APPLY TO HOST TED STAUNTON (IN PERSON)
BIOGRAPHY
Ted Staunton is the award-winning author of over fifty books of fiction and non-fiction for young readers pre-school to YA,. including Puddleman, titles in the Seven and Almost Epic Squad series, Friends for Real, (illus. Ruth Ohi), It Seemed Like a Good Idea and the graphic novel The Good Fight, (illus. Josh Rosen) about the 1933 Riot at Christie Pits. Ted presents to students and educators across Canada, as well as teaching creative writing at George Brown College.
Home Location: Port Hope, Ontario
Creator Type: Author
Genres: Middle-grade fiction
Website: tedstauntonbooks.com
Tour Region: Alberta
Target Audience: Kindergarten - Grade 12
Cost: For one 60-minute presentation: $300 plus 5% GST
NOTE: The fee of $300 (plus tax) will be paid to The Canadian Children's Book Centre (CCBC) upon receipt of an invoice from the CCBC. After Book Week, the CCBC will pay the author their presentation fee of $250 (plus taxes, if applicable).
PRESENTATION DESCRIPTIONS
Fun and Friends with Picture Books
Target Audience: Kindergarten - Grade 3
Preferred group size: 75 students
Maximum group size: 125 students
This is a lively, highly interactive presentation about stories: where they come from, how they get written and see how they become books. (Plus, music! I bring banjo or guitar for participatory songs that open and close the presentation, including Little Liza Jane, The Cat Came Back, Cluck Old Hen, Watermelon Song.)
We start with a song, then students take part in my telling of stories from a couple of my picture books – usually Friends for Real and Puddleman – via prompt questions about text and art, a movement and imagining activity, chanting, colorful props, and helping to act out parts of the stories. It’s designed to show that creating is fun work, and that it’s even more fun with friends.
The stories are followed by Q&A time in which I show how stories get written and books get made, using messy manuscripts, preliminary artwork from both books, uncut signatures to show manufacture, and showing the book that got me started: a handmade one I did for school that became Puddleman. Finally, we wrap up with another song.
Required equipment: table for show and tell material, armless chair
Required materials: none
Graphic Novels and The Good Fight
Target Audience: Grades 6 - 9
Preferred group size: 75 - 100 students
Maximum group size: whatever the venue can comfortably hold
The Good Fight presentation has three main parts, all interactive. In one we explore the basics of stories, what makes some right for graphic novels, and how graphics are written and illustrated. In another we look at the real-life events that inspired The Good Fight (anti-immigrant prejudice and antisemitism in 1930s Canada, the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, and the infamous Riot at Christie Pits in 1933). Finally, we discuss how these things remain sadly relevant today.
Students will participate in everything from demonstrating how a team of pickpockets works to plot suggestions and guiding the depiction of kids’ period clothing in a drawing demo. They’ll see manuscript pages, art roughs and layouts and archival photos from the 1930s, and learn how to make their own mini-zine from a sheet of paper as part of Q&A time.
Required equipment: HDMI hookup of my laptop to screen/whiteboard; marker and flip chart on stand (for drawing)
Required materials: none
Getting Shifty with Comic Shift
Target Audience: Grades 4 - 7
Preferred group size: 75 - 100 students
Maximum group size: whatever the venue can comfortably hold
“Growing up is morphing in slow motion”
The goals of the presentation, via the humorous adventure novel Comic Shift, are to get students excited about reading fiction, to give them some basic tools for creating stories and comics of their own, and to remind us that, while we often long to be different, we sometimes don’t realize how special we already are. Plus, the presentation should be fun.
Using the book trailer youtube (https://youtu.be/t_tnM1K-vJk) the group identifies story basics. Ted gives the kids a brief facial recognition test: could any of them be super-recognizers, like a character in the book and not know it?
Ted explains the next step of stories is to make the problem worse. He reads a brief Comic Shift excerpt and students suggest what might happen next.
With easel and flip chart paper Ted draws simple characters from a comic the book characters write. The group brainstorms villains and an adventure.
A Q&A time follows, in which Ted demonstrates the writing process for novels and comics. Included here are manuscript pages, art roughs and layouts for comics, unbound signature sheets to show how books are made, and how to make your own mini-zine from a sheet of paper.
Ted wraps up with a participatory song using either his guitar or banjo.
Required equipment: HDMI hookup of my laptop to screen/whiteboard; marker & flip chart on stand (for drawing)
Required materials: none
It Seemed Like a Good Idea: Twenty Canadian Questions
Target Audience: Grades 5 and up
Preferred group size: 75 - 100 students
Maximum group size: whatever the venue can comfortably hold
A winner for reluctant readers, especially in grades 7&8. Ted presents students with funny, multiple choice quiz questions based on material from It SEEMED Like a GOOD IDEA… CANADIAN FACTS, FEATS AND FLUBS in six categories: Inventions, Food, Nature, Language, Law and Order, and Just Because, with a goofy prize for the winning class or participants. We then talk about ways some of the material might be used in fiction, and how stories are written, and Ted teaches the group a simple sleight-of-hand trick to reinforce this.
A great way to get students wondering about things Canadian – and how real life can be not only stranger than fiction, but the basis for it.
Required equipment: none
Required materials: paper and pencils for each student to record answers and keep score. Ted brings postcards for sleight-of-hand trick.
Make Me a Story
Target Audience: Grades 4 and up (the material varies with grade grouping)
Preferred group size: 75 - 100 students
Maximum group size: whatever the venue can comfortably hold
Ted takes the group on a highly interactive, funny, and fast-paced tour of what goes into creating a story: quirky examples of real life material that can be spun into story ideas, what you need to get a story started, how to “make things worse” in the middle, how to wrap things up.
Students will brainstorm why you might stick an eraser up your nose, learn how to be part of a pickpocket team, discuss bad superpowers and see how the writing and publishing process works via manuscripts, art, and layouts in Q&A time.
As always, the group finishes with a participatory song, via Ted’s guitar or banjo.
Required equipment: HDMI hookup of my laptop to screen/whiteboard; marker & flip chart on stand
Required materials: none
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Selected titles
Comic Shift. Scholastic Canada, 2025. Middle-grade novel.
The Good Fight. Scholastic, 2021. Graphic novel.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea...Canadian Facts, Feats and Flubs. Scholastic, 2020. Non-fiction.
Friends for Real. Scholastic, 2020. Picture book.
What Blows Up (Almost Epic Squad series) Scholastic, 2019. Middle-grade fiction.
Harry and Clare's Amazing Staycation. Tundra, 2017. Picture book.
Bounced. Scholastic, 2017. Middle-grade fiction.
Speed (Seven Prequels). Orca, 2016. YA novel.
Coda, (Seven Sequels) Orca, 2014, YA novel.
Who I'm Not. Orca Book Publishers, 2013. YA novel.
Ace's Basement (Orca Currents). Orca, 2013. Hi-lo novel.
Jump Cut (Seven Series). Orca, 2012. YA novel.
Power Chord (Orca Currents). Orca, 2011. Hi-lo novel.
The Monkey Mountain series. Red Deer Press. Middle-grade novel series
The Morgan series. Formac Publishing. Beginning novels.
The Hope Springs trilogy. Red Deer Press. Middle grade and YA novels.
The Maggie and Cyril series. Kids Can Press.
Puddleman. Red Deer Press. Picture book.
Simon's Surprise. Kids Can Press.