Like a beauty queen contestant waving her last wave, Margaret and the Moth Tree‘s reign as the Silver Birch Express Award book of 2013 has come to an end. The year ended right where it began, at the Ontario Library Association conference here in Toronto, and this time, Brit was able to be there too! (Thank you, OLA!)

We had a great couple hours catching up with some of the other authors we toured with last May, and meeting new and old book-obsessed friends.

Who’s that between me and Brit? Click this photo to watch a family-made fan video… and see if you can spot her!

Brit and I were also part of a panel of authors talking about what our OLA award meant to us, and I want to reiterate here in cyberspace what we said (or tried our best to say) there: it was life-changing.

Apart from the honour of being nominated for (let alone winning) a provincial award because librarians selected us, the contact we were able to make with young readers was the truly priceless thing about this whole experience. There is nothing more inspiring than direct feedback from kids. Without that contact, without that exposure, we would never have had such strong encouragement to keep going and keep writing after our very first book. I really can’t emphasize enough how much this means to fledgling authors, and of course, what it means to almost 250,000 kids.

To everyone involved in this wonderful program, a million thank-yous.

Long live the Forest of Reading!

Author Marsha J. Skrypuch, Author Wesley King, Author-Ilustrator Martin Springett, Author Brit Trogen, Author Kari Trogen, and Co-Chair Helen Kubiw at the ‘Forest of Reading’ Winners Showcase