Julie Lawson in Ontario

After the first day, my week is a confusion of times, towns, schools, libraries, hotels, restaurants, names, junior grades, primary grades, Google maps and road maps for South-Western Ontario. With my husband as driver and me as navigator, we gamely go from hotel to town to school to hotel to town to library — and repeat. My schedule advises me to stop for lunch and I advise myself to carry snacks for “nutrition breaks.” Wednesday morning, Grimsby Public Library, afternoon, Niagara Falls. Monday morning, Orillia — or was it Marchmont? No, Marchmont was in the afternoon. Monday night, Barrie. Tuesday morning, Stroud and Lakeshore Libraries, Tuesday afternoon, off to Grimsby in a two hour blur of fog, drizzle, rush hour traffic and lane closures on 407, 401, QEH — Where’s the exit? Number what? We just passed it — Thursday morning, Thorold (South, not North), Friday — all day in Grimsby, in the same school? Bonus! And in a minute, it was the end of the last day. Over and out.

Kids always come up with the unexpected, in their questions or comments, or in the letters they write afterwards.
A grade sixer asks, “Can I call you Jules?”

When I show a collage of my writing tools, kids always ask about the ones that don’t belong. I put the question to them, and some of their ideas are brilliant. My favourite, from a grade 4 girl: “The hard hat is there because you’re constructing sentences.”

The number of revisions made an impression on a grade 6 girl, who writes: I was thinking that if you were revising all day 12-14 times, how many times did you revise 30 books? If they were all chapter books, well you would have revised 4200 times …

Another girl sums up what is, to me, the best thing about Book Week:
Thank you for everything and introducing me to some great books that I can read, because I love reading.