The Queen in her coach, setting off for her Winter tour of Ontario Schools

After a rather trying Christmas, our dear Queen, Elizabeth II, will be making a bracing winter tour of Ontario with her favourite children’s author, Charis Cotter. There is nothing Her Royal Highness likes better than teaching little Canadians to bow and curtsey as she introduces Charis and her book, Kids Who Rule: The Remarkable Lives of Five Child Monarchs. http://chariscotter.com/kids_who_rule.html.

HRH has entertained children with Charis from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and finds it all a very refreshing change from her duties at Buckingham Palace.

Charis is also looking forward to visiting Ontario schools and engaging students from Grade 3 to 5 in the boisterous trivia game, RULE YOUR SCHOOL, as she quizzes them about the five child rulers in her book. This exhilarating game gets the kids on their feet as they vie for the enviable position of first place, when all the other students have to bow and curtsey to them. http://chariscotter.com/school_presentations.html#kidsrule.

Everyone has fun and the students leave knowing a lot more about Ancient Egypt, Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries,  and Tibet and China in the 20th century, all seen through the eyes of the young monarchs.

The Queen sincerely hopes you will choose to brighten up the winter at your school with a royal visit in January, February or March.

For more information, contact Charis at: chariscotter@gmail.com. Or go to her website: www.chariscotter.com.

Holy Trinity is one of my favourite schools to go to. They have asked me back every single time I do a tour in Newfoundland, and they always make me welcome. I was at the old school twice, and they told me it was haunted. The new school doesn’t seem to harbour any ghosts, but all those good children did seem a bit supernatural to me. The library is big and full of interesting books and cosy places to sit and read them. I noticed some inspiring quotes on the walls and strangely, a few black crows and a vulture perched on the bookcases.

I usually find that Grade Threes are the perfect age for my presentation, but with these children I caught myself wondering a couple of times if my stories were too scary. They gazed at me with their wide eyes, hanging on every word. One boy sat with his hands over his ears and a look of horror on his face, but I noticed he kept dropping his hands so he didn’t miss anything.

I heard that traffic was bad, because of construction, between Torbay and St. John’s, so I got there 45 minutes early, down almost empty roads. I stopped at a vegetable truck in the rain and filled my arms with huge carrots, parsnips, turnips and homemade raisin bread.

A good day. A fun day. But I still keep wondering, Why were they so good?

Thank you, Holy Trinity, and Happy Halloween to all.

Western Bay, Newfoundland, October 2011

Sunrise over Conception Bay

Yesterday I packed up my ghost costume, my books and a lunch for the two-hour drive to Arnold’s Cove and Tricentia Academy. My first ghost presentation of the year! I drove along to the Isthmus, that stretch of land between the Avalon Peninsula and the rest of Newfoundland. A friend told me it is often wreathed in fog, just like the misty portal to the mythical Avalon.

Sure enough, there was fog as my car climbed up and down the hills. I drove in and out of it, and soon reached Arnold’s Cove.  Seventy-five students from grades 3 to 6 were waiting for me.

The Silky ghost was especially happy to get back to dusting children’s and entertaining them with her tales. She told of a little girl named Sally who lived in … Whitbourne, just down the road. Sally was a dreadfully messy child who never cleaned up after herself and whose mother was always nagging her to clean her room. When Sally finally did clean it up, the Silky came overnight and messed it up again, just for fun.  This is a popular story wherever I go, and the students at Tricentia were no exception.  I always try to make it local, but this time maybe I went too far?

“Sally who?” they called out. “What’s her last name?” I tried to explain that I would get in big trouble by revealing her identity, but they weren’t having it. “Tell me her father’s name,” said a boy as I left. “I’m sure I know her.” I didn’t tell him but I’m a little worried now.

If there is a little girl named Sally in Whitbourne, she may soon get a reputation she may not deserve.

Thank you to the students and teachers at Tricentia, for entertaining me in turn and making me so welcome.

Yes, it’s that spooky time of year again when phantoms are prone to wander, looking for unwary souls or ‒ looking for candy? You might hear an Irish Banshee wailing in the night, or (heaven forbid) hear the knock of the skeletal French Ankou at your door. Or you might see an Indian Brahmadaitya up a tree, or pass by an abandoned house where a Navaho Chindi is trapped forever.

The world is full of ghosts, and I’m happy to be bringing some of them to schoolchildren in Newfoundland during my Third Annual Ghost Tour, October 11‒21. I’ll be presenting ghosts and stories from my book, A World Full of Ghosts, illustrated by Marc Mongeau. The Scottish Silky ghost will be dusting books and children and telling spooky tales from every corner of the world. I’ll play a little Ghost Ball with the students using a haunted globe, and finish it off with two very true and very scary Newfoundland ghost stories.

Turns out that everybody all around the world loves a good ghost story. I’m booking now, so send me an email and I’ll come to your school, just in time for Halloween!

