 Hello, everybody. My name is Shannon O'Zourney. I am the head of Youth Services at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. And it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 16th annual Booktopia Literary Arts Festival for Young People. And the first ever virtual Booktopia. We miss you so, so much at the library. We can't wait to see you all again. In the meantime, we're so happy we can still serve you like this remotely from far away. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that the library has its home on the traditional and unseated territories of the Coast Salish peoples. And in particular, recognize the Squamish, Slewa-tooth, and Musqueam nations. Booktopia is a very special partnership between the library, the library foundation, and West Vancouver schools. I want to give a big shout out and a huge thank you to Director of Instruction, Mr. Ian Kennedy, for helping us bring virtual Booktopia to you, and your teacher librarians for still being so, so excited and passionate about Booktopia during this really challenging and different time. Also, our community newspaper, the North Shore News, for sponsoring Booktopia every year when we could actually meet together in person. So the format for this video is I'm going to very shortly turn it over to our presenter, Ashley Spires. Ashley is going to show you some cool stuff, chat with you for a little bit, and then I'm going to pop on at the very end and ask some of the questions that you've sent in in advance. I'm so excited that you get to talk to Ashley Spires today or that we get to talk to Ashley Spires today. Ashley is coming to us from right here in British Columbia, but her books are just loved and cherished by kids all over the world. Her picture book, The Most Magnificent Thing, has sold over half a million copies and was turned into an animated short featuring the voice talent of Whoopi Goldberg. Binky the Space Cat was one of the very first graphic novels that I ever read and that I really ever fell in love with, and it's now an animated series on Treehouse. Ashley will talk to you a little bit about that. And Ashley's latest book, Berry Science, is all about the power of inquiry and the scientific method. Finally, Ashley is also an amazing friend to animals. She fosters kitties in her spare time, the little spare time that she has, and if we're lucky, we may see a furry friend naturally walk into frame in the background. We'll just have to see. You'll have to keep watching. So Ashley, if you're ready, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thanks, Shannon. Hi everybody from Ladner. I wish I was there in the room to see all your happy little faces. And I know you probably would love to see your friends right now too, wouldn't we all love to see our friends. But I'm so happy that I get to reach you guys somehow. This is the way we do it now. This is the world. So I'm going to be talking to you guys today. You can kind of see that I'm in my studio here, but I'm going to show you a bunch of pictures of here where I work and my animals and where I get my ideas. Because that's the first question usually I get from adults and from kids is, where do you get your ideas? And I kind of get them from all over the place. So I'm going to show you a bunch of inspiration and maybe it will help inspire you guys to make some stories and draw some pictures on your own. So let me just switch over. I'm going to share my screen with you so that you guys can see my slides, which all just takes a lot longer than you think it's going to. There we go. There. That's me. There's my my furry family in an illustrated form. You can tell I have a lot of cats and you're going to see pictures of them in just a moment. So you see my studio behind me and here's a picture of it. If you were facing my computer. And so this is where I work and I work on this big computer here and I draw on this one here and as you can see I usually have some friends and some snacks close by. These little friends I like to introduce to you because who doesn't like to see animals, right? So let me introduce you to my lineup. I have Fran and I have Penny whose tongue isn't always sticking out like that, but often. I have Mina, the cat who looks like a lemur, and I have Scott and Tess. And not to be outshone by the kiddies, Gordon the dog. Now I love again showing you guys pictures of my animals because animals are so important, especially right now overall at home what wonderful company they are. But they also inspire my stories so much so that Gordon and Gracie have become actual characters in my books. So here's Gordon here if anyone's read Binky the space cat. He is up here and he's actually based on my sister's cat and I put my pets in there so Gordon is the technological wizard and the reason I did that is because I live with dogs and cats. So I see the cats can do all kinds of awesome things. They can jump up on counters, they can leap through the air. Gordon just can't quite keep up. So I decided that in the books he's going to use his mind instead. And so he builds robots and he hacks computers and he even builds a time machine. And my Gracie up here, she's my cat who sadly passed away a number of years ago, but I love that she's in the books because that means she gets to live forever. And now a lot of kids see that dogs and cats living