A Family Event in Toronto

I'm looking forward to this weekend's Bookmarker Event with Koffler Arts. It's Sunday at 1 -2:30 pm at Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street and it is FREE.

For this edition of our Bookmarkers series, we’ve invited award-winning author Sara O’Leary and award-winning illustrator Qin Leng to read from and talk about their latest children’s book, A Family is a Family is a Family. When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways – but the same in the one way that matters most of all. Plus: cartoonist Jonathan Rotsztain will also be joining our Bookmarkers conversation, featuring an intergenerational comics project with grandparents and grandkids.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to is meeting Qin Leng for the first time. It's a very funny thing making books with people--I always say to Julie Morstad that it's like we have all these children together even though we've only meet IRL a handful of times. And this really goes to the heart of what this post is circling around which is how both books and families are made. I'll be meeting Qin for the first time that day and yet I already feel that she and I are family in a way. I hope she won't made me saying so!

Koffler Arts has allowed Qin and I to take over their Instagram account for the week. This is the post that is going up today along with a little detail from this amazing spread from the book.

Here is a lovely depiction by Qin of a child's idea of how she sees herself...this detail is so funny and joyful and full of life! The purple hair! The winning smile!  A big part of what this book is about for me is exactly that--how children see themselves. My lovely publisher Groundwood has a page on their website called Windows & Mirrors that talks about issues of representation and inclusion in children's books. Here's one little bit of that: "Groundwood is committed to publishing books for and about children whose experiences of the world are under represented elsewhere." And it's for just that reason that I wanted to make a book with Groundwood and with its brilliant publisher Sheila Barry. I wanted this book to be in the world for children who wouldn't necessarily see themselves or their own home situation reflected in the pages of the picture books available to them. And, just as importantly, I wanted the book to be there for children who need to see that there may be other configurations and permutations to family than what they have grown up with. Windows and mirrors. Love is love.