I’ve been having so much fun working on a picture book I’m doing for Camp Triumph, which is on Prince Edward Island – a nurturing community for kids who have a sibling or parent with a serious chronic illness or disability. Started by the Sheriko family, formerly of Wolfville, almost 20 years ago, this is a dream project for me. The Sherikos ran Wolfville Minor Basketball for many years, and the dad, Tom, lived for almost 20 years with a brain tumor while Kathi and Tom’s three sons, Jordan, Jeffrey and Matthew, were growing up.
As part of the process of creating the book, I’ve been playing around with fonts. Fonts I like include: “Unkempt,” “Aprilia,” “Delius,” and “Lucida Bright.” I wanted to show them to you here, but apparently Word Press doesn’t recognize them. Oh well – each has things I like and things I’m not a big fan of, so we shall see…
It’s amazing how many thousands/millions of fonts there are out there!
Love this poster, spotted at Coldbrook School during a November school visit.
I did a few school visits in January and February, one of them in Stephanie Carver’s grade 6 class at Rockingham Elementary – she’s the daughter of Peter Carver, the now-retired editor of my Red Deer Press books. Her students were completely engaged and had a ton of great questions for me. And I could see her dad in Stephanie’s smile😊 I also spent two snowy mornings at Falmouth & District School with grades P-2 students – always fun to spend time with little ones (in 30-minute increments😊)
My morning with grades 3 and 5 students at Wolfville School was an easy visit – I walked down the hill! The resource teacher, Jenny Collishaw, was my warmly-welcoming host. The grade 3 students were excited to share the bulletin board they’d created with projects they’d done based on some of my picture books. Most of the pictures taken had kids in them, which is a no-no, but here’s their bulletin board, proof that teachers continue to do amazing work in our schools, despite snow days and everything else heaped on their plates. Kids really are the best, and it’s such a treat to spend time with people who have read my books!
And Jenny made me this lovely gift as a memento of my visit. So nice, all of it!
Huge thanks to Linda Hudson of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia who organizes the Writers in the Schools program. And thanks to you for stopping by. I hope sunshine and warm spring breezes will soon arrive in your corner of the world!
Jan L. Coates - "What if...?" 
I too love school visits. I’ll be doing a virtual visit tomorrow with a school in Airdrie Alberta. They are using Amanda in Alberta as one of their study units. I’ll look up your fonts. Glad to see you have another book project on the go. xo
So nice that you can visit kids in Alberta when you’re in Spain! The world has gotten so much smaller during our lifetime! I look at fonts quite often for my soul smiles cards, but it’s another thing to choose one for a picture book – too many! But we’re going with Delius Swash – look it up!
The virtual visit went very well. I love Delius Swash, perfect!!
Oh, Jan. Your talent at picking titles shows. Camp Triumph is a sort of camp I’d want to go to for many reasons or no reasons at all 😉
Thank you for the good work
Aw, thanks, Mirka – I have yet to visit the camp in person, but I will for sure this summer, after the book is in print. This title is/was the one and only that popped into my head. Hope you’re enjoying spring!
Love the poster at Coldbrook school. Such a great message. And very cool art the kids created based on your books. That must feel nice to see. 🙂
You have been busy and I know how excited you are about the book for Camp Triumph. Really looking forward to seeing it!
Enjoy your March. Hopefully we’ll chat next month.
Thanks for stopping by, Laura (and being a tad techy in your hermitage) – I’m back and forth with the designer who’s laying out the book while I’m here in Georgia – there’s a lot to putting a book together from words/art to font-choice, layout, printing, etc.! Yes – we’ll have a spring meeting!
Aww. I love all of this, Jan. Your books have touched so many hearts and minds – including my own kids – and I so appreciate your continued engagement with youth.
Kids have such open hearts and minds at this age and we never know what book or word or author visit will spark something that may burn into adulthood and even direct future career or leisure decisions! I’m sure there will be kids who get into writing/illustrating/publishing someday that will be able to point back to reading gorgeous picture or chapter books you’ve written and note that as a catalyst to it all!
You’re so kind, Elisabeth. I know I couldn’t have imagined meeting a real author back in my elementary days – times have changed! Hope you’ll enjoy a fun/quiet March Break with your kids!
Jan, we feel so grateful to have you write and illustrate this book. We are so fortunate to have your talent, compassion and insight into this population of kids, to take on this project! All the teachers, social workers and health professionals that we have spoken to about the book, are eagerly awaiting its arrival. It will be distributed to all the schools and hospitals across PEI and beyond.
So great, Kathi, and a dream project for me to be involved with Camp Triumph! Glad you’re getting the word out early!