Fiction as a tool for Resilience Building

Eric Walters, Natasha Deen, Erin Bow and Kathy Kacer

Fiction as a tool for Resilience Building

Eric Walters, Natasha Deen, Erin Bow and Kathy Kacer

10:00am

Thursday, October 29, 2020

120 mins

We are all born primed for social connection and love given from a primary caregiver shapes our brains to develop the resilience that we need to thrive. But the world is complex and unsettling and childhood filled with challenges and obstacles often alien or unrecognized by the care giver. Fiction for children and young people can play a vital role in recognizing, supporting and offering an articulation of anxieties, worries and fears. Join a panel of professional authors as they discuss the power of fiction to be a tool for talking and articulating our deepest concerns.

Moderated by Larry Swartz, literacy and arts instructor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), and author of Take Me to Your ReadersThis is a Great Book! and Teaching Tough Topics. Presented in partnership with the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

We are all born primed for social connection and love given from a primary caregiver shapes our brains to develop the resilience that we need to thrive. But the world is complex and unsettling and childhood filled with challenges and obstacles often alien or unrecognized by the care giver. Fiction for children and young people can play a vital role in recognizing, supporting and offering an articulation of anxieties, worries and fears. Join a panel of professional authors as they discuss the power of fiction to be a tool for talking and articulating our deepest concerns.

Moderated by Larry Swartz, literacy and arts instructor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), and author of Take Me to Your ReadersThis is a Great Book! and Teaching Tough Topics. Presented in partnership with the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Featured Authors

Eric Walters is one of Canada’s best-known and most prolific writers of fiction for children and young adults. His books have won over 120 awards, including thirteen separate children’s choice awards, as well as the Africana Children's Book Award, the UNESCO Award for Literature in Service of Tolerance and The Christopher Award. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. He lives in Guelph, Ontario, and is the co-founder of Creation of Hope, a charity that provides care for orphans in the Mbooni district of Kenya. In 2014, Eric was named a Member of the Order of Canada.

Eric Walters’ Festival appearance is generously supported by the Swedish Embassy.

Read more about Eric Walters

Award-winning author Natasha Deen spent the first part of her life in Guyana, then her family moved to Calgary, Alberta, which she found terribly exciting until her first minus-forty-degree winter day, at which point she began to question the sanity of the grown-ups around her. She currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband, dogs, and cats, and regularly entices the muses to her office with offers of cupcakes and tea.

Read more about Natasha Deen

Erin Bow studied particle physics in college, eventually working at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, before deciding to leave science in order to concentrate on her love of writing. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband James and their two children. Erin Bow can be visited online at www.erinbow.com

Read more about Erin Bow

Kathy Kacer’s award-winning list of Holocaust fiction and non-fiction for young readers includes The Secret of Gabi's Dresser (winner of OLA Silver Birch Award), The Diary of Laura's Twin (winner of the National Jewish Book Council Award [US] as well as the Canadian Jewish Book Award), Hiding Edith (winner of the OLA Silver Birch Award; the Sydney Taylor Book Award [Association of Jewish Libraries], Notable Book for Older Readers; and the Yad Vashem Award for Children's Holocaust Literature [Israel]), and To Look a Nazi in the Eye (a Sydney Taylor Honor Book for Teens). Her books have been published and translated in twenty countries. She is the child of Holocaust survivors, and the parent of two actors and musical theatre performers.

Read more about Kathy Kacer

10:00am

Thursday, October 29

120 mins

What to read

Broken Strings by , In the Key of Nira Ghani by , Stand On The Sky by ,
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