Larry Verstraete in Alberta

Seven days…1100 kilometres… 9 schools…3 libraries…18 sessions…1400+ kids…

Crunched into numbers, that was my Book Week tour. In actual fact, though, Book Week was much more. It was about chinook arches and the undulating beauty of rolling hills beneath never-ending sky that typifies western Alberta. It was about dedicated teachers, principals and librarians in communities large and small who welcomed me warmly, drove me around and often fed me, too. Mostly it was about amazing kids – curious, enthusiastic, hungry for more – and moments when you knew, just knew, that a tangible connection had been made.

Sometimes those moments were small and personal. Like when a girl in Grade 2 at Indus School whispered in my ear, “I like what you said. I want to be a writer, too.”

Or when a youngster in Grade 7 at Cayley approached me once the room had cleared. “I’ve written a novel,” he said. “Can you tell me how to find a publisher?”

One Grade 4 student in New Humble knew a thing or two about research. He thrust a crumpled paper under my nose packed with scribbled notes about me that he had gleaned from various websites. He also had questions that couldn’t wait.

There were collective moments, too. Some happened so regularly that I came to expect them. To illustrate how non-fiction writers incorporate facts, I asked volunteers to stake out the mosasaur, a prehistoric creature and the M entry in G is for Golden Boy: A Manitoba Alphabet. One student stood to mark the location of the head, another the distant tail. Four more knelt on the floor to make pairs of giant fins come alive.

No matter the school or library, when I read the mosasaur passage aloud afterwards, eyes were wide, silence permeated the room, barely a body moved. To show how illustrator Brian Lund used the words, I projected his preliminary sketches of the mosasaur on a screen, and then… pause, silence again… I showed Brian’s finished oil painting. Invariably there were gasps, followed by “Ahhh”, “Oooohhhh” and “That’s so beautiful!”

In those magical moments of Book Week, we were connected – writers, illustrators, readers – marveling in unison at the power of words.