together. Not everybody knows that dogs and cats can actually be really good friends. There's Gracie there. Dogs and cats can be fantastic friends. And in my house, all my cats love Gordon. And they are, again, how can you not be inspired to write a story about that? And now another thing that inspires me, as Shannon mentioned, are kittens. Now I foster kittens for my local shelter and that means that when there is a group of kittens who for whatever reason can't be with their mom anymore, they come and hang out with me until they're old enough to go to their forever homes. And so I've had a lot of kittens over the years, at least 51 kittens that I've fostered so far, not all at once I would have lost my mind. But I bring them in and I bottle feed them and I keep them clean and I'm their mom until they're ready to go to their forever homes. And they are such like I said, a source of inspiration for me. And sometimes things happen like you fall in love with them. So Scott and Tess that you saw at the beginning, this is what they looked like pretty early on when they first came to my house. So their brother and sister, and I found manly in love with them because they're a little bit special. So they have asthma, which a lot of people have asthma. I didn't realize cats could have asthma too. And I think there's a lot of people out there who don't know their cats kind of asthma. And so I kept these two and I have to give them a popper every day just like everybody has asthma. And I decided I was going to start making a comic about it. So there's this comic that I created called The Asthma Cats. And so I have some informative comics that are like this one where it tells you the kind of symptoms they have. They make little gaspy sounds. So they sound like Darth Vader. And when they sleep, they snore. So you always know where they are. And when they play really, really hard and chase things, they start to pant like dogs. And test her. Her asthma is a little bit more severe. So she can't even purr, but that just means Scott purrs twice as much for her. And so I created these comics. Sometimes it's just about them being cats because, you know, they are cats after all. And they chase bugs and they eat bugs just like they eat a space cat. And this whole little comic that I started, now it's going to turn into a book. And so in a few years, The Asthma Cats comic book will be coming out with tender books. And all of that came from me just opening my heart and my home to some little kittens. So as you can tell, the animals in my life are a huge inspiration for my work. There's them again. Scott likes to wash Tessa's face like all the time. She's not always okay with that. So when I was your guys' age and even younger, because I think you guys are grade two and three. So I have been, as soon as I can hold a pencil, I love to draw. And I think a lot of kids think that if you're an adult and you draw, it probably means you've always been just so good at drawing. But that's not the case. I've had to practice my whole life. I still have to practice. And to prove it to you, I thought I'd show you some of my early work. So here is my early drawing of Humpty Dumpty, as you can see. But I like to point out that I'm a person who makes a lot of mistakes. And I've always been a person who makes a lot of mistakes. Because as you can see, even though Humpty hasn't fallen yet, he's already missing a foot. So his day is going to get worse, but it's already been pretty bad. And I kept practicing drawing as I got older because, like I said, you've got to practice to get better at it. So I was drawing cats. What a surprise, right? So out of character for me. And I was creating different characters all the time. But I would look at books and I would look at cartoons and I would think, why can't I draw things that look like that? I want my drawings to be better. So I taught myself how to draw by copying drawings that I thought and still think are very good. So as you can tell, Calvin and Hobbes, one of my favorite things to draw when I was younger. And I copied Garfield and I copied Beatrix Potter. I copied all types of things because that helped me learn how to draw. And I especially loved copying Disney. Because I don't know about you guys, but when I still to this day, when I sit down to draw hands, my hands can sometimes look like a hamburger with hot dogs glued onto it. Hands are really hard to draw. Faces are really hard to draw. And I found that by copying how other, oops, sorry, sensitive mouse, how other artists would draw hand and draw different facial expressions, that's how I learned how to draw different faces too. So I was also the kind of kid who just loved making stuff. I still am. I love crafting. I have to be careful. If I let myself get too far into crafting, I won't get my work done. And so when I was younger, when I was your guys' age, I loved something called Fimo or Sculpey. It's the type of colored clay that when you bake it in the oven, it turns hard so that you can keep it forever. So that's why I have all these little creatures here that you see on the screen. I made all these things when I was a kid and I have really, really tiny things like that little bear right there. It was about half the size of your pinky fingernail. Yeah, he's so tiny. But what I thought was really neat when I pulled these guys out to