Small Children's First Paintings of Trees

and the David Booth Children's and Youth Poetry Award

I can’t stop looking at these paintings made by junior kindergarten students at the school in Toronto where I work. They make me feel a lot of things, things I have no words for. When this happens I know the weight in my heart wants me to sit down and write some new poems. What does the weight in your heart tell you to do?

In October my beautiful friend, Irene Luxbacher and I won the David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award for our book Robot, Unicorn, Queen: poems for you and me. This biennial award was established in 2022 to recognize excellence in Canadian children’s and youth poetry. David Booth was a beloved professor and poet who spent his entire career bringing poetry, teachers and children together. Here is my tiny acceptance speech (we were only allowed one minute!):

Thank you, Shelley Stagg Peterson, for founding and funding The David Booth Children's and Youth Poetry Award. Poetry is magic, and no-one knew that better than David Booth, who believed poems should be in every child's life, who recognized poetry's ability to act as a springboard for deep thinking, play and joy. 

Thank you to the brilliant and generous team at Groundwood Books, especially my dear editor, Nan Froman, who brought Irene Luxbacher, and I together for this book. Irene, thank you for your detailed, heartfelt and sometimes deliciously surreal illustrations that cast warmth and tenderness on every poem in our book. 

I might never have the chance again, so I will be bold now and thank Dennis Lee, poet and co-founder of House of Anansi Press. His work has inspired me deeply over the years--it's expansiveness, humour, rigour and gentleness all at once. His poems gave me permission to write mine. 

Thank you to my loving family, for the poems you give me, my favourite poems.

Thank you to the jurors, Carol-Anne Hoyte, and the Canadian Children's Book Centre for helping us all thrive and grow as Canadian creators of literature for young readers. I feel so grateful and humbled to be among you all. 

Since this is a newsletter, I’ll share one more bit of news! I’ve added another part-time gig to my schedule. Alongside my work at Annette Street Public School and visual artist and author, Jessica Hiemstra—I now work at BIG BEER SOAP COMPANY with an amazing woman named Clare Raman. If you buy some soap from her it’s quite possible that I helped make it!

Big hugs to you and as my therapist liked to remind me, be gentle to yourself.

xx Shannon