So honoured that FIREFLY is a CBC Books "Best Middle Grade Books of Spring 2021" selection! I'm in great company with some terrific Canadian writers.  Thanks CBC!

Here is the whole list, check it out for some wonderful reads for kids 9-12: Philippa Dowding on the CBC Books Spring 2021 List

All posts about FIREFLY on this blog

Beautiful Heat Ascending in the Snow

Wandered the snowy streets of Toronto today, and came upon this beautiful, fragile image on the street.

Heat ascending from a sewer water grate. Such an everyday thing, ugly even, on an ordinary day. But on a snowy day like this, the city exhales from beneath the street, and this lovely image appears.

It looks like lungs. Or a leaf. Or the x-rayed ribs of a child.  Or even the imprint of a rubber-soled boot.

What do you think it looks like?

Beauty in the everyday, found.

Time Travel in Toronto...

Did you know Fort Rouillé was a tiny French trading fort which stood at the foot of what is now Dufferin street in Toronto, from 1750-1759? 

The French inhabitants (12 people for most of the year), and local First Nations, traded furs for hatchets, blankets and silver. Fort Rouillé was the first permanent European settlement in Toronto and a monument still stands, beside Scadding Cabin on the CNE grounds.  

 Learn about Fort Rouillé at the CNE this summer, on Kid's Toonie Monday! Travel back in time, learn about Toronto's history, and enjoy a reading from my children's book in a chapter about the fort, Carter and the Curious Maze...

... Carter enters a curious maze at the fair, only to discover that he has travelled back in time! He visits three time periods, 1903, 1813 and 1750, all on the same spot on the CNE grounds!

Hosted by the York Pioneer and Historical Society, the event will include historical children's games, a scavenger hunt, prizes, a reading, book signing and more. Come join us for Time Travel in Toronto:

Event: A visit to Fort Rouille with Philippa Dowding

When: Monday, August 21 & Monday, August 28

Time: 1-3 pm 

Where: CNE Grounds, Scadding Cabin

Cost: $2 CNE admission for kids 13 and under

More About Carter and the Curious Maze, book 3 in the award-winning middle-grade series, Weird Stories Gone Wrong:

Book Trailer, Carter and the Curious Maze
Blog Posts, Carter and the Curious Maze
CM Magazine Review (4/4 stars)
Goodreads Reviews

NEW BOOK COMING MARCH 2018!
The Weird Stories Gone Wrong series, for kids 8-12, has a new little brother coming in 2018: Alex and The Other.

Myles and the Monster Outside is the Silver Birch Express Regional Winner!

Author with her surprised face on!

Myles and the Monster Outside was the Regional Award Winner at the Festival of Trees in London, Ontario yesterday (May 12, 2017)!

Thank you to the Ontario Library Association, the fabulous teachers, librarians, and 1700 young readers, it was a great day for reading. So surprised and delighted to win, and such a lovely award!

Lovely Award for the London 2017 Silver Birch Express

Next week, the Festival of Trees continues in Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie. I'll be in both cities, come join us!

what 1700 kids look like at the London Festival of Trees

Here are dates, schedules and ticket sales:

May 17: Festival of Trees, TORONTO
(Appearing with series illustrator Shawna Daigle in Toronto)
May 19: Festival of Trees, SAULT STE. MARIE

I see you, Myles ...

Here's the Myles and the Monster Outside Book Trailer.

Carter and the Curious Maze at the CNE!

I'm really pleased to say that I'll be reading from my new book, Carter and the Curious Maze, on the Kids World Stage at the Canadian National Exhibition this weekend (Sat. Aug 27/2016)!

A thousand thanks to the Fort York and CNE staff for all the support, and for helping me to arrange the reading.

Here are the details:

Event: Philippa Dowding at the CNE
Place: Kids World Stage (CNE, near Dufferin Gates)
Date: Saturday, August 27th
Time: 4 pm - 4:30 pm
FREE with admission to the CNE. The author and the illustrator Shawna Daigle, will be selling/signing books after the reading.