show you is that I discovered that at your age, I was creating characters that have stayed with me my whole life. So this guy here, he looks an awful lot like Binky the Space Cat, the cat you saw in the slide earlier. And I didn't know that when I was your age, even though I was copying other people's drawings, I was creating my own vision and my own style that has stayed with me my whole life. So this little guy, even though his name wasn't Binky, he turned into Binky many, many years later when he got his very own book. I also love doing anything to do with felting, which I still love felting. And these are some finger puppets that I made, and it turned into the very first book that I ever wrote and illustrated, which normally when I'm in the room, I realize I would hold it up. So if you have a cover, yes. I was going to say, normally at this point I have the book in front of you and I can point to it. But I'm not there in the room, but here it is Penguin in the Cupcake, totally inspired by the little finger puppets that I made earlier on in my artistic career. So for me, when it comes to sitting down to creating a story or creating a character, often what I do is look at the things that I've already made in my craft work and see if maybe there's a story or a character in there. But drawing is still my favorite thing to do, and my favorite thing to do is doodle. And I bet most of you guys who are watching love doodling too. My favorite place to doodle is in my sketchbook. These are a couple of my sketchbook drawings. And I'll tell you why I love the sketchbook the most is because in a sketchbook, I don't have to worry about making it perfect. I get to play, I get to try things, I get to do a lot of things wrong. And if I really don't like the page, you know what? I just turn the page and start fresh somewhere else. And that's the best way to get better at something is to just let yourself play. And you never know what kind of ideas are going to pop out of your head. So this is a drawing I did in a super old sketchbook very long ago. And I drew this because drawing pirates is super fun. If you haven't done it, highly recommend it. They have fantastic outfits, and they have bad teeth, and they have warts and stink lines and unibrow. There's just so much to work with. And so I started with this drawing, and then I kept drawing pirates until this little fella popped out of my head in another sketchbook. And as you can tell, even though he's dressed like a pirate and he's clearly a pirate, he probably isn't the best pirate. So for some reason when I drew him, I made him very cute with big glasses, and he was fighting with a fork instead of a sword. And I thought, what kind of pirate would fight with a fork and look that happy? And then I got this whole idea for small salt, which I changed from the original name because two S's sound good together. And he got Stépaul in French, he's Petit Paul. And so small salt started with that one little drawing that I did in a sketchbook. And it became this amazing event for me in my career a few years ago because small salt was given to every single grade one student in all of Canada. So over half a million kids got a book that I created, and it all started with one little doodle in my sketchbook. So I like to say there's no such thing as wasted creative time. Every time you sit down and you create something, you just never know where that creation is going to take you. So we had a little technical glitch there, and I've come back the next day and I'm finishing the presentation for you because all of a sudden I froze and you could be here or see what I was trying to show you. So we're going to just jump right back in where we were and I'm going to share with you now how I illustrate a lot of my books. So with things like small salt and with Binky, I paint the books. And that actually looks like this. I don't actually paint this quickly. I wish I did because I would just churn out the books like it was going on style. But I paint the books with watercolor paint and I do layer upon layer upon layer. So in this video that you're watching right here, that's actually about an hour of work, maybe an hour and a half actually. And you'll notice at the end of the video that she's not even finished. So that was an hour and a half of work to do this one little bit of a drawing and I still worked even more on it afterwards. So painting is extremely fun, but it's also really time consuming. So I like to work on a computer now, a fair bit, and this is sort of a setup that you could see in the original image there of my studio. And so I draw on this huge screen that's actually right next to me right here and I draw on it with a special stylus. And it's how I illustrate a lot of things. In fact, pretty much everything now. And here's a quick video again of how I do that. So you keep an eye on her arms. I decided I didn't like her arms to be like this. I wanted them to be like that. And you know what it's like when you're drawing on a piece of paper, right? When you erase something and you can only erase something so many times before the lines are kind of there forever, right? Well, it doesn't happen as a computer. There's always an undo button. There's always some way to erase it and to start over again. So for somebody like me who makes a lot of mistakes, it's really great to