TD Canadian Children's Book Week 2012 has just winded up. A lucky group of authors and illustrators were touring the country all week long. Ottawa YA author and Governor General's Prize winner Caroline Pignat visited Montreal-area schools. But because I was in Kamouraska at the beginning of the week and still a little too busy with my own school business after that, I didn't get to hear Caroline at either of her open-to-the-public talks.
So, because yesterday was my last chance to meet her, I popped by Babar en Ville on Greene Ave., where I had a short, but most entertaining visit with Caroline. (A mutual friend of ours, YA editor Peter Carver, predicted we would hit it off.)
Caroline won the Governor General's Prize for her YA historical novel, Greener Grass. The book is set in Ireland during the Great Famine of 1847. Since then, she has written two sequels to the story, and another one is already in the works. When I read Greener Grass, I could not put it down. I was as taken by the musicality of Caroline's language ("His pants draped about his gangly legs like rags on a rowan tree") as by her wonderful story and the characters in it.
Like me, Caroline is a teacher. She teaches World Religion and Writer's Craft at All Saints High School in Kanata.
Caroline told me that she begins the writing process by doing a lot of research. In fact, she seems to spend almost as much time researching as she does writing her first draft. "I find the gems you use in a story while I'm doing research," she said.
I asked Caroline what, for her, is the hardest part of the writing process. "It's finding the voice," she told me. But once she's got the voice of her narrator, why there's no stopping Caroline: "Once I get the voice, it doesn't take me that long to write it."
Caroline's been blogging about book week. Check out her book week diary at pig.pen.weebly.com or learn more about Caroline by clicking here on her website.
Hey, Caroline, fun to meet you! Come back to Montreal soon and we'll continue comparing notes!!