all focused on literacy and reading.
All the students were celebrating the Blue Spruce awards — part of the Forest of Reading program — which represent a series of books nominated by the Ontario Library Association which then get voted by the students.
“All the students voted on their favourite book from 10 different ones and the book with the most votes receives the Blue Spruce Award,” said Tim Best from Cobblestone Elementary.
Special guests for the day were author Kari-Lynn Winters and author-illustrator Christina Leist.
Winters is an award-winning children’s author, playwright, performer, and scholar. She talked to students about many of her books, including Jeffrey and Sloth, On My Walk (illustrated by Leist) and aRHYTHMetic: A book and a half of poetry about math.
“Reading gives you power and opportunity. Every job and career requires literacy. And Blue Spruce provides children with a voice,” said Winters.
Leist started her career as a graphic designer in her birth country of Germany. She later moved to Vancouver; there, she illustrated many children’s books and wrote Jack the Bear. During her presentation, she spoke to students about her creative process when writing the book and showed them how to do drawings.
“Blue Spruce gets young children aware about reading and writing. I think giving them a chance to meet the creators of these stories shows them that we’re human,” Leist said.
2010
“Access Books and Airlift to L.A. to deliver books to inner-city school”
As part of their ongoing commitment to strengthen inner-city school libraries throughout Los Angeles and beyond, Access Books has joined forces with a team of Canadian authors to help impoverished families gain access to books. The event will take place at Ralph Bunche Elementary, a Los Angeles, CA, USA school that is in desperate need of books for its 450 students.
Access Books, Air Lift to L.A. and a team of volunteers from Bunche will spend October 2nd revitalizing the library by painting murals, cataloging brand new books, and providing a reading rug, rocking chair and sofa to create a warm and inviting environment for students. Five authors from Canada will be on hand for the event and to give fun and exciting presentations to the students: Rob Weston, Kari-Lynn Winters, Jill Murray, Wendy Kitts, and Helaine Becker.
California’s Department of Education recommends 28 library books per student however Bunche has a mere three books per student. Therefore, Access Books has set a goal: Collect at least 5,000 books for Bunche’s library and classrooms. Many of these will be brand new, popular fiction titles – books that have been carefully selected to get students excited about reading.
Access Books’ partner for this endeavor, Air Lift to L.A., grew wings after Canadian children’s author Helaine Becker visited a school in the area and saw the empty shelves. Shocked and saddened, she rallied her Canadian colleagues and started a book drive. “The conditions [in Los Angeles] are on par with the worst of the Third World countries,” she writes on the Air Lift to L.A.” Facebook page. “Actually, they are worse, because in much of the Third World, people are doing their best to raise their standards, while in Los Angeles, conditions have deteriorated abysmally in the last ten years.”
“Enthusiasm stacks up in Carson school’s book drive”
A nonprofit group teams with students, parents and Canadian children’s authors to bring thousands of desperately needed books to the two small libraries at Ralph Bunche Elementary School.
Calleigh Tanner, 4, of Compton stamps books at Access Books’ “Air Lift to L.A.” book drive at Ralph Bunche Elementary School in Carson.
Excited chatter filled the auditorium of Carson’s Ralph Bunche Elementary School on Saturday as dozens of children flipped excitedly through piles of books before stamping and stacking them for catalog in the school’s two small libraries.
“I came to help the school, and other people … and they said I can take a book I like home,” said 8-year-old fourth-grader Carlyn Tanner of Compton, beaming as he and his brother Cayden, 7, sorted through a mountain of books in assembly-line fashion.
The Ralph Bunche students were accompanied by their parents and 4-year-old sister Calleigh. They had volunteered for the day-long effort to bring desperately needed books to the school’s libraries.
The drive was organized by Access Books, a nonprofit group that works to improve Southern California’s most impoverished school libraries. Access joined with a team of Canadian children’s authors [Helaine Becker, Wendy Kitts, Jill Murray, Rob Weston, and Kari-Lynn Winters] to collect around 5,000 books — some purchased new, others used and donated.
“The best predictor of how you read is access to books,” said Rebecca Constantino, founder and executive director of Access Books. “For children who live in poor communities, the best predictor is access to a good school library.”
Students at Ralph Bunche have lacked such access, according to Principal Synee Pearson Gourdine. The school, one of 25 elementary institutions in the Compton Unified School District, can provide only about three books per child, Pearson Gourdine said. California’s Department of Education recommends 28 library books per student, according to a recent draft of its proposed school library standards.
So when Pearson Gourdine learned that her school had been selected to receive a bounty of books, and would receive help renovating its libraries, she was elated.
“If our students don’t learn to read and don’t experience the joy of reading, I feel their growth is stunted for the future,” Pearson Gourdine said. “We want to enhance the library to where it’s a place they want to visit at school and in public.”