use a computer because I can try something and if it doesn't work, I can erase it. And that goes for the actual drawing of the character. That goes for the background. That goes for the color. Everything can be changed. So like I said, paint is really fun, but it's really permanent. Something like the computer is something that was a place where I could always play and try new things and make mistakes without being too worried about how it turns out in the end. Because I can change it. Now what you're looking at here again is a quick doodle of something I did for fun. But it was actually again about two hours of work. So it's great because you can fix your mistakes, but you can also spend a lot of time going in and fixing and fixing and tweaking and tweaking. And so sometimes you just end up. It takes just as long as painting. I'm almost done there. I think again, this is just a doodle I did one day. There he is. So this style is how I did the most bangles in the paint, which you've probably heard about. But in case you haven't, it's a story about a girl who wants to make something just right and she makes a lot of mistakes. Gee, do you think maybe I wrote it about myself? So I wrote this book because making a book means that I make a lot of mistakes. It means I have to try over and over and over again to get things right. And so I thought I'd show you the many stages that go into making a book and show you why I'm the girl in the book. So when I write a story, it looks really boring. It looks like this. And so this is all what's called a draft. And this is my writing. And so I write all the words that are going to be in the book, but I also describe in blue here all the things I'm going to draw in the book. And now I write it and I share it with somebody called an editor. She's kind of like what your teacher is to you guys. She looks at my work and she helps me make it better. And so what she does is she sends it back to me with all these little notes on it. And she says, well, maybe this could happen later in the story or I don't fully understand what's going on. But I'm going to keep doing this scene a little bit more. And so we go back and forth. And I keep tweaking the draft and we keep perfecting it until it's finished, which means that by the time a book is published, I've usually written that story somewhere between 10 to 20 times. So I have to work on it for a long time to get it just right. Just like the girl in the book, right? So that goes for my drawings as well, not just my writing. So the first time I ever drew the girl from the book, she looked like this. And my editor took a look at her and she said, oh yeah, she's really cute. But maybe she could look just a little bit more modern. So just like the character in the story, I drew the character from the story over and over and over again, trying all different ways to make her better, to make her different. This is four different ways, but I actually, I remember drawing at least eight to 12. I think some of the files got lost in the many years since I did this. But these, as you can see from these drawings, I was the girl from the book. I was trying her to draw her over and over and over again, all different ways to make her better. And so we decided we liked the girl in the polka dot co great. So now I have my draft and now I have my, my character. All I have to do is draw it, right? Well, I don't just sit down and draw and color at the whole book. And then it's done. It still requires a lot of go back and forth with my editor. So I do the whole book like this. It's sketched out. And I give it to my editor. And like I said, she looks at it and she says, well, you know, maybe we could move that spot over here, maybe clarify her expression here. Sometimes it's start over. This isn't, this page isn't working. So I draw the whole book like this. And then I finally get approval to start adding the color, which is kind of my favorite part. So I get to start to add the color and get to see it start to, to take shape. And I add the shading and everything. And then I think at this point that it was done. So I'm going to go back to my editor and she still has more ideas. She says, well, maybe mom could be a bit bigger and maybe the, the buildings could spread out there. And she said, Hey, what about maybe adding some trees? And so, or sorry, some color to the trees. And so I did all those things. We even added a parked car off to the side here. And so I did all those things and sent it back to her. And she liked all the changes, except the park car. That one came back out again. So that's how much work goes into one page of a book. And there's about 32 pages in your average picture book. So you can imagine it takes a long time to make a book. In fact, a picture book from start to finish for me takes anywhere between nine to 12 months. So it's like the whole time you guys are in the grade that you're in right now, that's how long it takes me to write one book. So I do like to say that if you are reading a picture book, maybe slow down, maybe read it twice, you know, it takes us a long time to make these things. So as Shannon mentioned at the beginning, the most magnificent thing is now a short animated film. And it is so beautiful. If you have a chance to see it, it often airs on YTV and tele-tune on sort of special weekends, like the International