YABS Confab

Pictured: Bill Bunn, Val Lawton, Maureen Bush

Thirteen writers, illustrators and storytellers from the Young Alberta Book Society gathered last night for the first Calgary YABS Confab. If you're a teacher, librarian or parent, you should know about the Young Alberta Book Society (www.yabs.ab.ca) - YABS helps to organize and fund school author and artist visits.

Artist and authors of the Young Alberta Book Society make all kinds of stories, from picture books to middle grade and young adult novels to storytelling concerts. And they travel to the far corners of the province to share their literary know-how with schoolkids.

In between swapping news of our latest books and talking about creativity and work, we drew exquisite corpse pictures, a kind of group drawing. Each person draws a section of a picture in sequence without seeing what the person before them drew.

Here are some of the more family-friendly exquisite corpses:

Thanks to the talented crew who showed up for a spirited discussion and a fun evening: Maureen Bush, Jan Markley, Carolyn Pogue, Jacqui Guest, Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli, Sandy Nichols, Bill Bunn, Mary Hays, Shenaaz Nanji, Shirlee Smith-Matheson, Faye Reinberg Holt, Val Lawton.

(Now go read their books!)

Last Blooms of Winter...

... in the lost single mittens that festoon the bushes near my house!

Arctic Walk II

British Navy Captain Franklin was one of scores of explorers who sought the as-yet unmapped Northwest Passage, a water route that would link the Atlantic to the Pacific. His two ships, the Erebus and Terror were the most well-provisioned and up-to-date of the time. But while threading a way through the maze of polar ice, the boats became trapped over several Arctic winters. Franklin died in 1847. The remaining crew, beset by scurvy, tuberculosis and lead poisoning, abandoned the doomed ships in a desperate bid to walk to safety. Death and cannibalism followed. None survived.

Global warming has thinned the ice that trapped Franklin's boats, but the ice pack is still unpredictable and subject to extreme weather. While the Northwest Passage may be more accessible to ships in the near future, animals who depend on the ice - like polar bears - are suffering from the early ice break-up that hinders the spring seal feed.

Arctic Walk

I met some writers and artists from the Young Alberta Book Society a couple of weeks ago. We brought sketchbooks to the Royal Alberta Museum's Arctic Show.

I love Inuit artist Irene Avaalaaqiaq's wall hangings, both for the design and the content. She uses bold shapes and bright colors to depict fantastic creatures, she says, from the time "when animals used to talk like human beings."

Here's what I drew in my sketchbook, after Irene Avaalaaqiaq:

Valentine's Day