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As usual, I’m a bit late with my post about last week’s Brantford & Burlington Book Camps, but you can stop fretting: the wait it over!

It was an early start to get the train to Brantford from Toronto, but I arrived just in time to find all the campers posing for their group photo. Myself and one of the powerhouses behind the conference, Marsha Skrypuch, joined in for a few photos and then we were ready to get down to the nitty gritty of comic making.

I always enjoy visiting schools to meet the kids and talk comics, but I soon discovered that being at the book camps is like talking to the literary all-stars from all the classes in the region. The kids in the Brantford and Burlington camps aren’t reluctant readers, they’re not forced to sit there by their teachers, they actually want to be there learning about writing! In fact, just to get into the camp they had to write a short essay on why they wanted to attend the book camp. These guys were keen, sharp, ready to write and a pleasure to work with.

At both camps, the first half of my talk went through the steps in writing a mystery story and putting into the comic script format. There were plenty of volunteers for the Max Finder Mystery Theatre and many sharp minds in each of the groups who managed to identify the culprit and crack the case.

The second hour of each session was a workshop where the kids got a chance to put their comic know-how to the test. I gave them another Max Finder Mystery with the text blanked out and challenged them to write up their own dialogue and caption boxes. The pencils were scribbling away before I’d even finish explaining the task and they stayed that way for 30 minutes. There was silence in both groups (the first with over 50 kids and the second with a respectable 27 writers) as they used their imaginations to create their own plots for the images in the strip.

At the end of 30 minutes, it was pencils down and time to share our efforts. The range of ideas and different snippets of dialogue was great to hear. And I thank all the campers for sharing their creative efforts (I know how nerve-wracking that can be!) It was the perfect way to end a fantastic day.

Big thanks goes out to the organizers of the book camps, Marsha Skrypuch & Kids Can Fly in Brantford and Andrea Gordon at the Burlington Library. The book camps are a great idea for promoting literacy and giving kids a summer alternative to sports camps. The number of book camps seems to grow each year, this was Burlington’s first year, which is a good thing. I’d like to see more cities, including Toronto, hosting events like these. From what I’ve seen in Brantford and Burlington, there’d be no shortage of kids eager to attend and definitely no shortage of authors happy to present.