It is always such an honor to be invited to judge a storytelling festival! This was my second stint as judge at the Kanoon festival and I can’t believe how different an experience it was from the first time! One person came up to me, I think it was an Iranian administrator or something, and […]

Recently I was approached by a thoughtful teacher librarian who questioned the addition of this book on my Muslim booklist: The teacher librarian wrote: “I am a public school librarian in a diverse, growing community. We have recently seen an increase in our immigrant/refugee population, particularly of students whose families are from Arab or Middle […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about addiction these days. It’s all over the news, the opioid epidemic and it’s starting to hit Toronto, where I live. Two eighteen year old girls recently went into a building downtown and overdosed in a stairwell. There was a fascinating study done about cocaine addiction. They had this rat […]

Children’s literature is an interesting field! There’s a whole canon of academia that wrangles over the minutiae of an author’s choices. It’s quite fascinating to watch them wrangling actually. I went to the IRSCL conference over the last few days, it began with its opening keynote on Saturday evening and then wrapped up on Wednesday […]

I recently got back from my first Highlights Foundation workshop. Highlights Foundation is located on a family homestead in eastern Pennsylvania, a small town called Honesdale. For years they’ve been running writing workshops, retreats, that are lauded as some of the best writing intensives around. They’re affiliated with Boyds Mills Press, a publisher that has […]

It’s so funny that my last blog post was wondering about direction! Yesterday I returned from the Highlights Foundation workshop on Graphic Novels. It was their first workshop on the genre and it was absolutely amazing! The Highlights Foundation is the same that has been putting out Highlights Magazine for more than forty years! The […]

Met a very interesting librarian this week. He spoke of how the librarians who are the most gung ho about bringing diversity and inclusion to their schools are often the ones who were ‘outsiders’ when they were growing up. I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘outsiders’ these days. From S. E. Hinton’s iconic novel to […]

In Islam we believe that when someone dies the angels go around recording ‘witness statements’ from others on what the person was really like. There’s a sentiment I remember reading in Western fiction that echoes this idea, referring to not speaking ill of the dead. It’s best to just keep quiet if you didn’t like […]

I think the most charming situation I’ve ever encountered has to do with people trying to outdo each other in politeness! I mean talk about rivalry! That’s something to strive for! I went to a school recently, they were having a multicultural festival and I guess I was part of it. At the beginning, when […]

Just got back from three days presenting in Kingston, Ontario, and I’m feeling a good kind of tired. It’s the kind of tired when you know you’ve given it your all, and you have high hopes that you changed a few minds and did some good. I visited six schools, in three days, did eight […]