As we head towards slightly sunnier days, Young Adulting is back with a quick wrap up on January, a look ahead to February, and exiting industry news that’s come our way! And as always, we are looking for new authors to share their first pages with us for our First-Page Features (drafts are highly encouraged!). You can also revisit our 2024 recap here.
Recent Reviews
Young Adulting took on the musical stylings of The Tragically Hip in their well-loved, nostalgic picture book tribute to their song history in an the illustrated The Tragically Hip ABC Book. Gather your young readers and explore Canadian landscapes, Hip songs, and the alphabet that ties them together.
For slightly older readers looking for an early chapter book, we took a look at Stink and the Hairy Scary Spider, a fictional exploration of very real fear of spiders as explored through honest facts and information.
It can certainly be said that a good picture book takes on the slightest absurdity and runs with it, so for all the music-loving readers out there, Metal Baby is a loving homage to metal in the form of a perfectly average couple who are forced to confront their metal-loving musical baby (with poster included!).
We got an early look at an upcoming story called I Would Give You My Tail, about brother on his way to fetch his grandmother to help with the imminent birth of a new sibling. With thoughtful illustrations and gentle poetics, this Indigenous story brings us closer to appreciation and understanding of the world.
Author Interviews
Wayne Ng’s writing career started relatively later than many debut authors nowadays, but his work has reached an important audience within Asian-Canadian literary circles. You can learn about his stand-alone sequel about a young man in Chinatown navigating life and the emotional challenges that come with his history.
“I was hesitant to reinforce the convention of Asian-parents who are restaurateurs, emotionally distant, demanding, burdened by history and of parent-adolescent conflicts steeped in cultural and generational divides. And for all the superpowers Asians have, emotional expression isn’t one of them. It wasn’t like we ran yoga studios and art galleries. Yet there was no escaping the service industry stereotype because there was much truth behind it. The early Chinese were segregated in so many ways, such as where they could live and the types of jobs they could hold.
For most of my life I cringed at such stereotypes and ran from them and my roots. Now I recognize that was internalized racism and shame. Writing Johnny Delivers allowed me to embrace, question and flirt with those conventions and ultimately reclaim them.”
Allister Thompson’s newest young adult fiction is a ‘cli-fi’ (climate fiction) novel set in a post-apocalyptic Ontario that has transformed immensely. We chatted with him about his motivations and inspirations, as well as the responsibilities that come with writing about a bleak future and seeing story within in.
“I knew that I couldn’t just write some bleak tale about a post-collapse world full of disposable characters. I needed to create likable characters you can root for, people that embody this idea that we can be better. You need to want them to succeed and be safe. So to me, having characters who of course contain complexities but are not going to let you down is what carries a story like this. Too often modern writers of fiction, TV, and film conflate “complexity” with behaving badly or making terrible choices (many such choices in one plot, sometimes). I wasn’t interested in that, at all. I wanted my characters to embody the idealism behind the novel’s concept.
In that way, I’m hoping that the story is more interesting or even positive than grief-enhancing for readers. Yes, there’s adventures in here, too, but I’m balancing an idea-driven story with a character-driven one, basically.”
Industry News
Freedom to Read Week is fast approaching and will run from February 23rd to March 1st. Educators and readers can find resources, materials, and information on Freedom to Read’s mandate to bring diverse books with important stories to readers all over Canada. Learn more here.
The Festival of Literary Diversity will be taking place from April 27th to May 4th and you can check out their mix of in-person and online offerings here.
The Writers’ Union of Canada‘s annual short prose competition is open now until February 17th, 11:59PST. Please read more here about how to submit unpublished works of fiction and nonfiction up to 2500 words in English.
For our local writers, Upstart and Crow is an independent bookstore on Granville Island, Vancouver looking for their first-ever Poet in Residence, a paid opportunity to work on a chapbook or full-length work. Applications are due by February 18th, and you can read more here.
Annick Press is currently accepting submissions of picture books, early chapter books, middle grade fiction, YA fiction, graphic novels, and nonfiction for kids of all ages. Illustrators are also encouraged to submit portfolios. You can read more information here.
Coming up for the month of March only, McClelland & Stewart will be opening submissions on behalf of Penguin Random House for unsolicited and unagented works from marginalized writers. You can read more about the guidelines here and submit directly to the email provided.
IBBY Canada is calling for Proposals for the Frances E. Russell Grant for Academic Research on young people’s literature in all forms. Applications in English or French are due on February 15 and you can read more about guidelines here.
As always, stay safe and send any of yours young adulting news our way at young.adulting@ubc.ca.
Take care, and happy reading,
The Young Adulting Editors
YOUNG ADULTING 