Wednesday in Whitehorse

I'm feeling so at home here in Whitehorse. It could be because when I walk into the local café Baked, people say, "Hey, weren't you at my school yesterday?"!

Today, I visited four schools in the Whitehorse area. The first one was Jack Hulland Elementary, where I got to be with my new best friend Helen O'Connor. Like me, Helen does a lot of stuff. In addition to being a wonderful artist, she is the librarian at Jack Hulland, and she is also the Yukon coordinator for TD Canadian Children's Book Week.

I worked with grades six and seven students. One girl named Hannah has even more energy than me. And a student named Chayce ("it's spelled weird," he told me) stayed after my session to discuss writer's block. Chayce said, "I start writing a story and within the first paragraph, I get writer's block." Luckily for Chayce, I had a solution! I told him that for me, writer's block is like running -- if you get a cramp while you're running, you gotta keep running -- or writing in the case of writer's block.

Here's a photo of me with a few students at Jack Hulland. Note the cool display!

Next stop was Holy Family Elementary, where I worked with a LIVELY group of grade sevens. The first student I met shook my hand and introduced himself saying, "My name is Conly and I'm a fellow author." I had some trouble getting this group to settle down at first, but I think I got them hooked when we started talking about the Holocaust and I told them how my mum had been a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. 

And we did a really cool thing together -- we Skyped my class at Marianopolis College... that's because at the same time as I was visiting Holy Family, author and editor Sarah Harvey was visiting my Writing for Children class at Marianopolis. The students at Holy Family were eager to check out my students -- as you can see from the  next pic.

After lunch, I went to Porter Creek High School. I was happy to meet up here with another new friend, Porter Creek librarian Brenda Estabrook. I worked with Mr. Hale's grade ten students, as well as a few grade eleven and twelve students who are keen writers. When I told a sad story, I could tell from a student named Tyra's eyes that she really felt the story's pain. Writers need to feel, Tyra! I even showed the students a few of my boxing moves (that's because my latest book is about a girl boxer, and I took boxing lessons as part of my research for the story). That's me in the next pic demonstrating an uppercut!

My last stop for the day was at Elijah Smith Elementary, where I worked with Mrs. Potters's grade six class and two visiting grade seven students. My favourite moment was when a student named Asher said, "You should write a book about the Yukon!" So I told Asher, "You know WHO should write a book about the Yukon?" and four other students (Josh, Meghan, Kenny, and Cassidy) called out, "US!"

That's exactly right, you guys! In fact, that's the whole point of TD Canadian Children's Book Week -- to make you realize that you can be writers, too, and that you have great stories (not to mention a beautiful territory!) to write about!

I'm off to Carmax tomorrow, then Mayo on Friday ... will do my best to keep blogging if the internet connection is good enough!