Day of the Girl and Thanksgiving, they aired it. It's also available through Prime. If anybody has the stacked television, it's up there to stream all the time. And so this is a still from it. It's very beautiful. And I was so excited to see my characters run across the screen, especially dog. You have no idea how exciting it was to see dog, peon stuff on the big screen. Because in my head, he's been peeing on stuff for years. And now you guys get to see him peeing on things too. It's an illustrator's dream. There's another still from it. And now Binky the Space Cat, as we mentioned before, it's also a television series. Binky is actually a series of five graphic novels that I created. And then I have spin-off books like this one, Gordon Barks the Future and Fluffy Strikes Back. And I created all of these books in this whole world. And how exciting is it that they get to go from their graphic novel to television. So Binky is airing on Treehouse on the weekends, I think, in the mornings. And it's also available, like I said, through Prime and through the stacked television. And I'm just going to show you guys a quick clip from it, because I just think they are just the most adorable things in the world. So let me start this up. Sorry about the numbers and stuff. This is just from my screeners that I get sent. He's on a space station. We've got to get it out of here before it changes into something huge and terrifying. This is a mission for first. I love showing that to you guys, because when I was your age and even though I'm a little bit older, I really wanted to be an animator when I grew up. And now the characters that I've created are animated. And they're on the screen, they're on the big screen, they're on the little screen. And remember at the beginning when I mentioned there's no such thing as doing something creative and it being a waste of time. I created a book about a silly cat who wanted to go to space. And now there's television series about my cat, my dog, and everything else. It's an absolute dream come true and it's just incredible what can happen if you just let yourself create because that's what you love to do. I'm hoping that things are going to get a season two. We don't know yet, but if it does, I'm going to be writing some episodes that are actually already written an episode for season two. And hopefully we'll get a chance to write more if we get to do that. And given that the world is all sort of shut down, animation is the only thing going. So I have my fingers crossed that that might work in our favor. So Fairy Science is actually my latest book that I have. And it's all about Esther who's this fairy right here. And I created this story because I like writing stories about characters that are just a little bit different who look at the world a little bit different than everyone else. And I thought there's nothing more different for a fairy than not believing in magic. What if this fairy actually thinks that science is the way to go? And so I'm going to read you guys this story. There's the cover there. And if you do like it, I hope that you will do the experiment that's at the end and also keep your eye out for the second book that's coming out this September. Fairy Science Solid Liquid Gassy, it's called. And it's all about the water cycle. So let's meet Esther and see what her world's all about. And do keep an eye out for Albert. He's the little bird up here. He's in every single scene. And he's her assistant. Esther does not believe in magic. This is unusual because Esther is a fairy. And fairies are all about magic. They use magic wands. They mix magic potions. Some fairies even make magical fairy dust. Esther is pretty sure that's a standard. She is the only fairy in Pixieville who believes in science. Esther prefers facts, data, and hard evidence to wishing on stars. And you can see here, she's changed Esther's room into Esther's laboratory. And Albert's nest is now Albert's observatory. So he can look at the stars. Unfortunately, the only thing they teach in fairy school is magic. Class is very frustrating for Esther. Miss Pelliepedal, her teacher there is saying, fairies were born when a drop of rain passed through a rainbow and landed on a flower bud. When the flower bloomed, the first fairy took flight. Class is also very frustrating for Miss Pelliepedal because Esther now stands up with her piece of paper and says, as you can see from this chart, it is more likely that fairies as a species evolve in response to influences such as environment and diet. I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure your teacher wouldn't be super happy if you got up and contradicted her like that. Esther can't help observing the world differently from everyone else. Where other fairies see a path to hidden gold, Esther sees light and water colliding. The fairies pointing to that rainbow and she's saying, follow the rainbow. And Esther's saying, the water helps us see all the colors that are hidden in the sunlight. That's just dispersion, people. Where they see a dangerous omen, she sees condensation. She's pointing to the fog and saying, when the temperature is just right, water droplets are suspended in the air. Albert's having a bit of fun there with them, though he's going boom. Where they see faces of the spirits, she sees erosion. They're all looking at these