Liam O'Donnell

Max Finder Mystery lands on CityTV

liam — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:22:49 +0000

To celebrate the first day of school here in Ontario, CityTV’s Breakfast Television visited St. Margaret’s Public School in Toronto and Max and Alison tagged along for the fun.

The fantastic Kendal showed off a host of great books from Owlkids and Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook #5 was among them. Watch the BT segment here (skip in 18 minutes to get to the Owlkids book bonanza.)

If you were up early enough to catch the segment and are dying to get your hands on Max and Alison’s latest collection of mysterious adventures, visit the Max Finder Mystery page at Owlkids, your local Canadian Indy bookstore (American Indy bookstores here.) You can also always find them at Amazon, Indigo and B&N.

Happy clue hunting!

Max Finder Mystery: the UK editions

liam — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:10:52 +0000

After months of top secret negotiations, dangerous diplomatic missions and many, many cups of tea, Max Finder Mystery are now available in the United Kingdom. Each of the five (soon to be six!) books in the series will be published by Franklin Watts. To celebrate the news, keep Gibson’s mirror world alive and confuse Amazon buyers, each book has a brand new title. So, Collected Casebook #1 becomes Max Finder Mystery and the Case of the Snake Escape . Head on over to the Franklin Watts site to see all the new (but not really new) Max Finder Mystery books!

Text2Reader brings Food Fight resouces 2 teachers

liam — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:21:41 +0000

Orca Publishers get teachers. As a teacher myself, I appreciate that. Besides offering a fantastic catalogue for readers and great teacher guides for educators, they’ve launched Text2Reader, an online magazine for teachers packed with resources, lesson ideas and rubrics around their award-winning books.

In their words:

Text2Reader offers high-quality reading selections from award-winning books and engaging activities to help your students make meaning from what they read. And for you? We’ve packaged a boatload of easy-to-use, teacher-created comprehension exercises, reading and writing activities, assessments and opportunities for enrichment—all directly tied to ELA learning outcomes.

And for a limited time, you can download the September 2011 issue for free. And best of all, that issue features lesson ideas around my graphic novel Food Fight.

So, if you’re scrambling for one last language arts lesson before the kids escape for summer, check it out and think about getting a subscription for next school year. When September rolls around (and it will) you’ll be glad you did.

Share the Power!

liam — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:54:06 +0000

Thanks to the webby wonderfulness of Graphic Guide Adventures illustrator Mike Deas, his trailer for Power Play is shareable. So, here it is:

You can even share the power by copying this: http://youtu.be/pfocLhZLpO8 and pasting it into your blog, facebook page, twitter feed or whatever else you use to be a hip social media type person.

And you can get all the details about the latest book in the Graphic Guide Adventure series at powerplaygraphicnovel.com

Want to know more about the whole series? Head on over to GraphicGuideAdventures.com

Happy reading (and sharing!)

Power Play is out and online

liam — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:12:34 +0000

Can’t get enough of politics? Has this 41st Canadian Election turned you into a political junkie? Poor you. It’s almost over and by the time you read this, it probably already is all over. Which means you’ll have lots of time to read Graphic Guide Adventure #6: Power Play.

What’s it about?

Glad you asked:

Devin and Nadia team up with Bounce, Pema and Marcus as they all travel to Northern Ontario to watch their parents present to the Summit of World Leaders. A swarm of politicians, lobbyists, corporate bosses and protestors have all converged on the summit to get their messages heard. A tragic accident just hours before their parents’ presentation plunges the kids into their biggest mystery yet and sets them on the trail of a murderer bent on stopping their parents’ controversial message from being heard.

We’ve even created a website for you to check out at: powerplaygraphicnovel.com.

Head over to see a trailer for the book, help Devin track down some missing documents, grab an avatar and much more.

And if you really want, you could think about picking up the book too, either from Orca, Amazon or Indigo online.

Better yet! Walk down the street to your local bookselling establishment and say: “Excuse me, good sir or madam, would you perchance happen to have the stellar new release from one Liam O’Donnell? I believe it is called Power Play.” (if you’re really keen, you can put on a British accent, but it’s not necessary.)

Good luck and let me know how you get on!