Charis Cotter’s Third Annual Newfoundland Ghost Tour: October 11‒21, 2011

chariscotter@gmail.com

Driving the Cabot Trail

WOW!! Just got back from my Cape Breton and Halifax tour for Hackmatack. My book, Born to Write: The Remarkable Lives of Six Famous Authors, was nominated for the 2011 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award and  I was invited down east to tour some schools and attend the award ceremony.

I had so much fun and was treated like a queen by all my hosts. I got there in the middle of a rainy deluge, but I didn’t care. I love the East Coast, rain, fog, sun or snow!  The rain stopped long enough for me to glimpse the famous winding road, headlands and rocky beaches of the Cabot Trail, whetting my appetite for another trip soon I hope. I also saw my first moose of 2011, right ahead of us on the road, and snow banks (in May!) in the highlands.

The Giant Fiddle of Sydney and Me

I had a wonderfully warm reception from Chris Thomson and Tara MacNeil, from the Cape Breton Regional Library, who ferried me around and fed me and made sure everything ran smoothly at the schools. The students and staff were also very welcoming at the four schools I visited:

Cape Smokey Elementary, Ingonish

North Highlands Elementary, Cape North

Brookland Elementary, Sydney

Étoile de L’Acadie, Sydney

A bumpy little Dash 8 flew me from Sydney to Halifax, where I met up with the other Hackmatack finalists for a party and an exciting ceremony where the winners were announced. I didn’t win ― but yes, I guess I did, because being nominated for this great award means that students read my book and the whole trip was like a prize: meeting new book lovers, staying in a fancy B & B in Sydney and a haunted hotel in Halifax (TRUE!!)

Highlights

* The introduction from my presenter at the ceremony, Gwyneth Fountain, in grade 5 at Sacred Heart School: her enthusiasm about my book made my day.

* The funny questions from students: How old are you? How much money do you make?

Showing the picture of Madeleine L'Engle and her dog at Brookland Elementary

* The serious questions from students: Are you proud of writing Born to Write? What were the echoes from your childhood when you wrote it?

*Six pillows on my Princess and the Pea bed at the B&B and the stool I had to climb on to get into it.

* The pilot who said we couldn’t take off for Sydney because “the boys who are supposed to wave us out have disappeared.”

* Kate Watson, Scott, Steve, the Hackmatack board members and all the wonderful volunteers who make the Hackmatack reading program such a success.

* My fellow nominees, children’s writers from all over Canada: you rock!

The Princess and the Pea high bed at the B & B in Sydney

Everyone had fun! Two groups of children sat for 45 minutes each, picking countries on the Ghost Ball for ghost stories, and the Silky cooperated with tales from Jamaica, China, Finland, Africa and many more. All the books sold out!

One little girl’s family came from Scotland, which made the Silky just a tad nervous. She can be a bit embarrassed about her over-the-top Scots accent. But as the father thanked her and said goodbye, he asked if she was from Edinburgh.

“No!” said the Silky.

“Where are you from then?” he asked.

The Silky laughed again and dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s a fake accent,” she confided. “It’s not real.”

He shook his head. I don’t think he wanted to believe it. “I could have sworn you were from Edinburgh.”

That got me thinking. Maybe she is from Edinburgh.

At Holy Trinity school in Torbay last week, I was treated to a room full of Grade 3s and the presentation just sailed along. I love that when it happens: the kids are with me every step of the way. At the end, when we turn out the lights and I warn them to sit closer to their friends, the room ripples with anticipation and then I tell the them the story that was too frightening to put into the book: The Old Hag, the ghost from Newfoundland.

I met more enthusiastic students in Paradise last week, at Holy Family School, and I also drove to Whitbourne Elementary. That must be a particularly haunted part of Newfoundland, because the kids were bursting with ghost sightings of their own.

On the pretty drive back home along Trinity Bay I saw an old business sign that gave me pause: “Job’s Insurance.” Hmmm. I wonder.

So now my Ghost Tour is finished for another year. It was a great success: I met lots of kids, sold lots of books, had enormous fun scaring them with my extra-scary Newfoundland ghost stories. I went to places I’d never been before (Paradise, Whitbourne, Mount Carmel) and visited wonderful schools with many ghost-loving students.

Just one more event tonight: the award ceremony for the St. John’s Public Libraries Ghost Story Writing Contest. The Silky is rolling up her sleeves. Rumour has it that the dust at the A.C. Hunter Library is shocking.

This week I discovered that St. John’s likes to hide its schools. As a concept, it appeals to me. A secret, no, an invisible school, hidden away between streets, where children are protected from the outside world. People can only find the schools when the moon is full, or when the fog lifts, or by learning a magic spell.

My first experience with this was when I tried to find way into Bishop Feild School on Monday. I could see it, but I couldn’t get there. It was a bit like the castle in Sleeping Beauty: protected by high hedges, one-way streets and dead ends. Yesterday I visited two more schools that were tucked away from the bustling world: Macpherson and Bishop Abraham.

