Coldbrook School – Jan L. Coates

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!

I can’t believe I haven’t made it onto my blog for so long, but I’m finally here. Seems time just keeps skipping by more and more quickly the older I get!

We bought a family cottage in the Haliburton, Ontario area a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve already spent five days there, most of them without running water… But I already love the beautiful lake-rich area, the friendly people we’ve met so far, and the cozy cottage. The previous owner is 94 now, and with his late wife, he built the Viceroy home in 1975. He planted many hardwood trees around the property which are quite big and shady now, and he left just about everything in the cottage, so other than fully winterizing it, there’s not much for us to do but enjoy when we’re there! I’m hoping it’ll be a place where we can watch our granddaughters grow up – they’ll no doubt think it’s our house since I expect we’ll see more of them there than here in Nova Scotia.

I had kind of a big book week this week. Tuesday night Red Deer Press hosted a historical fiction Zoom launch for Christine Welldon’s new middle-grade novel, Knight of the Rails, and my new picture book Anna Maria & Maestro Vivaldi, with stunning art by Francois Thisdale. It was so great to finally meet Francois, who I’ve gotten to know through a lengthy set of emails as he was working on the art for this book. I’ve admired his work for years, and his passion and enthusiasm for his art is inspiring. I’m very grateful to have had an opportunity to create a book with him. Plus, he regularly bikes 35 kms a day as part of his artistic process (6,000 kms total in 2022) I’ve also gotten to know new Red Deer Press editor Bev Brenna through email, and it was wonderful to meet her, sort of in person. Thanks to friends and family who tuned into the Zoom launch, including baby #2, the youngest-ever participant on a Red Deer Zoom launch😊 Giant thanks to everybody on the Red Deer Press/ Fitzhenry & Whiteside team, including former editor Peter Carver and former publisher, Richard Dionne, who acquired this book back in 2019.

If you didn’t make the launch, but you’re interested in hearing how both the words and art evolved for this book, here’s the link. Our bit starts at about the 23 minute mark:

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/0BNjDksp8m79T94GOZmaOBKqaUMU9P3BQBzOz3wYOqq-vxz31iYZffirhQ6ad9xU.s75Dfu3ePyLe59nk

Passcode: .v7F7$z1 (note there’s a period in front of the “v”)

I spent two mornings this week at Coldbrook School (the wall outside the office above), visiting grades primary to two classes, and I completely enjoyed talking about writing and being with kids again (I wore a mask as much as possible since everybody is coughing these days). Thank you to all the young writers who shared their energy, dreams, grandparent poems, and guessing games with me. A special shout-out to Mrs. MacLean’s grade 2 class, my first audience for Anna Maria & Maestro Vivaldi – they listened so closely, and I loved your energy for the guessing game activity. Hope to see you again! There are so many teachers, educational assistants and students absent with various viruses these days – even though they’re tired, the adults in the building keep the school ship afloat – not an easy task at the best of times. Thank you!

Hope you’re settling in for the winter and enjoying spending time doing things you love with people you love – cheers!

Jan