One of my writing groups, the Children’s Writers’ Round Robin, is celebrating our 40th anniversary in 2024. This past weekend (though our members in British Columbia sadly were unable to come), the rest of us travelled from across Saskatchewan, and Flin Flon Manitoba, to gather in Shaunavon for the first in-person instalment of our 40th year together as a group. We had a wonderful time reconnecting in person, in our treasured decades’-long friendships. In addition to our business sessions, critiquing and brainstorming, we were thrilled to participate in a special afternoon reading sponsored by the Shaunavon Public Library and Museum. That event was beautifully organized by our member Sandra Lynn Davis and head librarian Anne Bennett. There was a great attendance of kids of various ages, with their parents. One of the parents, now a high school English teacher, remembered me from a talk I’d given there when he was in Grade 9! Much of the rest of our time was spent at host Sandra’s farm, a truly peaceful setting 8 miles out of town.
More of our 40th Anniversary celebration will take place in Regina this fall.
One of our longtime group initiatives has been our online bookstore, “Our Little Bookshop”, organized and operated by member Dianne Young. For our 40th anniversary, every week we’re offering one book (or a series) on sale, marked down by 40%.
This week’s sale book is my middle-grade time-slip novel Picturing Alyssa, published by Dundurn in 2011. This book was a finalist in two categories of the Saskatchewan Book Awards, and was also granted a Saskatchewan Arts Board grant for on-site (Iowa) research and to finish writing it.
Topics include bullying, pacifism, and time travel to the farming area of Iowa where my mother spent her childhood. Picturing Alyssa also features the Quaker “Plain Speech” exactly as my grandparents spoke it (thee, thy” etc.) — which, sadly, has been presented incorrectly in dialogue, in every other children’s book I’ve seen that has used it… The family shown on the book cover is my mother’s family, in Iowa in the early 1930s! https://ourlittlebookshop.bigcartel.com/product/picturing-alyssa-by-alison-lohans
Alison Lohans 