The campaign to bombard Bunche with books got a boost from far-flung literary specialists after Canadian children’s author Helaine Becker visited schools in Long Beach and was dismayed by the dearth of books.
“I was really appalled by the state of the libraries,” Becker said. “I thought, it’s shocking; it’s terrible.”
She rallied colleagues to organize several book drives, which eventually led to the campaign “Air Lift to L.A.”
The books include illustrated large-print texts, activity-oriented manuals and popular fiction.
Fourth-grade teacher Emma Den Hartog stressed the importance of having culturally sensitive books that “open up the world for children who may not have the opportunity to travel, or travel only within a small radius of their home.”
While some children stamped and catalogued books Saturday, others helped beautify the Bunche campus by painting murals. Fifth-grader Kennedye Davis, 10, slathered red paint into the outline of a train on an outside wall, while 10-year-old Angel Benitez and Ryan Smith stood shoulder-to-shoulder painting a huge green caterpillar in the library room designated for kindergarten-through-second-grade pupils.
Sibling third-graders Ajalee and Lee Harris were among the army of youngsters encouraged by their parents to spend part of their weekend helping their school. Sorting out the libraries was a priority for their mother, Demetra Harris.
“Unorganized library, unorganized education,” she said.
Some of the young volunteers were experienced book-drive helpers and were eager to share their views on reading as they stamped, stacked and racked.
“Books are a good education for all ages,” said Madeline Miller, 10, a fifth-grader at Valley Alternative Magnet School in Van Nuys, who came to help at Ralph Bunche with her sister, Susannah, 8, and mother, Sandra Tsing Loh. “Just imagine a world without books. It would be pretty boring.”
The Sudbury Star (Ontario), February 2010 (read online)
“Winters on roll with new books”
Putting pen to paper was like pulling teeth for Kari-Lynn Winters when she grew up in St. Thomas.
Now, pearly whites of children’s literature just flow.
Winters launched her fourth and fifth children’s books on Saturday in St. Thomas.
She’s on a holiday visit home. And she’s on the way — with husband, two children, two cats — from Vancouver and completing her PhD in arts as a way to bolster reading, to St. Catharines and an assistant professorship in teacher education at Brock University.
Winters stopped Saturday at the Talbot Teen Centre with a tickle trunk of props betraying her earlier post-secondary education in technical theatre, for a presentation to a young audience.
“I’m passionate about youth and literature,” she said.
But her audience also included her Grade 3 teacher at Southwold Public School, Eleanor Lyle, now retired, who was anticipating her first taste of Winters’ work.
“It’s wonderful,” Lyle said as Winters autographed a copy of her first book, Jeffrey and Sloth, about a boy facing a blank sheet of paper who has writer’s block until he draws an imaginary creature to help him.
Published in 2007, the book is an award-winner which also suggests Winters’ own struggle writing words until she discovered that authorship actually is in storytelling — and writing is just the process of putting a story down.
“I was good at telling stories on the playground,” Winters says.
“It took me a long time to figure out what I was doing, playacting and telling stories, was actually authorship!”
And with that approach in mind, writing actually becomes the easy part, Winters says.
This redefinition of authorship is a point Winters makes in her doctoral dissertation.
Her new books are On My Walk, for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, about a walk around Vancouver, and When Chickens Fly, an Olympics-inspired reader — although Winters is reported having been prohibited from mentioning the Olympics by federal legislation protecting the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.
A sixth book, Runaway Alphabet, an unconventional speller, is on the way.
“Online retailing seen as book industry’s future,” in The Expositor (Brantford, ON), August 14, 2010, by Richard Beales. Includes report of Summer Writers Workshop and quotes from Winters. Read PDF [2.4MB].
Author Kari-Lynn Winters wowed the crowd at Cassie Hall yesterday morning during a meet and greet with the students as part of a BC Book Prize tour. Winters shared some of her early childhood writing experiences with the youngsters, and encouraged them to write even if they don’t think they can. (Terrace Standard, 4/13/10)
Terrace Standard (BC), April 13, 2010 (read online)
An Author’s Tip, by Kat Lee
BC Book Prize finalists hit the road this year as part of a free tour throughout the province, giving public readings at libraries, book stores and schools.
Author Kari-Lynn Winters, whose On My Walk is shortlisted for the Christi Harris Illustrated Fiction Prize, visited Cassie Hall students yesterday morning as part of the tour. She shared some of her early childhood writing experiences with the youngsters, and encouraged them to write even if they don’t think they can.
Visits were also made to the Terrace Public library on Sunday afternoon and Caledonia Secondary School yesterday morning.