I hope you'll come and join us.

The book is a time-travel story set on the CNE grounds. Young Carter is bored with the CNE this year, until he enters the curious maze, and travels back to 3 time periods on the same spot: the CNE in 1903, the Battle of York on April 27, 1813, and then back to a fur-trading day at little-known French Fort Rouille, in 1750. The Fort Rouille monument still stands at the foot of Dufferin Street, behind the bandshell and next to Scadding Cabin. I've lived in Toronto all of my adult life, and had no idea that it existed, and that Fort Rouille was actually the first European settlement in the area.

Me signing books at Fort York, thank you for having me!

I had so much fun writing this book, although it was an incredible amount of work for 20,000 words. But as I delved further into the 3 time periods, there was more and more I wanted to say. It was tough to keep the word count for each chapter to about 1,000 words and to say what I wanted to say in 3 chapters per period. I also needed to keep the tension high, since the maze is actually another midway ride, after all, with chills, thrills and scream-inducing moments. Just like any good roller-coaster.

The next stage, the getting-the-word-out stage, has been fun, too. I was lucky enough to read at Fort York twice in August 2016 to summer camp kids, that was pretty special. Many thanks to the Fort for having me. (Note: a room of kids yelling KA-BOOM makes me laugh, apparently, every time.)

Fort York 2016

The book isn't really a history lesson, although it was my hope that the mystery of the maze will pique young reader's interest in the historical aspects of the story. And certainly it isn't didactic, it's a yarn about growing older and the infinite mysteries of the world around us as we leave childhood. I leave it to the reader to form their own impressions of the awful practice of freak shows in the last century, the terror of the Battle of York, or to recognize that the fur-trade was the sad first step in the European domination of First Nations people. The information is all there, Carter is sympathetic and curious, and it's my hope that teachers and librarians will open the conversation with their students, and use this book as a jumping off point for further inquiry and critical thinking.

I also wrote Carter and the Curious Maze because I have lived in and around Toronto most of my life, and I have the fondest memories of travelling to the CNE on the GO train from Oakville as a young teenager (one of a gaggle), and wandering through the CNE until the last train left for home. The words "Doggie Doggie" will mean something to a few readers of this piece, and send anticipatory shivers down a few spines, like they still do for me.

A trip to the CNE was, for most of my friends and certainly for me, our first taste of real freedom, through a world of wonder, strange and luminous to us. I wrote Carter and the Curious Maze to share some of that wonder with the next generation of readers, a sort of love song if you like, to Toronto. Finally, to be able to read this book at Fort York and now the CNE this weekend ... how lucky am I? Thanks to all who made it happen.

Recent reviews of Carter and the Curious Maze:

"This original take on time-travel historical fiction is a sure bet" Kirkus Reviews
"Readers will be compelled by historical tales of Toronto's past" 4/4 Stars, Highly Recommended, CM Magazine
Goodreads Reviews

Find a few more thoughts about why I wrote the book here: AUTHOR ARC LETTER

And to showcase illustrator Shawna Daigle's fantastic art, here is the BOOK TRAILER

Enjoy!

One Purple Tulip

Gorgeous tulips as seen yesterday at Queen's Park Circle in Toronto...and one lone purple tulip.

A love song to spring (and a little respite from book news), here's my guitar instrumental with editor Allister Thompson, titled "Spring." Feast your ears, enjoy, and stop to smell the tulips...

The Tale of the Christmas Bonus

Gather 'round my friends, and let me tell you a tale from my corporate life long ago: the Tale of the Christmas bonus.

The year was 1987, and I was a production manager at the Financial Post in downtown Toronto. I was just out of university, it was my first real job.

Every year, the Christmas party took place the Friday payday before December 25th. I had only been in the job a few months, so I had no idea what to expect, or why everyone was so excited. I was soon to discover why.