rocks, oops, sorry, seeing the faces. Rocks get worn away by water and wind, says Esther. The faces are just your imagination. Albert whispers, I don't think they're listening. Esther can't wait to teach the scientific method to her fairy mates. The scientific method is what you have to go through to figure out if your idea or guess is successful is right. So first you have to ask a question. Then you have to do some research to find out more. Then you make a hypothesis, which is Albert says it's just a fancy word for guess. Then you get to do experiments, study the results, and finally you draw a conclusion, which is why Albert's going eureka. So there's a lot of steps to go into the scientific method, which is why your fairy friend here says, or you could just do magic. It does sound a lot easier. She shows them the periodic table. This is a list of all the elements that make up the whole universe. No, not all of them, says the other fairy. Where are dreams and wishes in sunshine? She even demonstrates gravity. Gravity is why things fall down instead of up. But the other fairies can fly, so they're saying, but we can go up so we must be magic. Esther's getting frustrated. They just don't get it. She kicks the rock, pings off the tree, and whoosh, all those leaves land on her. That is definitely gravity. And there is definitely something wrong with this tree. It's wilting, she says. The fairies do their best to help. They cast spells, they make magic talismans, they even do a mystical moonlight dance, but nothing works. The tree keeps on wilting. Esther asks a question. Why is the tree wilting? She does some research. She's got a little list there and it's saying, what I know about trees, they have leaves, they have roots, they are pretty, and they grow out of the dirt. Next, she makes a hypothesis. She tries some experiments. You guys probably saw a cat go by in the background there. I can hear her eating now. She can't miss out on story time. So Esther tries some experiments. She studies her results. At last, Esther draws a conclusion. Eureka, the tree needs more sun. She flies up through the trees. She bursts through the leaves and lets the sun come in on the little tree. But while she's doing that, her teacher has showed up. Ms. Pelleypedal. And she's saying, Simbalahoo, Simbalahee, I'm doing some magic to save this tree. Now, she waits for the sun to do its work. But it looks like she's going to have to wait a while because if you can see there, she is waiting all day and all night. And then she even waits through the spring, the summer, the fall, and the winter. I'm hoping at some point she got up and had a snack because I'd be pretty number if I had to wait around for a year. It took a while, but the tree is looking positively perky. You can see all the new buds starting on the tree. She did it. Esther has proven the power of science. Oh, but wait, the other fairies are saying, Ms. Pelleypedal did it. Magic saved the tree. At least she thought she proved the power of science. She might not have changed the other fairies' minds, but Esther has inspired some questions. Her friends have shown up there and they're saying, how did you do that? Can you teach a science? And asking a question is where every good scientist starts. So now she's showing her friends Fig and, what's their name? Fig and Clover. Sorry. They're how a photo synthesis works. And if you want to know how photosynthesis works, like I said, there's an experiment right at the end of the book. And you can grow your very own seed at home and see how water and sunlight will help grow a plant. So I would love to answer some questions. And I did answer some yesterday. I'm trying to remember what they were. One had, it was a great one. And it was how do you focus your brain so that you can sit down and create, especially when we're all stuck at home right now. And I have to say that the most important thing to me every single day is to go outside and get some exercise. So that for me means going for a run and going for a bike ride and walking my dog. So I get outside at least twice a day to clear my head and help me be a little bit more focused when it comes time to sit down and do my work. Some of the things I think you guys had asked, I had hopefully answered in my presentation, which is how long does it take to make a book, which was nine to 12 months, sometimes longer because I'm working on a project right now that I actually wrote the very first outline for six years ago, but I'm actually working on it now. Hopefully it will be finished within a year. And I'm trying to think of what some of your other wonderful ideas or questions were. I have forgotten because my head is too full of my latest draft. Hopefully you guys had heard the answers to your questions. And if you hadn't, if you would really, really need to know the answer to the question, you just send me an email. I'm on ashespires.com and I would love to answer your questions if you guys have any, because I can't be in the room with you, but I still wish I were. So thank you guys so much for listening to my presentation today. And I hope you guys all stay safe and stay well. And thank you West Van Public Library for inviting me to booktopia. And I'm so happy to be here with you guys. Almost there with you guys. So hopefully you all stay well and I will see you all soon. Bye.