Other finalists on tour are Kristin Butcher for Return to Bone Tree Hill which is shortlisted for the Shelia A. Egoff Children’s literature Prize, Michael Turner for 8 x 10 which is shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and Cathleen With for Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison, shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
“Shortlisted authors en route to Kitimat,” in Kitimat Northern Sentinal, April 7, 2010, by Marcel Vander Wier (brief mention). Read online.
2009
St Thomas Times Journal, December 15 2009 (read online)
Winters on roll with new books
Putting pen to paper was like pulling teeth for Kari-Lynn Winters when she grew up in St. Thomas.
Now, pearly whites of children’s literature just flow.
Winters launched her fourth and fifth children’s books on Saturday in St. Thomas.
She’s on a holiday visit home. And she’s on the way — with husband, two children, two cats — from Vancouver and completing her PhD in arts as a way to bolster reading, to St. Catharines and an assistant professorship in teacher education at Brock University.
Winters stopped Saturday at the Talbot Teen Centre with a tickle trunk of props betraying her earlier post-secondary education in technical theatre, for a presentation to a young audience.
“I’m passionate about youth and literature,” she said.
But her audience also included her Grade 3 teacher at Southwold Public School, Eleanor Lyle, now retired, who was anticipating her first taste of Winters’ work.
“It’s wonderful,” Lyle said as Winters autographed a copy of her first book, Jeffrey and Sloth, about a boy facing a blank sheet of paper who has writer’s block until he draws an imaginary creature to help him.
Published in 2007, the book is an award-winner which also suggests Winters’ own struggle writing words until she discovered that authorship actually is in storytelling — and writing is just the process of putting a story down.
“I was good at telling stories on the playground,” Winters says.
“It took me a long time to figure out what I was doing, playacting and telling stories, was actually authorship!”
And with that approach in mind, writing actually becomes the easy part, Winters says.
This redefinition of authorship is a point Winters makes in her doctoral dissertation.
Her new books are On My Walk, for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, about a walk around Vancouver, and When Chickens Fly, an Olympics-inspired reader — although Winters is reported having been prohibited from mentioning the Olympics by federal legislation protecting the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.
A sixth book, Runaway Alphabet, an unconventional speller, is on the way.
Brief mention in Vancouver Sun, March 24, 2009 (read online)
There are many fabulous books out there that connect early numeracy concepts with early literacy. Vancouver-based publisher Gumboot Books has a number of books that combine poetry and mathematics, including the new title “aRHYTHMetic”.
St. Thomas Times Journal (Ontario), April 28, 2009 (read online)
Hometown girl returns for triple book debut By Kyle Rea, Times-Journal Staff
Fans of children’s literature received a triple treat earlier this month.
Hometown girl Kari-Lynn Winters returned from her current home in Vancouver, B.C., where together with fellow authors Lori Sherrit-Fleming and Crystal Stranaghan, they launched three new children’s books at the Talbot Teen Centre.
The trio held an interactive live show, complete with pirates, song and music, before a crowd of more than 100 children and parents. Afterward the authors were available to autograph their books — A World of Stories (Winters and Stranaghan), aRhythmetic (Winters and Sherritt-Fleming) and The Pirate Who Lost his Aarr (Stranaghan).
Winters explained that when she launched her first book, Jeffrey and Sloth, in March 2007, about 20 people attended the B.C. book launch.
“A lot of them said they wished I could do something similar for St. Thomas,” she said. “We thought this (Talbot Teen Centre) would be the perfect place. We’re actually raising money to give back to the (TTC).”
Roughly $300 in ticket sales for the show went to the centre to support its programs.
Winters, nee Moore, grew up in Elgin-St. Thomas and went to Southwold Public School and Parkside Collegiate Institute. When she was 17, Winters went to Brock University to take theatre arts and drama.
“(We met) in clown class,” Sherritt-Fleming, a fellow Brock student, said of their meeting.
Since then, both have become authors and educators, but they haven’t abandoned the theatre side of their careers. Sherritt-Fleming owns a Vancouver-based performance troupe called the Tickle Trunk Players.
“We travel to elementary schools to celebrate literacy,” Sherritt-Fleming said.
Stranaghan, an author and poet, published their books through her company, Gumboot Books.
The event was the official launch for all three books.
Teacher candidates participate in a workshop at the Arts Matter conference.
Brock’s future teachers have gained some new ideas about using art in the classroom thanks to the first ever Arts Matter conference held by the Faculty of Education. More than 125 teacher candidates attended Arts Matter: Integrating the Arts Across the Curriculum on Oct. 28 and 29 at Brock’s Hamilton campus. Highlights included:
a keynote speech from arts advocate David Booth
a performance by Roseneath Theatre
10 integrated arts workshops with skilled clinicians in drama, music, dance and visual arts
closing remarks by Fiona Blaikie, Dean of the Faculty of Education
The conference was organized by Shelley Griffin, Peter Vietgen and Kari-Lynn Winters, all faculty in the Department of Teacher Education. “We look forward to the continuation of this event in future years,” Winters said.
