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Susin
Nielsen


Authors’
Booking Service is pleased to announce that children’s and YA author Susin
Nielsen is now scheduling visits to Ontario schools.
Susin would love to plan a visit to your school or
library. Her rate is $250 per session, plus travel.
Susin is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada, and so
schools wishing to invite her may be eligible for a travel and fee
subsidy to offset the cost of her visit. Contact us for details of this
program.
Susin
Nielsen started out feeding cast and crew muffins and bologna
sandwiches on the award-winning television series, Degrassi Junior
High. They hated her food (a fact that’s memorialized forever
in a poem the cast wrote: “An ode to Susin, the Bran Muffin Queen, we
eat them, we die, then we turn green”). Luckily for Susin, however,
they saw a spark in a spec script she wrote. Susin went on to pen 16
episodes of Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. She
also got her first crack at novel writing when she was asked to write Shane,
one of the books in the Degrassi series. She went on to write three
more: Wheels, Snake and Melanie. She loved writing
in book form, and vowed that one day she would write an original young
adult novel. After she wrote for a lot more well-received TV series: Ready
or Not, Madison, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Edgemont, Heartland and
the animated series, What About Mimi and Braceface, to
name a few – she finally made true on her vow, and wrote her first
original young adult novel, Word Nerd, which is now nominated
for the 2010 Red Maple Award and the Golden Oak Award.
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Published Works
Picture Books
Hank
and Fergus (Orca) 2003
Mormor
Moves In (Orca) 2004
The
Magic Beads (Simply Read) 2007
Young Adult Novels
Word Nerd (Tundra) 2008
Awards and Nominations
Hank
and Fergus
Winner, Mr.
Christie’s Silver Seal Award
Blue Spruce
Award nominee
Word Nerd
Winner, Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year, Silver 2008
Juvenile Fiction
Nominated for the 2010 Red Maple and Golden Oak Awards
Nominated for the 2009 TD Canadian Children’s Literature
Award
Shortlisted for the 2009 Canadian Library Association Book of
the Year Award
Shortlisted for the 2009 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s
Book Awards
Shortlisted for the 2010 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice
Awards
One of The Globe and Mail’s “Susan Perren’s Top 10 Children’s
Books for ‘08”
Presentation Details
My
presentation explores writing both for the page and for the screen,
because I also write for television. In a fun, interactive way, I talk
to the students about writing for both genres, and the challenges and
pleasures each one brings.
I’ll show a
clip from a TV show I’ve written, and later on in the presentation – if
the kids vote for me to do it – I will read a short excerpt from a new,
not-yet-published book (it will be released in fall 2010).
The overall
message of my presentation is to instill a love of the written word, in
any form, and most importantly to instill a love of reading – because
the best “TV” is the one that plays in our heads when we read a great
book!
Grades I
will present to: 6 to 8
Is this
flexible? It can be, but teachers should be aware that there may be
content that could be deemed inappropriate for younger children.
Maximum number of
students per session: 100
Venues I’m
comfortable in: Classrooms and libraries.
Equipment
and other requirements:
- A TV/DVD
player, set somewhere with good visibility for the participants.
- A table
and chair.
- Bottled
water would be much appreciated.
- I do
insist that a librarian or teacher be present throughout the
presentation.
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