Tag: Guest Post

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Guest Post: Please, sir, I want some more YA

Hello! We’re so happy to have Sarah Essak here at Tundra. She’s been working behind the scenes in editorial with us. You’ll find her reading manuscripts, writing reports, and lending a helping hand with a smile. We wouldn’t have had such a smooth sales conference this week without her. Some of her out-of-the-ordinary tasks included making newspaper hats and filling tubs with cotton candy for our reps to enjoy. We thought you’d like to hear from her today!
TundraYASarah Essak: About a month ago, I ran into a fellow intern in the shared kitchen. I told her I needed to take a brief break because the manuscript I was reading was getting too intense. She looked at me strangely and said “but you work at Tundra.” It took me a moment to work out what she meant. Oh. Right. YA books aren’t meant to affect you the same way as high literature. My friend is by no means the first person to think that. I myself have been guilty of judging readers based on what is in their hands. But after working at Tundra for three months, I’ve read multiple manuscripts that will stay with me for a long time to come. And these are manuscripts. I can’t wait to see what the editors here will do for the books that left me heartbroken, laughing out loud, and drooling for more in their roughest form.

In literary circles and in the eyes of the general public, there is this pervasive thought that YA books are not worth the time and attention of mature readers. In fact, YA as a genre is often scoffed at, and those who advocate for it open themselves up to mockery. Have we forgotten about coming-of-age novels such as Great Expectations, The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Oliver Twist? And what is YA if not stories about coming of age? There are stories to be told, for what time in our lives is more earth-shatteringly complex than when we are teenagers, learning who we are and what the world is like?

Perhaps we are in a time where YA novels have hit a trend that some find “fluffy,” but much of adult literature is in the same situation. That is not to say it is bad, but it is to say that there is a wide variety of work out there. So, I’d like to piggyback on a well-known proverb and say, don’t judge a book by its genre. In the words of the almighty Atwood: “There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.” Pick up a YA book; you might just be surprised by what you find.

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Guest Post: Lorna Schultz Nicholson

From November 21 to 24, hockey players from across Canada, the United States, Finland, and Mexico came together for some team competition. Lorna Schultz Nicholson, the author of the Puckster series, went to cheer them on and celebrate!

Lorna Schultz Nicholson: Girls can and do play hockey! Over 62 teams and 1,100 players took part in Wickfest 2013 at WinSport in Calgary, Alberta. There were 150 games played in three short days. Olympic medalist, Hayley Wickenheiser, the tournament organizer was on hand the entire weekend to meet and greet. As well as running a top notch tournament, she put on her skates to give seminars to help others improve their skills. This year she had Bryan Trottier, Danielle Goyette, and Caroline Ouellette on the ice for the skills sessions. Also this year, the tournament had two international teams attend and girls flew in from Mexico City, (yes, Mexico has girls hockey and they were so excited, especially when they won a game and when they got their Puckster books) and Finland. When Hayley played in the men’s league in Finland she billeted with a family who had a little girl. Well, that girl now plays hockey so they flew overseas to play in the tournament.

I was thrilled to be on hand to sign Puckster books at the autograph session with other members of our Canadian Olympic Team. Of course, Puckster stole the show and was asked to pose for many photographs!

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
From left to right – Meghan Agosta-Marciano, Genevieve Lacasse, Jennifer Wakefield, Shannon Szabados, Hayley Wickenheiser, me, Laura Fortino, Lauriane Rougeau, Melodie Daoust, Vicki Bendas, and in front is artist Zinour Fathoullin.

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Here I am with Genevieve Lacasse (blue) and Jennifer Wakefield (green). They love the Puckster books!

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Look at the line-ups! Young girls waited over an hour to meet their heroes.

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Puckster says hello!

Lorna Schultz Nicholson
I’m signing Puckster books and then the books were signed by the players!

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Guest Post: Searching for Extraordinary Manuscripts

Hello! We’re so happy to have Esme Shapiro here with us at Tundra. You might have already seen some of her illustrations pop up on instagram. She’s not only a talented illustrator, but with her keen sense of art, she’s been helping us search for illustrators for newly acquired manuscripts and giving us valuable input on cover comps. So we hope you enjoy her insights on children’s book publishing and we hope that she’ll write (or draw) many more guest posts!

Esme Shapiro Tundra illustration

Hello there! I am Esme Shapiro, Tundra’s summer 2013 intern.

