An email from a friend told me about the Christmas baking she’d been doing. I responded to her: You will be happy to know that even this grinch sees baking shortbreads as a must-do every Christmas. It’s even a want-to do.

One year I baked shortbreads and other delightful sweet nibblies in the company of Bill Richardson all afternoon. His show on CBC Radio probably didn’t last all afternoon, but that’s how I remember it. Since 2002, I’ve been getting together with my sister to do our Christmas baking. We often try out new cookie recipes (with varying degrees of success), but even if we try a new shortbread recipe (the one with grated orange peel and chocolate was yumm), we always make a batch of our traditional shortbreads too, using the recipe our mother always used.

Last year, we broke with tradition a little. We still made shortbreads, of course. But we’d finally used up the last of the colours-never-seen-in-nature cherries we’d always cut up to use as decoration. (We cut them into bits so small the same container lasted for years. Let’s hope whatever was in them helps preserve us even half as well.) Rather than going out to buy more glazed cherries, we decided to cut up little gummy bears that I happened to have on hand. (What would our mother have said!?)

The gummy bears melted into beautiful little circles of red, gold, and green in the middle of our shortbreads and we were convinced we’d found the perfect alternative. Until we sampled our product and discovered that baked gummy bears are 100% unchewable. They could be used by dentists for fillings.

This year we settled for patterns of fork-pricks or a sprinkling of coloured sugar. Not that shortbreads need any embellishment in terms of flavour, just a little something to make them prettier on the plate.

Do you have baking traditions that honour someone in your family at this special time of year? Have you started any new traditions with your own kids that you’d like to share with the world (well, the little corner of it that reads my blog anyway)?

I’ll just be off having a quiet cup of tea and a shortbread now. I hope my sister and my baking friend will join me, albeit some miles away.

A bug has been spreading through the community of Guelph’s teens this year. I’m not referring to H1N1 but to the Writing Bug. There were three times as many submissions to GPL’s 2009 teen writing contest as there were in 2008.

This year was the second year I had the pleasure of judging stories for the GPL contest. Among the fascinating characters I met this year:

• a blind teenage girl who goes to a party and discovers she has fallen in love with a boy who has been a friend for years
• a teenager in a poor village who makes the tough choice to forego her education so she can support her family
• an abused teen who finds a way out of her own pain by reaching out to someone she has hurt.

Pictured here, thanks to Michael Foley, father of one of the contestants are Jennifer Foley, me, Erin Mullen, and Mike Leslie.

Mike Leslie, who was another of the contest judges, is the managing Editor of What If? – Canada’s Creative Magazine for Teens.

If you’re a teen writer or artist, or if you know someone who is, check it out.

Congratulations to Jennifer and Erin, as well as Elizabeth Nash, Emilia Main, and Mary-Margaret Annab whose stories all ranked among the judges’ favourites. (Writers Ken Oppel and Jane Lewis also acted as judges.) I wish all the other young writers who entered the contest all the best as they continue to pursue their interest in writing.

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If a signed copy of a select few of my books would please someone on your shopping list, I may be able to help you out. I have a limited supply on hand of A Pocket Can Have A Treasure In It and of the anniversary editions of Red is Best and Big or Little?

There’s still time for me to deliver your choices in time for Christmas, but not for too much longer, so don’t delay.

Why not place your order now?

A recent article in the New York Times informs readers that Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter is about to be auctioned off. It’s expected to go for between $15,000 and $20,000. That’s a lot of money for a typewriter that has, according to McCarthy, “never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose” in the 50 years he’s been typing on it.

But clearly there’s something pretty appealing about the idea of owning the typewriter this Pulitzer Prize winning author has written all the drafts of all his books on. Does whoever is going to pay the big bucks for it think the machine itself produced All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men? And if only they can put their hands on it, great literature will clack onto the pages for them, too?

Not consciously, of course. But what established writer has not been asked by newcomers to the field: Do you write in the morning or at night? Do you write an outline first or just start? Do you know the ending before you begin? And the most common question of all: Do you write longhand or on a computer? As if there’s some great secret to writing and if they ask enough “real” writers, they’ll find out what it is. (No one wants to hear you have to sit down day after day and do it till it’s done.)

That said, if the purchaser of Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter wins a Pulitzer Prize (or a Governor General’s Award) any time soon, I may just have to trade in my Dell laptop for manual Olivetti.

Nancy Evans is a teacher-librarian in London, Ontario. She sent me a thank you note recently that made my day and she’s given me permission to post it here, along with the accompanying photos.

I wanted to sincerely thank you for sharing time with us. Our students are all in a buzz this week as I follow-up with them. You truly connected with our children on many levels and the common thread that keeps coming through is that you cared, you listened, you truly answered their questions and you inspired the creative juices in the young minds of today and the creative thinkers of tomorrow.

One of the reasons this note meant so much to me is because my author visits with kids are just that – visits. I don’t sing or dance or do magic tricks. I have no high-tech visual aids. It’s just me and my books and a group of kids in a classroom or library. That’s the way it’s been for over 25 years now. With invitations to visit schools less plentiful than they used to be, I began wondering recently if I should be jazzing up my presentations. One writer-friend suggested I do up a power-point presentation. Nancy’s letter made me think maybe it’s just fine to keep doing what I do to inspire kids (or re-inspire them) to read more good stories and write some of their own, too.

The letter continues, referring to my signing her copy of Red Is Best from its first print run, artwork some of the students have been doing based on an unpublished story I read them, and eventually coming to:

Find attached a few photos of your visit with us for you to enjoy & re-live our morning together.

