Pajama Press

Pajama Press is honoured to celebrate a win for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People for the second year in a row. Dance of the Banished by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch received the award on November 18^th at the Canadian Children’s Literature Awards Gala at the Carlu in Toronto.

“In Canada we are writing fantastic historical fiction for kids,” Skrypuch said, speaking in particular to her fellow finalists Patrick Bowman (Arrow Through the Axes, Ronsdale Press) and Caroline Pignat (The Gospel Truth, Red Deer Press and Unspeakable, Razorbill Canada).

This is not the first award for Skrypuch, who has written more than a dozen historical picture books, chapter books, and juvenile and young adult novels. In these books. as in Dance of the Banished, Skrypuch employed her exceptional research skills to bring to light aspects of history that are little known or understood.

A second Pajama Press title was also a finalist for an award at the gala. A Brush Full of Colour: The World of Ted Harrison was shortlisted for the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for the most distinguished English-language Canadian children’s book of the year. This picture book biography, co-written by Margriet Ruurs and Katherine Gibson and illustrated with Ted Harrison’s own art, details the artist’s life from his childhood in an English coal mining town to his final home in British Columbia. It recently won the Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada Information Book Award and is nominated for several more, including the Forest of Reading Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award. A Brush Full of Colour is published under the Ann Featherstone imprint.

Pajama Press extends warm congratulations to our talented authors, and appreciation to the TD Bank Group and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre for their administration of these awards.

Pajama Press is pleased to announce that Dance of the Banished by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has been shortlisted for the 2015 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People.

This Young Adult novel, set in Canada and Anatolia during World War I, uses a compelling love story to explore two difficult and significant historical events: the internment of so-called enemy aliens in Canada, and the Armenian Genocide. Skrypuch, the granddaughter of a World War I internee, conducted extensive research into history that had not been brought to light in 100 years.

Ali and Zeynep, the novel’s protagonists, are betrothed Anatolian teenagers caught by circumstances that threaten to separate them forever. While Ali has found passage to a better life in Canada, war breaks out in 1914; he is declared an enemy alien and sent to an internment camp. Meanwhile, left behind in a country plunged into war and revolution, Zeynep is determined to stay alive and—despite the impossible odds—cross a continent and an ocean to find Ali again. First, though, she must find a way to save her Christian Armenian neighbours from the horrors of the Armenian Genocide.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the multi-award winning author of more than a dozen historical picture books, chapter books, and juvenile and young adult novels, including three other novels about the Armenian genocide: The Hunger, Nobody’s Child, and Daughter of War. Her first work of narrative non-fiction, Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War, won the Red Cedar Information Book Award, was an OLA Red Maple Honour Book, and was nominated for the Hamilton Literary Award. It was followed in 2012 by One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way, winner of the 2014 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award. In 2008, in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the development of the culture of Ukraine, Marsha was awarded the Order of Princess Olha, which was bestowed upon her personally by the president of Ukraine. Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario.

The Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People is administered annually by the TD Bank Group and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Established in memory of children’s author and historian Geoffrey Bilson, it awards $5,000.00 to the Canadian author of an outstanding work of historical fiction for children or young adults. The winner will be announced at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards Gala in Toronto on November 18^th.

Alma Fullerton

Two Pajama Press authors begin their TD Canadian Children’s Book Week tours today: Alma Fullerton in Alberta and Sylvia Gunnery in Manitoba. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre interviewed both of these wonderful authors before they left.

Click here to find out why Alma struggled to read as a child

Click here to find out what famous writer’s hometown Sylvia is excited to visit.

And then click here to learn more about the TD Canadian Children’s Book Week!

Sylvia Gunnery

Alma Fullerton is the author of two Pajama Press books: A Good Trade (2012) and the upcoming Community Soup (June 1, 2013). Her novels Libertad, Burn, Walking on Glass and In the Garage have earned her many awards.

Sylvia Gunnery is the author of Emily For Real (Pajama Press, 2012) and more than fifteen other novels for young people. A recipient of the Prime Minister’s Minister’s Teaching Award, she regularly gives presentations and writing workshops young people, inspiring them to write just as they have inspired her.