Throughout the day, employees were asked to leave their desks, department by department, and gather in the corporate boardroom. All morning giddy people from marketing and editorial filed past our office, giggling and quite uncharacteristically jovial. Then it was my turn to walk down the deeply carpeted halls.

My co-workers and I were met at the boardroom door by well-paid carol singers (from the local opera company) and two elves (from accounting), who handed us crystal goblets of very rum-laden eggnog. We sipped away as we lined up with our co-workers in an orderly but increasingly chatty and rosy-cheeked rhumba line that criss-crossed the boardroom and spilled out into the hall. I peeked into the room over everyone's heads, and who did I see off in the distance, sitting at the head of the boardroom table? Santa of course (the CEO), and on either side of him were two more elves (Toronto police officers).

On the table in front of them were our gifts, in two large cloth sacks! But there weren't any bows or ribbons. No. Our gifts were in orderly, crisp white envelopes labelled with each of our names. And what was inside each of those envelopes, my friends? Our Christmas bonuses: one week's pay, in cash. You heard me. In cash.

Legend has it that there was over $250,000 cash in those bags that day, which I guess would explain the Christmas Police Officer Elves.

I approached Santa, managed a rum-soaked "thank you, Merry Christmas" as I staggered back to my desk with my bonus. Did I mention that it was in cash? I sipped my eggnog and got nothing done for the rest of the afternoon, like everyone else. In fact, most of us left work early that day, slightly hungover by mid-afternoon.

And that my friends, is the tale of my first and last Christmas Bonus, which I experienced only once and at the beginning of my career, since the next year they were cut. But they had been a long-standing tradition up until then, a holiday tradition at the company since the 1950s. I know it's hard to imagine in these meager times, where jobs are hard to find and the idea of a Christmas bonus of any kind may seem like the stuff of legend, but I assure you, it was real. It's hard to imagine that kind of corporate generosity now, but it meant a lot to the staff, to morale, to loyalty. It certainly meant a great deal to me and is one of the reasons that I'll always look back fondly at my days working for the Financial Post.

It was 1987, not so very long ago, and a tradition sadly lost to the mists of time. Luckily the tradition of eggnog survives, think I'll have one now!

Goodbye old tree

Last day for the 80-year old Norway Maple

Denuded

A neighbour was taken away yesterday: An 80-year old Norway maple tree across the street was finally cut down by the city. It's been in terrible shape for the past two years, dropping limbs onto the road and sidewalk with every storm. It's had the spray-painted, city-ordained "orange spot of death" on it for almost six months. It was on an incredible tilt, leaning about fifteen degrees further than it should have been over the street, and all my neighbours and I were just waiting for it to fall into our front porches and laps, at any moment. It was time for the gorgeous old tree to go. I will miss it terribly.

Logs in a truck

Over the twenty plus years I've lived in this house, I've seen raccoons, squirrels, cats, blue jays, cardinals, crows, falcons and brilliant yellow butterflies in its branches. I could see its trunk, its limbs, its lofty crown from every window in my house, and it was always the first tree on the street to turn golden, my first harbinger of autumn. It shaded us all, on both sides of the street, and offered some privacy to not one but two neighbouring houses.

This too shall pass

It was the last of three old trees on the street to go in the past five years -- the three sisters I called them. Several years ago, we asked the city to plant a tree on our property, knowing that one day soon the three sisters would be gone. Our tree is now a lovely young sugar maple, but its a baby in comparison to the grand old lady we said goodbye to yesterday, a tree planted some time in the 1930s in a city bracing for war. I'd love to know
who planted the tree, the city or the home owners, or if it grew to 100 + feet from a stray maple key left by carelessness or design. I feel like a house has been removed, or a faithful friend. So, this blog post is meant as a passing note of admiration and recognition: dear 80-year old Norway maple, thanks for all the shade.

Here's a youtube video of beautiful spring trees on Toronto Island, set to my guitar music.