Thank you, Nancy Evans, for helping the teachers at Blessed Kateri prepare so well for my visit there. Thanks also to the B. K. students for giving me a morning I’m happy to remember. Read on!

Last night Caroline Pignat received a Governor General’s award for her young adult novel, Greener Grass. Not surprising when you look at the reviews. And needless to say, she’s delighted. The book is set in Ireland, and she’s going to take her parents there with some of her prize money.

What makes Caroline’s win sweet for me and for my partner Peter Carver is knowing we both had a hand in helping this talented writer develop her story. Caroline brought her (very promising) manuscript to our first Nova Scotia Writing Workshop. I offered her feedback there, and she revised it. Peter, as editor at Red Deer Press, took it on, and the rest, as they say, is history. (A cliche, you might say, but an apt one, perhaps, given that Greener Grass is historical fiction.)

Peter and I will be setting dates for this year’s Nova Scotia workshop very soon. In the meantime, congratulations to Caroline Pignat!

(By the way, The Bite of the Mango which I wrote about in a previous blog post, won the Norma Fleck Award for Non-Fiction this week – another prestigious honour in the field of Canadian children’s literature. Congratulations to Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland.)

Picture this. I’m having breakfast (last week), listening, as usual, to CBC Radio. Andy Barrie is interviewing a bookseller and children’s author because it’s Canadian Children’s Book Week. After a few minutes, after several American titles have been mentioned, I grumble to my husband, “You’d think one of them could name a Canadian title.” (I tend to grumble a fair bit some mornings.)

Then Andy Barrie asks his guests (Eleanor Lafave and Sylvia McNicoll) to “name the book that will always be a classic that you would always recommend to a small child.” And Eleanor says, “Red Is Best“. I do my best to ignore the fact Andy Barrie doesn’t know the book and manage to feel a little less grumbly.

Listen to the whole interview yourself. Eleanor and Sylvia mention some other worthwhile books you may or may not know.

Could I write a book in a coffee shop? I’ve always thought of myself as a writer who needs a quiet room, free of distraction. I have trouble resisting the sound of human voices. So how could I possibly write anything more challenging than a shopping list in a coffee shop? Why would I even consider it?

Because a new literary contest has been announced, challenging authors to “write the bulk of a novel, short story collection, poetry collection or a work of creative non‐fiction at a coffee shop between November 2009 and April 2010.” I like the sound of the prizes being offered. And maybe shaking up how I normally write would help break me out of the writing funk I’ve been in lately. (No big deal, it happens.) I wonder, does it matter that I don’t drink coffee?

It seems fitting, it being Inspirational Role Models Month in the US, that I should meet this week with a professor from Smith College to discuss her work on a book about Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. “Like you,” she said in her initial email contact, “I was asked by Cornelia to write a book, and like you, I find her a tough nut to crack.” Cornelia was a tough nut to crack, but her passion for taking care of the environment through the work she does continues to inspire me.

Writing Love Every Leaf: the life of landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander has also influenced the way I look at many things as I go about my days – the groundcovers that grew on harsh terrains in Newfoundland last month for example, and trees that are well or poorly placed in relation to buildings and other features in a built landscape. Even the berm/hill/mound that provides a buffer between a playground in my neighbourhood and the houses beside it caught my attention recently.

I was in that playground with my seven year old granddaughter. She played on the equipment for a while, then abandoned it to climb to the top of the mound. I couldn’t help thinking of the mound in Jim Everett Park in Vancouver, designed by Cornelia where there was once just an unused triangle of soggy land. It’s the mound pictured on the cover of Love Every Leaf with Cornelia standing proudly on top of it. How well she understands children (although in her late 80s, she’s a long way from childhood herself) to know that a hill to climb is an important feature in a landscape for children. They love the element of surprise that hills provide opportuinvites for.

I suspect that whoever designed the park in my neighbourhood didn’t know that, because of course when my granddaughter climbed the hill there, she was delighted to discover the excellent view it provided of the “private” backyards on the other side!

I must write Cornelia and tell her how much I enjoyed meeting her next biographer, and thank her for inspiring me with her passion for her profession. If I were lots younger than I am, I’m sure I’d be inspired to join her in the exciting field of landscape architecture.

I have just finished reading The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland. It’s Mariatu’s story of how her life in Sierra Leone was changed when the rebel army attacked her village and cut off her hands. The back cover says it’s a story of “immense courage, resilience, and hope.”

Reading of the atrocities of war, and the sadness and anger that naturally follow, it was difficult to imagine how hope could possibly emerge. (Not only did Mariatu Kamara lose her hands, she had a baby when she was only twelve years old after being raped.) But knowing that Annick Press would not publish a book that left its subject or its readers in despair, I read on.

The courage and resilience of this young woman is truly inspiring. I was especially moved by her description of meeting former child soldier Ishmael Beah in Toronto, when he was there promoting A Long Way Gone.

After six years of living in Canada, Mariatu Kamara returns to Sierra Leone. She can’t give up the life she knows is available to her in Canada. But seeing living conditions of loved ones in Sierra Leone, now through the lens of having lived in Canada, how could she just “look forward”, as they all urged her to do? It’s impossible not to have profound admiration and respect for how she resolves this dilemma.

I hope high school English teachers are recognizing what an eye-opening and enriching experience reading the two books – A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango – would be for their students. (Teaching guides are available online for both books.)

I also hope booksellers are placing copies of The Bite of the Mango on both young adult and adult bookshelves. It would be a shame for any of its potential readers to miss it.