Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. The blog name refers to the mythical pact made between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House and still miraculously in print.
Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog. They have lined up and conducted author/illustrator interviews and invited and coordinated guest posts. That support has helped me get through weeks when I’ve been in edit-copyedit-proofing mode, and it’s also introduced me to writers and books I might not have found otherwise. Our overlapping interests have led to posts for which I might not have had the time or attention-span. It’s the beauty of shared circles.
Guest Post: What if…?Julie Lawson on Bear on the Train
Julie Lawson’s Bear on the Train is a wordier picture book than we’re used to seeing now, yet how delicately drawn its relationships are: boy and bear, bear and landscape, landscape and train. The train is the moving target of the reader’s attention and the boy becomes a stand-in for the reader. I have admired this book for years, I once had a copy that walked away from my bookshelf (maybe it took a train somewhere), so I was delighted to find a replacement copy at Russell Books, Victoria’s wonderful used bookstore. I was further delighted to find that Julie is the friend of a friend, so I asked her to reflect on the making of this book, which is sadly out of print now.
Process Talk: Andrée Poulin on Planting Sunshine
Children live in the same world as we do. It’s a world with violence, inequity, discrimination, hatred. It’s a world in which wars break out, drag on, reignite. If we pretend otherwise, imagining childhood as a magical place sealed off from reality, we’re deluding ourselves. Denying knowledge of war to children living in the relative privilege of a peacetime society only propagates the notion that we don’t really have to care about other people’s children, who may not be as lucky as our own.
Also, children are not easily duped. If there’s something we try to hide from them, that is the very thing they will do their best to ferret out. These are the knotty issues taken on by an unlikely text—Planting Sunshine is a slender novella in verse by Quebec writer Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Montreal-based musician and artist Enzo. I invited Andrée Poulin to tell me more about the making of this little jewel of a book.
Guest Post: Rowena Rae on Why We Need Vaccines
I met Rowena Rae when our books were both shortlisted for the 2025 City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. That unexpected recognition (for me anyway!) brought us together — it’s the kind of writerly connection that feels like a gift.
We all come to this children’s writing gig along vastly different paths. Rowena worked as a biologist in Canada and New Zealand before becoming a freelance writer and editor and a children’s author. Like me, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia. We share a sense of perspective lent by a little mountain that used to be called Mount Douglas and has now officially embraced its SENĆOŦEN (Saanich language) name, PKOLS. I love that the Indigenous name has slipped gracefully into public nomenclature. The mountain is a defining geographical feature of this island that Rowena and I both call home.
Rowena’s shortlisted book is Why We Need Vaccines: How Humans Beat Infectious Diseases, illustrated by Paige Stampatori. I asked Rowena to tell me more about the creation of her information-packed book for young readers.
Process Talk: Karen Krossing on My Street Remembers
In a big-hearted treatment of place and history, akin to Australian writer Nadia Wheatley’s iconic picture book, My Place, Karen Krossing’s latest release, My Street Remembers, is grounded in conceptions of people and place that we’d all do well to reflect upon:
everyone is part of history and every place has a story worthy of telling.
story should be told in all its aspects, joyful and sad.
just as the Earth has layers, so do our histories.
if we are to grow beyond our worst instincts, those histories must be told and read and talked about.
I'm delighted to welcome Karen Krossing to Writing With a Broken Tusk.
Guest Post: Margriet Ruurs, With The Book Bus in Zambia
Margriet Ruurs is a writer and the author of books like Where We Live, an exploration of neighbourhoods around the world, and Come, Read With Me, which loops a world of stories into a bedtime read. I was delighted to find that my Look! Look! was included in her Global Book Recommendations list for The International Educator.
Earlier this year, Margriet raised funds for The Book Bus, a UK charity dedicated to getting books into the hands of kids, educators, and volunteers in Malawi, Zambia, and Ecuador. Here she writes about her ensuing trip to Zambia.
Sarah Ellis is in a Flap
My friend and former VCFA colleague Sarah Ellis is in a flap about words. That is to say, a BookFlap mini-masterclass, BookFlap being a new collaborative site launched by four Canadian writers and authors of books for young readers--Vicki Grant, Teresa Toten, Marthe Jocelyn, and Kathy Kacer.