APPLY TO HOST RICHARD SCRIMGER (IN PERSON)
Home Location: Toronto, Ontario
Creator Type: Author
Genres: Picture books, early chapter books, middle-grade fiction, young adult fiction, non-fiction
Website: www.scrimger.ca
Tour Region: New Brunswick
Target Audience: Kindergarten to Grade 12
Cost: $300* (for one 60-minute presentation)
*(The author collects $250 of the fee and $50 of the fee covers The Canadian Children's Book Centre's administration fees for coordinating Book Week).
Taxes charged on presentations: YES
BIOGRAPHY
I care about story and about connection. I want all my readers to feel seen. For more than twenty years I have written for children and taught creative writing at the college level. I’ve given talks and workshops on five continents, and been supported by the Canada Council, Mr Christie, the Chicago Public Library, YALSA, The Junior Literary Guild, and the Forest of Reading. My last book is a hands-on guide to writing that sums up my approach to the subject: Your Story Matters.
PRESENTATION DESCRIPTIONS
Let Me Tell You A Story
Target audience: Kindergarten to Grade 2
Ideal group size: 30
Maximum group size: 50
This presentation is short and funny. The kids and I build a story together, using a couple of easy prompts. Then I read from one of my picture books, encouraging class participation – mostly in the form of sound effects.
Required equipment: none
Required materials: none (though coffee would be nice)
What is a story?
Target audience: Grade 3-6
Ideal group size: 60-90
Maximum group size: 200 (or more if there’s a camera and sound system)
This presentation is very interactive. Using concrete examples, we talk about the way into a story. Since there has to be a problem in a story, I talk about my own life experiences, especially the negative ones - fear, anger, and sadness – and their impact on my work. I use my own neurodiversity as a focusing tool to highlight the value of all stories. Then we build a short fable-type narrative and act it out together, using random prompts. There’s a hero, a villain, and a mystery character who makes the problem worse. The conclusion is always a surprise. Audiences take away an understanding of the morphology of story – what it looks like from the inside. This type of presentation can be modified up or down the age range. It has succeeded with audiences from kindergarten to adult.
Required equipment: none
Required materials: maybe a chair or 2 to stand on
Story Breakdown
Target audience: Grade 7 – 12
Ideal group size: 50-90
Maximum group size: 200
For middle school and YA audiences, I use PowerPoint to illustrate the various stages of story writing. The presentation is based around illustrations from my new book, Your Story Matters. The essential aspects of story creation (setting, character, problem) are compared to the essential aspects of pizza creation (crust, toppings, baking) with random sidebars on things like plot construction, setting specifics, or dialogue no-nos. There is a section on the 4 kinds of writing used in fiction, and the corresponding roles of the writer. Audiences will take away a better understanding of the books they read and the stories they write. They will also realize that their story is important, and so is everyone else’s, and that getting to know each other’s stories is how we create a better society.
Required equipment: Smartboard or plug-in and screen for a laptop
Required materials: none. With a smaller group (50 or so), a story-building exercise can work well. Each student needs a pen or pencil and a large sheet of blank paper divided into 6 panels like the page of a comic book.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PICTURE BOOKS
Bun Bun’s Birthday. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2001.
Princess Bun Bun. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2002.
Eugene’s Story. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2003.
MIDDLE-GRADE NOVELS
The Nose From Jupiter. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1998
The Way To Schenectady. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1998
A Nose For Adventure. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2000
Of Mice And Nutcrackers. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2001
Noses Are Red. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2002
The Boy From Earth. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2004
From Charlie’s Point of View. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2005
Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book (with Marthe Jocelyn). Toronto: Tundra Books, 2014
Zomboy. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2014
The Wolf and Me. Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2014
Downside Up. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2016.
Weerdest Day Ever! Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2016
Irresistible. Toronto: Scholastic Books, 2019
YA NOVELS
Into The Ravine. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2007
Me & Death. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2010
Ink Me. Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2012
Lucky Jonah. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2016.
Autumn Bird and The Runaway (with Melanie Florence). Toronto: Scholastic, 2022
At The Speed of Gus. Toronto: Scholastic, 2023.
NON-FICTION (for middle-grade and young-adult readers)
Your Story Matters: A Surprisingly Practical Guide to Writing. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2024.
FORTHCOMING
At Camp FUNdament. Scholastic.
ADULT NOVELS
Crosstown. Toronto: Riverbank Press, 1996
Still Life With Children. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1997
Mystical Rose. Toronto: Doubleday, 2000