A book by a Brock professor has been nominated for the prestigious B.C. Book Prize.
Kari-Lynn Winters, assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, has been nominated in the Christie Harris Illustrated Book category for On My Walk. The story follows a mother and toddler on a walk through Vancouver. It is illustrated by Christina Leist and published by Tradewind Books.
This is Winters’ sixth book for young children, and the second to be nominated for the B.C. Book Prize. There are a lot of great Canadian picture books for children aged four to seven, Winters said. But there are few for children aged zero to five.
“When I read to my two-year daughter, McKenna,” Winters said, “she struggled to pay attention to the length of a regular picture book, so I wanted to write a whole story to her that was at her level.”
Toddlers prefer short text, concrete ideas and one linear theme, she said.
Writing for small children, she said, can be tougher than writing for adults. It requires taking an idea and scaling it back until it is at a children’s reading level.
“I know it’s ready when there’s not another word I can cut out of it,” she said.
Winters spent about two years working on On My Walk.
She now performs the book in classrooms using props and lots of action. She teaches drama in education at Brock.
The B.C. Book Prize will be awarded at an April 24 gala in Victoria, B.C.
In the spring of 2007, Orca Books published Kari-Lynn Winters’ Jeffrey and Sloth, a picture book about the daunting task of overcoming writer’s block. Her next book, Runaway Alphabet, will be published by Simply Read Books. And another story that she developed in our Children’s Book Workshop – with the working title Chicken on Skis - has been accepted for publication by Raincoast Books. Kari says she didn’t always consider herself a writer – that, in fact, she was a reluctant writer in elementary school who found composition a struggle. It was her love of storytelling and children’s literature that led Kari to eventually to try her own hand at writing. She affirms that her love of children’s literature continues to grow as she “practices writing as a reader and reading as a writer.” In her “spare time” Kari is also a PhD candidate, graduate teaching assistant, children’s theatre performer and mother of two. You can read more by and about Kari on her web site.
Some forms of pre-censorship appear to be specific to Canada. Canadian children’s picture book author Kari-Lynn Winters was forced to make extensive revisions to a book that she had written which was accepted for publication prior to the introduction of Bill C-47, the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act (1st sess., 39th Parliament, 2007):
Bill C-47 “gives the Vancouver Organizing Committee of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games . . . considerable powers to prevent the use of Olympic marks by businesses or individuals seeking to profit from an unauthorized association with the 2010 Games. . . . [It] extends protection to a set of images, words, and expressions associated with the Olympic Games in general and the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in particular.”
When Winters was interviewed, a month before Bill C-47 came into effect, she said, “I’m being censored by the government.” Her book, originally titled Olympic Chicken, must be renamed and Winters notes that Bill C-47 prohibits her from using the words “Olympic, Olympic games, . . . winter, gold, silver, bronze, sponsor, Vancouver, [or] Whistler . . . in conjunction with . . . the expression of the Olympics or some sort of sporting event” (Kari-Lynn Winters, interview with the author in Vancouver, Canada, on November 12, 2007; see When Chickens Fly).
Videos
2011
I am included in the video below from the 40th anniversary of CODE,Council of Ontario Drama and Dance Educators. My interview starts at the 4:40-minute mark. Click on the small embedded video below, or see a larger-resolution version at vimeo.com/20685983.
aRHYTHMETIC book launch: The first (of many) book launches for this was held April 2009 at Science World in Vancouver, featuring the Oscar-worthy stage performances of all three authors. Videos are 24 minutes long in QuickTime format. Download small movie (28MB) or large movie (124MB). (Right-click “save as” to download to your computer.)
2008
Forest of Reading Forest of Reading Literacy Initiative is an Ontario Library Association’s Literacy Initiative. To learn more about this program see accessola.com,Orca books, or see the video below (Jeffrey and Sloth is shown in “Segment 4″ at 2:46).
2007
Jeffrey and Sloth book launch: The book launch for Jeffrey and Sloth was held in April 2007 at the Vancouver Aquarium, home of some of Canada’s only sloths. A 1-minute video presentation can be viewed in these formats: high quality .mov (8 MB), medium quality .avi (17 MB), and low quality .mp4 (2 MB) — (if the sound doesn’t work, try a different browser or download the files to your computer and open them using a different program).
To follow my career and hear about my latest events and publications, click here.
As part of their ongoing commitment to strengthen inner-city school libraries throughout Los Angeles and beyond, 
