Word on the Street
Last Sunday I travelled down to Queen's Park in Toronto for the Word On The Street, a huge outdoor literary festival held in the city each year.
As part of the promotion for her new picture book, I'm Bored, Debbie gave an illustration workshop in the Children's Activity Area. I went down to help out as her assistant.
I'd forgotten how -huge- Word On the Street is! And also how very dynamic and cool the festival is. I hadn't been there in several years. I'd planned to do a curcuit of the booths before meeting up with Deb, but I only got through about half of them before heading to the workshop. I did pick up some cool movie reel earrings, though, and spent time utterly geeking out at "The Hobbit" movie promotion booth, where they were giving away free Hobbit movie posters and "hobbit food" (straws of honey). What I really coveted were the t-shirts the workers were wearing, but they weren't selling those.
Went back and met Debbie for her workshop and she was laden down with a ton of cartoon puppets for the kids to hold and a zillion activity sheets for the drawing part of her workshop. Also chatted with Walter, who was there with his family, and a teacher friend of mine who came by the workshop, too.
Deb had a fair-sized audience of kids and adults just before she started her reading, but as fate would have it moments before she started the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. Being that the activity tent was one of the few spots of shelter in the area Deb's audience suddenly doubled :).
I turned the pages of the picture book as Deb led the kid audience in a chorus of "I'm Bored!" every time the potato talked in the book. All the kids had little "I'm Bored" covers on sticks that they waved about as Deb did her reading.
After the reading Deb continued a drawing workshop where she taught the kids to draw different emotions on their potato faces and showed them how to draw a flamingo. As she did that I walked through the tent passing out activity sheets and encouraging the kids to sit at the tables and draw. The rain let up as quickly as it came, so there was a lot of hustle and bustle as families came and went. Deb was the hub of attention as the kids kept bringing her their drawings of potatoes and flamingos to show off :).
After the workshop Deb headed to the booth next door to do a signing for her book.
When she finished we parted ways and I dove back into the crowds to see the rest of the festival booths. I saw well-known Canadian children's poet Dennis Lee giving a talk, saw Robert Sawyer talking to folks at the Science Fiction Writer booth and had to give up on seeing Canadian environmentalist/TV host David Suzuki giving his talk as the crowds around the tent were massive.
Fun day. Thanks for asking me to be involved in your workshop, Deb!
As part of the promotion for her new picture book, I'm Bored, Debbie gave an illustration workshop in the Children's Activity Area. I went down to help out as her assistant.
I'd forgotten how -huge- Word On the Street is! And also how very dynamic and cool the festival is. I hadn't been there in several years. I'd planned to do a curcuit of the booths before meeting up with Deb, but I only got through about half of them before heading to the workshop. I did pick up some cool movie reel earrings, though, and spent time utterly geeking out at "The Hobbit" movie promotion booth, where they were giving away free Hobbit movie posters and "hobbit food" (straws of honey). What I really coveted were the t-shirts the workers were wearing, but they weren't selling those.
Went back and met Debbie for her workshop and she was laden down with a ton of cartoon puppets for the kids to hold and a zillion activity sheets for the drawing part of her workshop. Also chatted with Walter, who was there with his family, and a teacher friend of mine who came by the workshop, too.
Deb had a fair-sized audience of kids and adults just before she started her reading, but as fate would have it moments before she started the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. Being that the activity tent was one of the few spots of shelter in the area Deb's audience suddenly doubled :).
I turned the pages of the picture book as Deb led the kid audience in a chorus of "I'm Bored!" every time the potato talked in the book. All the kids had little "I'm Bored" covers on sticks that they waved about as Deb did her reading.
After the reading Deb continued a drawing workshop where she taught the kids to draw different emotions on their potato faces and showed them how to draw a flamingo. As she did that I walked through the tent passing out activity sheets and encouraging the kids to sit at the tables and draw. The rain let up as quickly as it came, so there was a lot of hustle and bustle as families came and went. Deb was the hub of attention as the kids kept bringing her their drawings of potatoes and flamingos to show off :).
After the workshop Deb headed to the booth next door to do a signing for her book.
When she finished we parted ways and I dove back into the crowds to see the rest of the festival booths. I saw well-known Canadian children's poet Dennis Lee giving a talk, saw Robert Sawyer talking to folks at the Science Fiction Writer booth and had to give up on seeing Canadian environmentalist/TV host David Suzuki giving his talk as the crowds around the tent were massive.
Fun day. Thanks for asking me to be involved in your workshop, Deb!