Macpherson wasn’t so hard to find, because the entrance was actually on the same street as its address — but it stood alone down a long driveway in an in-between place that was neither a city block nor a park. Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, it was spooky and quiet when I arrived at 8 a.m. The door was unlocked, and the only living person was a janitor, who could have been a ghost now I come to think of it. Gradually people started arriving and I was delighted to do my presentation for big group of very well-behaved children. Actually, they were unnaturally well behaved… maybe they were ghosts too, or under an enchantment.

Then I was in a rush to get to Bishop Abraham, which the teacher had assured me was just a few short blocks away. I kept my Silky dress on, loaded my books into the car, and screeched out of the driveway, after consulting a map for the exact location of 196 Pennywell Road. (Okay, so I still use maps.)

I got to Pennywell Road, no problem. But then I ran into trouble. I kept seeing those traffic signs that warn you that a school is nearby, but the school never appeared. After a few blocks, I realized I was 200 numbers past the address, so I turned around. I was supposed to be there at 10:30. It was 10:40. I don’t like being late.

I had seen a big building called “Bishop’s College” and I wondered if this could be the place. I hauled into the parking lot and accosted someone, who pointed away over some scrubland and fences — and there it stood. Bishop Abraham School. I could see it but I couldn’t get there.

I drove back the way I had come, catching glimpses of the school between houses. Finally I found a side street I could turn into, and that led me into a between-the-streets place where the school sat in the sun, waiting for me.

I got a great welcome from the teachers and the kids, and the presentation went very well. There were even some grade twos there, usually a bit young for my ghost stories, but they sat as if bewitched, eyes big, clutching their friends in the really scary parts. Then I sold a lot of books, which is always very satisfying.

I like to think I’m catching on to the way things work in Newfoundland. But my expectations are still Ontario. If an address is 196 Pennywell Road, I expect the school to be there, right between 194 and 198. Not so. I should know better by now. My own house has two different street names and an invisible number that doesn’t relate to any other houses. This summer, new street signs  with different names suddenly appeared on my road.I tell couriers I’m the last house on the road to the lighthouse. That seems to work.

Next week I’m going to Paradise for the first time. I wonder if the cows planned the streets there. I’ll soon find out. I think I’ll give myself an extra half hour, just in case.

Since then I’ve been in and out of St. John’s to visit Bishop Feild School, which is more than 150 years old and is tucked away on another hill in downtown St. John’s. This was not easy to get to: with the one-way streets and dead ends, I kept circling for about 15 minutes. I could see cars parked by the school but no way in! It was like an impregnable castle… but eventually after I spoke to the school secretary on my cellphone, she revealed where the entrance was… down an impossibly narrow street from another level of the city.

I loved the school: it has big old staircases and cavernous arches leading down to the basement. The library had big tall windows and a huge fireplace. The kids were enthusiastic and chatty and surprisingly fearless: they voted most of my most frightening stories at only a one-skull scariness level. Even my Old Hag story,which usually results in a show of hands for three-skulls worth of spookiness, had them nonchalently voting one skull. I guess living in haunted downtown St. John’s, they’ve seen worse!

The day I drove to St. John’s the sun came out and then the rain swept in and then the sun came out again and then it rained. I love the drive up and down the ribbony highways, with the barrens spreading out ahead of me, and the other cars chugging along through miles and miles of space and sky.

I came back to my little cottage and have been walking to the lighthouse in the mornings, climbing over the wrecked boardwalk (a souvenir of Hurricane Igor), and counting rainbows. This year I have been surprised by all the rainbows in the bay. One seems to start at the same point of land across the water from me. They are often a complete arc, right across the bay, and sometimes the colours are piercingly vivid, but by the time I run to get my camera, they fade.

This October, the St. John’s Public Libraries are giving young people a chance to put their spookiest stories into words and submit them to a writing contest. The winners will receive prizes at a special ceremony on November 2 at the Arts & Culture Centre in St. John’s. As the Celebrity Judge, I will have the honour of awarding the prizes. The Scottish Silky Ghost will come along to do some dusting and perhaps tell a tale or two.

This is going to be fun! Here are all the details:

Share a Scare
St. John’s Public Libraries
Ghost Story Writing Contest
Entry Deadline: Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Young people 7 to 15 are invited to write an original ghost story and submit it for a chance to win a prize. Entry forms are available at all St. John’s Libraries:

A.C. Hunter Children’s Library – Arts & Culture Centre – 737-3953
Marjorie Mews Library – Highland Drive – 737-3020
Michael Donovan Library – Topsail Road – 737-2621

For more information, contact:

Julia Mayo
Marjorie Mews Library
737-3020
juliamayo@nlpl.ca

Follow the blog at: http://ghoststorycontest.blogspot.com