OCULUM is featured on CBC BOOKS, livestream event and more!

IMAGE of author and OCULUM from CBC Books, click image for link.

So honoured to have OCULUM featured on the CBC Books site this weekend! Thanks to my publisher DCB Young Readers, the Forest of Reading, and CBC Books.

Here is the featured page: OCULUM on CBC Books

OCULUM is nominated for the Forest of Reading Silver Birch award this year, which is the largest reader's choice award in Canada, with over 250,000 children between kindergarten and grade 12 engaged in reading! Due to COVID19, all festivals and celebrations were cancelled this spring, however, CBC Books partnered with the Ontario Library Association and now there will be an online celebration and a winner announced on June 16. 

UPDATE: Here are the Forest of Reading Winners (I'm in the Silver Birch category): 

FREE JUNE 2, 1:15, LIVESTREAM EVENT!

Also, I will be live-streaming on the Peel District School Board Youtube channel on Tuesday, June 2/2020 at 1:15, reading from the book and answering kids' questions about OCULUM. Here's the link, I hope you can join me: OCULUM LIVE STREAM (I start at @ 43 minutes; author Helaine Becker is before me; author Zetta Elliott is after me)

On stage at Harbourfront in Toronto, celebrating
Forest of Reading in 2017 with Illustrator
Shawna Daigle (left)

Our book, Myles and the Monster Outside,
won Silver Birch Express Honour book!
A great day. Image courtesy Riley Murray

They are streaming more Forest of Reading nominated authors all week, so check out the PDSB Youtube channel for more great free events!

I hope you can join in on June 2, June 16 or some other time, and celebrate Canadian authors, books and kids. If you read a book and enjoy it, please consider posting a review online, giving a copy to a friend, or telling the world somehow. Canadian authors need your support more than ever!

My motto these days: we can't hold each other right now, but until we can, it might help to hold a book.

More about OCULUM on this blog including free teacher's guides, 5 Questions about OCULUM 
answered, free read-aloud licensing agreement
and much more.

Writing in the time of Coronavirus

Dear Friends,

It's March 2020, and the world is in the grip of a pandemic. No one alive today has been through anything like this, the last similar virus was in 1918, over 100 years ago.

So we're all watching the news, reading the reports, trying to stay calm in the face of the worst kind of news imaginable: this virus is a super-spreader, it kills somewhere between 2% and 6% of those infected, older people aged 60 and up are more likely to develop serious illness and die. If there is any good news, children are largely unaffected, but remain a reservoir of disease, so should avoid older people.

In Canada, and in Toronto where I live, we've all been asked to self-isolate for two weeks, even though the numbers of infections in Canada remain low at least for now, at under 200 confirmed cases and one death in B.C. (a man in his 80s) as of today. Schools are now closed, large gatherings, conferences, sports events, libraries, and much more are closed down. We are living in our homes, hoping we have enough frozen vegetables to last the storm which authorities assure us is about to come.

We believe them. Just look at poor Italy, South Korea, and China. It's coming, all we can do is hold on. The idea now is to "flatten the curve" of infection by self-isolating, so hospitals don't become overwhelmed with the sick.

I lived in Toronto when SARS came through and claimed 44 lives in 2003, but this is much worse. It's worse because it is ALL of us. Everywhere.

Oh Earth, what have we done to ourselves?

As a writer, my job is to look around me and make predictions about what I see. In 2015, five years ago, I started writing a dystopia for children, ages 10 and up. I wanted to tell a story about love, and equity, and also about the collapse of our society through environmental crisis, loss of bees, and yes ... pandemic.

My book is OCULUM (2018, DCB), which has been nominated for two awards (thank you SYRCA and OLA) and has been optioned for television and audio-book. In this story, two separate groups of kids interact 80 years after the collapse of society. They either live a comfortable life inside a domed, dystopian world with robots and peaches, or they live a hardscrabble existence outside the dome in the rubble of the cities.

This may seem gloomy for children, but the main message of my book is one of hope and love. The story is a very loose echo of Shakespeare's Tempest, which is ultimately, a story of love and community.

OCULUM is a story about how we have each other, and we are better together, no matter what happens. The final words of the book come from one of the first-person narrators, Mannfred (Mann for short). He is dreaming about the orchards he is going to plant once he gets to the farm.

He says, "It'll take a long time, my whole life and then some, but I got only one wish: one day, when I'm a man, me and my friends, my family, everybody there is, will pick peaches big as barrels, sweet as honey, from trees tall as the sky."

That's my wish for all of us today and in the weeks to come: that we may plant, grow, and enjoy the bounty of this amazing planet together again one day soon.

In the meantime, I'll be reading, writing, and thinking about spring. Hold fast everyone, hold each other, just hold on.

With love for all of you,

PD

More about OCULUM
FREE Teacher's Guide for OCULUM
Goodreads Reviews
More about Oculum on this blog

OCULUM makes the 2019 Forest Kid Summer Reading List!

What are your kids reading this summer?

I couldn't be happier to announce that my middle-grade dystopia, OCULUM, has been selected by young readers on the Forest Kid Summer Reading Committee, a first for me!

OCULUM is in the Red Maple category with some terrific books by Canadian writers like Susin Nielsin, Kevin Sands, Wendy Orr, Gordon Korman and more.

Here's the list: Forest Kids Committee 2019

The OLA Forest of Reading says: "This is what your readers should read over the summer - as chosen by the readers themselves!"

YES to that! Keep reading everyone, and read Canadian. Thanks to my publisher, DCB Young Readers, for letting me tell this near future environmental dystopia (with robots)! 

Borrow OCULUM from Toronto Public Library 
(or check your own hometown library)

Purchase a copy online AMAZON INDIGO 

Check out the FREE Teacher's Guide
More about OCULUM on this blog.
Publisher's Page

MORE fabulous kid's art for OCULUM

J's Granola Bar from OCULUM

"E created a set of bookmarks that depict important scenes from the story.  Part of J’s project was that he created a granola bar based on the story - the details he included are so creative!  R created a poster. If you look closely it includes an amazing amount of details. He split the paper in half and one half is related to things inside Oculum dome, the other half is related to things on the outside in Oculum City.  Personally, I loved the book!!  Thanks for introducing it to us!"- Grade 5 Teacher, Ontario

E's awesome bookmarks

I love this time of year, I get wonderful letters and creative projects from students across the country. Last week I received these wonderful pictures of projects grade 5 students did for OCULUM, my environmental dystopia. SO good, and SO creative, thanks guys!
Keep reading everyone.

R's poster: the amazing detail inside and outside OCULUM.
I love the "W1 Here," the man William 1 made of garbage from the Olden Begones. Amazingly creative.

Here's a link to the FREE TEACHER'S GUIDE for Oculum, courtesy of my publisher Dancing Cat Books