I have been working here for about a month now, and there is never a dull moment! It has been a very eye opening experience to be a part of this wonderful, creative publishing team. The Tundra team really seems more like a family that all share the same goal: the desire to create amazing stories for children and young adults that expose children to quality illustrators that can stimulate their imaginations. As an aspiring children’s book illustrator, it’s very exciting to see the long and thorough process a book has to go through to finally arrive on the shelves of book stores and libraries. One of my favorite things to do to help out is to read the manuscripts coming in. There are so many great ones, written by so many authors from all over the place, it’s truly inspiring!

So with all these amazing manuscripts coming in, how does one sniff out the extra special ones? As an intern, it took me a while to figure out how to tell a wonderful manuscript from an extraordinary manuscript. There really are so many amazing stories written by talented authors out there, so sometimes it was hard to pick the extra special ones out. I didn’t have the essential critical eye quite just yet. Eventually, after talking with the members of the Tundra Team and listening closely during editorial meetings, I have discovered that an extraordinary manuscript should be a unique experience all on it own. I have put together a list of the sensations you go through when you are reading that extraordinary manuscript.

First, the extraordinary manuscript should reel you in; they don’t call it a hook for nothing. Within the first few pages, you should be so involved that you have the desire to bury your face in the papers- you want to jump right in. Your belly should delightfully rumble with curiosity and your toes should tingle with anticipation.

Then, you should expect a few surprises. You should leave your chair to travel into the world that the author is describing. You should start imagining what that world would taste, look, feel, and smell like. You should begin to really connect to the characters. At this point, the rumble in your tummy should move from your belly to your smile, and a big grin should appear (with perhaps a few giggles or tears).

By the end, the rumble in your tummy and the tingle in your toes should turn into little tiny blue birds that fill you up from your head to your toes. The extraordinary manuscript should tie up all the loose ends like a brilliant seamstress. There should be a lesson you have learned and absorbed all throughout your being. When you are done reading it, you should want to put down the pages and touch them as if it were made out of the most precious of fabric. Flowers should blossom behind your eyes when you recall the book, and the words should echo in your head long after your done reading.

So that is what it feels like to read an extraordinary manuscript – and that’s not even including watching the illustrations bring the story to life!  That’s a whole other story. What a magical experience.

In my month here, I have learned that Tundra Book’s has a special ability to sniff out the extra special books. They give these stories a chance to breathe life into library and book store shelves everywhere.  I’m so honored to have been given the chance to see the inner workings of a company the produces such quality books for children and young adults.

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International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition

Written by Janet Willen and Marjorie Gann

The kids we meet at schools – in Canada, the U.S., even Israel – are always bursting with questions about slavery:

“Is it true that white people were slaves too, not just black people?”
“Are there still slaves today?”
“Isn’t it illegal?”
“Can we end slavery? How?”

A student at Al-Nahda School, in Israel, looks at a whip for slaves.

August 23 is UNESCO’s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. So now is a good time for us to think about all the people who were captured and sold into slavery in the long history of the world, and of those who fought to end slavery. Even more important, it’s a time to think about what we can to do end slavery today.

As we explain in Five Thousand Years of Slavery, Slavery has existed in all times and all places, and people of all races, religions, and nations have been slaves. Slaves did the hard work that built immense palaces in Ancient Babylonia. They mined silver and gold in the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, people captured in Britain became slaves in Ireland, and people captured in Ireland became slaves in Scandinavia. In the 1700s, North Africans enslaved American and European sailors they seized on the Mediterranean Sea. African slaves drained marshes in Iraq in the 800s and planted the sugar cane and cotton that made Britain and America rich in the 1800s. Chinese girls did their owners’ bidding until the 1920s.

And today, twenty-seven million people are enslaved. Though slavery is illegal almost everywhere, laws aren’t always enforced. Schoolchildren are forced to pick cotton in Uzbekistan, and prisoners are forced to work in slave labor camps in China, North Korea, and Cuba. Poverty often drives parents to sell their children into slavery. Five Thousand Years of Slavery tells the story of James Kofi Annan, sold by his father to work on a fishing boat in Ghana.

Abolitionists can make a huge difference. Englishman Thomas Clarkson organized the movement that ended the West Indian slave trade in 1808. Harriet Tubman, a runaway American slave, returned to the American South nineteen times before the Civil War to free over three hundred slaves. Today, the former slave James Kofi Annan is taking on the cause of child slaves through his own organization, Challenging Heights.

As we tell the schoolchildren we meet, everyone can help in the fight against slavery. You can:

Though the fight against slavery seems insurmountable, it is a fight worth waging.

Tundra Book Group