Went up to Newmarket this morning for a presentation sponsored by Weaving Words festival.

Weaving Words is storytelling festival taking place just north of Toronto on Sept. 29th. Free to all! And they invited me!

Well to promote it, they asked me to do a storytelling session at the Newmarket Public Library!

Newmarket is a cute little town, with a rustic feel to it! I love the old red brick buildings and the churches on Main St. with their tall narrow steeples.

And oh, the flower baskets! On every lamp post and barrels of flowers on every corner of the road! It’s part of York region.

And there’s something definitely wrong with the mentality of the folks of York region!

Every year The Canadian Children’s Book Centre–a national entity whose job it is to promote Canadian literature, authors and artists, has a grade one book giveaway.

Think about it! The CCBC chooses one book from the canon of Canadian children’s literature and they give a copy to EVERY grade one student in the country–for free!

What a way to promote literacy and reading!

And the company who sponsors this book giveaway is Toronto Dominion Bank.

TD bank has no say in what book is chosen, no say in anything to do with the program. They’re just the money behind it.

Can you blame them for wanting their name acknowledge on the book? I sure can’t.

It’s a small price to pay.

But because of the corporate logo, the region of York has decided that their students don’t get to officially receive a copy of the book giveaway!

Who are the officials of York region to prevent the children from benefitting from such a program???

Aaaargh!

Bureaucrats!!!

Well, anyway, it had been a few months since I’d done a storytelling presentation, and even though I’ve been storytelling for fifteen years now, I can’t help getting just a titch nervous after it’s been a while.

Oh it’s ridiculous! One I start, alhamdu lillah, I get right back into the groove of it! And there’s no need to be nervous, but still!

But then library gigs are always iffy. You never can tell who’s going to show up as an audience.

And as the time for my session came close and there was no one there, I started to get nervous.

But then who shows up but the head librarians two daughters!

I have many librarian friends but this gentleman is one of my favourites! He was originally head of the Mississauga system but now he’s moved up to Newmarket!

It was so nice to see him!

He’s the one who said that reading Many Windows made him cry.

So I told some folktales to his little daughters and then another troop of kids came traipsing in and in the end we had a nice group of kids!

Ended up with Big Red  Lollipop, a crowd favourite!

Alhamdu lillah, lots of fun!

Looking forward to the Weaving Words festival on Sept. 29th insha Allah!