Our Good Reads events are just that: superb books that will entertain and amaze kids without fail. Whitney Gardner’s Free Piano (Not Haunted) is a graphic novel with a passion for music at its core, and a pitch-perfect understanding of middle grade sensibilities. Kim Spencer explores identity, family, and Indigenous culture in I Won’t Feel This Way Forever, the follow up to her award-winning Weird Rules to Follow. Carousel Summer is another engrossing graphic novel from Kathleen Gros, blending a queer coming-of-age story with broader social themes about tradition and transformation. Across three sequential presentations, these authors will share humour, personal stories, and insight into how kids can identify their values, true friends, and authentic selves. Moderated by Jael Richardson. Grades 4–7.
Themes: Middle-grade fiction, Indigenous, friendship, racism, lived experience, queer, coming-of-age, LGBTQ2SIA+
Curriculum Connections: English Language Arts 4-9, Physical and Health Education 4-7
More information about the Festival:
Box Office | Accessibility | Venue Map
Event Participants:
WHITNEY GARDNER is an author, illustrator, and cartoonist. She started drawing stick figures in second grade and somehow no one’s been able to stop her. She is the creator of Fake Blood, Long Distance, and Free Piano (Not Haunted) and the illustrator for Debbie Levy’s Becoming RBG and Stephanie Cooke’s The Racc Pack series.
KATHLEEN GROS is a cartoonist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated with a BFA in illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and she published her first graphic novel, Last Night at Wyrmwood High, soon after.
JAEL RICHARDSON is the founder and Executive Director of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) and the co-host of Into the FOLD: A Book and Lit Fest podcast. She has written a memoir, a novel and three children’s picture books. Her debut novel, Gutter Child was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award and the White Pine Award, and her middle grade anthology Today I Am: 10 Stories of Belonging was a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award. Richardson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario.
KIM SPENCER is an award-winning, bestselling author. Her debut novel, Weird Rules to Follow, received a Kirkus starred review and was a 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award finalist. The book won multiple awards, including a 2023 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and a 2023 Jean Little First-Novel Award. Kim is from the Gitxaała Nation and lives in northwest BC.
