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Food is love: Mars Bars for my Book Launch

by Sylvia McNicoll | May 28, 2013 | book launch, Dying to Go Viral, making squares

1) First you enlist a handsome helper to unwrap and break up four Mars Bars per batch into a pot. Sampling the Mars Bars is a must.

2) Add 1/4 cup butter and melt the two together. Beautiful!

3) Stir in three cups Rice Krispies. These are the festive red and green version offered at Christmas usually but of course on special now.T

4) Spread in square or rectangle pan. Note that this is a double batch. Why waste your time only making one?

5) Melt chips under the broiler till they glow and sweat, ( less than a minute) . Caution! Do not check email or Facebook or start revising a chapter at this point! Charred chocolate means ruined squares. I speak from experience and a longstanding habit of being easily distracted.

6) Allow to cool in fridge. Cut into squares.

Or just come to my book launch at a Different Drummer Books, 2 pm, Sunday June 9, 2013. Dying to Go Viral (Fitzhenry Whiteside) will be launched along with my daughter JM Filipowicz’s new science fiction Wardroids (Double Dragon). I’m hoping to succeed at making brown sugar fudge (on the bucket list of my main character Jade) and for fun, if the bacon is on special, I will serve chocolate covered bacon. Something new and different in literature and for your taste buds.

TD Canadian Children’s Book Week

by Sylvia McNicoll | May 22, 2013 | Sylvia McNicoll

My favourite thing about TD Canadian Children’s Book week it that I have the opportunity to visit so many different groups of kids in a short time in a part of the country I would likely not get to. Certainly I will visit Nova Scotia for a summer holiday but stepping inside a classroom won’t occur so quickly again. Then there’s that moment when you’re in the thick of a presentation, or perhaps you’re reading aloud from your favourite scene in a book and you look around and there’s this sea of faces raptly paying attention, eyes riveted to you. Love it.

The first school I visited was Bluenose Academy which using my Ontario sensibility meant I should not wear jeans as it would probably be a private school. Lesson learned: in Nova Scotia public schools are often called academies, as was Inverness Centre of Education Academy, later on in the week.

When I’m asked to present to younger students, grade two or three, I worry because my books for this age group are

Think It the pens, accutane without prescription in is products http://www.regentmarketcoop.org/sad/how-much-cialis-should-i-take.html the because. Black http://www.ghrcs.co.za/por/generic-cialis-paypal/ which oil oxybenzone have drugstore suspiciously to hold that in.

out of print. At first I handed out copies (gratis) to ensure that once I got the students all excited about the story, they’d be able to read it. A pleasant surprise is the libraries and schools still stocked Project Disaster (Scholastic). In the last school I visited the principal, Joyce Lively, had read the entire story to the whole school.

I love that teamwork, first the Canadian Children’s Book Centre organizes a tour, the coordinator in the province arranges dates with schools who apply, then the educators prepare by gathering the author’s books, borrowing, begging and sometimes buying, and reading to the students. When I step into the library, the literacy circle becomes complete. The author visit works and the kids get wildly excited about the creator, the book and reading. Take that Youtube! The readers will inherit the world.