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Ankylosaur Attack Nominated for Silver Birch

by Daniel Loxton, Oct 15 2012
Ankylosaur Attack cover

Click for Ankylosaur Attack listing at Shop Skeptic

I’m very excited to announce that Ankylosaur Attack, my first paleofiction storybook for young children (illustrated with Jim W.W. Smith) is among the 2013 Forest of Reading® Silver Birch® Express Award nominees revealed this morning by the Ontario Library Association. This will make the book part of Ontario’s province-wide school and library reading program—the largest such program in Canada.

I’d like to express my immense gratitude to the Ontario Library Association for this nomination (and of course to my publisher, Kids Can Press). The Forest of Reading awards are exceptionally competitive in every category, and it’s an honor to be in such fine company. (My nonfiction Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be was nominated for the Silver Birch nonfiction award, which went that year to my friend Valerie Wyatt—Editor of both Evolution and Ankylosaur Attack, and veteran of over a hundred other children’s books).

The Ontario Library Association describes the Silver Birch:

The Silver Birch Award is comprised of three separate lists of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and an Express list that is made up of both Fiction and Non-Fiction, geared to the more reluctant reader. The Silver Birch® program is meant for readers aged 8 to 12, from Grades 3-6, with the Express list focusing on the lower grade level and the Fiction and Non-Fiction focusing on the Grade 5 and 6 readers.

The Forest of Reading program runs throughout the Spring, and includes video and essay contests (PDF) as well as many other opportunities for kids to get more involved in reading and the love of books. The whole thing culminates with events in Parry Sound, North Bay, Thunder Bay, and finally Toronto’s Festival of Trees,™ Canada’s largest literary event for younger readers—a massive award celebration at the Harbourfront Centre in front of an audience of 8000 people (May 15 and 16, 2013).

Winners of the Silver Birch Express and other Forest of Reading awards are selected by the kids of Ontario. Any of the 250,000 participating young readers who read a minimum number of the books in their reading category become eligible to vote for the award in that category.

Will Ankylosaur Attack’s lonely, armored young dinosaur find a place in the hearts of Ontario’s Grade 3 students, as he has in mine? We’ll find out on May 16, 2013!

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5 Responses to “Ankylosaur Attack Nominated for Silver Birch”

  1. Trimegistus says:

    Congratulations, Mr. Loxton! It looks like a wonderful book.

  2. Donald Prothero says:

    Congrats, Co-author!

  3. Matthias says:

    I wish I could buy this in German to read it to my son.
    Congratulations

  4. Mike says:

    You do understand that the Ankylosaur was in fact a very small dinosaur of about 12 to 15 inches high that lived with humans. This was possible because the Ankylosaur was only the size of a large squirrel and as such was able to be saved by Noah during the flood.

    The Ankylosaur was named due to it’s ferocious attack on humans ankles. They would attack in packs of ten to twenty, firmly afix themselves to the hapless humans ankles and chew the meat off the bone.

    Soon many in the villages had to wear bronze ankle bracelets for protection against the indomitable creatures. Until that time men women and children could be found begging on busy street corners in an effort to purchase crutches. They were often heard to complain “My ankles, so sore”

    And that is how they were named Ankylosaur.
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