My book is out at last! Actually, it was probably out months ago, but I only just got my copies. Here it is, my very first not-self-published book (yaaaay! *waves arms like Kermit the frog*)

Roberta’s Space Adventure is part of the Grade 6 space book club unit Mission: Space in the Moving Up with Literacy Place program by Scholastic Education Canada. Comics in the classroom—isn’t that awesome? There are, I think, eight comic stories in total in the unit, all done by different artists. In the ongoing struggle to get kids reading, this is going to be a pretty good tool!

Roberta’s Space Adventure is a fictional story set sometime in the nebulous future (where I like to set all my stories!), but the purpose of it is to teach the reader about the Canadian astronauts. The two main characters, who live on a large Canadian spaceship (because of course we have one, in the future), learn about their early space-pioneering ancestors. The more they learn, the more they appreciate how amazing those first Canadians to go into space—people like Marc Garneau, Roberta Bondar, and Chris Hadfield– really were.

The story is 40 pages long, and there is additional biographical information on the astronauts in the back. I did the pitch, script, script rewrites, art, and colouring (but not the word balloons or the title design) all within the space of about 5 months, which for me is insanely fast—especially considering the weeks of downtime where I was waiting for editorial approval before I could go on to the next step. It was both hideous and wonderful, and I hated and relished every minute of it.

Unfortunately, the book is only available to schools and similar educational groups (meaning I can’t sell you one). So if you’re an elementary teacher or if you know one, you may be in luck! Oh, and I guess you probably have to be in Canada, too… though if you represent a school in another country and have a burning desire to teach your kids about the Canadian Astronauts, I suppose Scholastic won’t say no to you! If you are in Canada… please spread the word!

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