Edo van Belkom wins Silver Birch!

My great buddy Edo van Belkom just won the Ontario Library Association's Silver Birch Award. His winning book was Wolf Pack, which also won last year's Aurora Award. The Silver Birch is a gigantic award in Canada, and I'm totally thrilled for Edo.

The Silver Birch is voted on by kids in Ontario:

The Silver Birch Awards are given by Grade 4, 5 and 6 students in a spectacular ceremony held annually in May before fifteen hundred of their peers. The children choose winners in Fiction and Non-Fiction when they cast their ballots on the province-wide Voting Day earlier in the same month. It is the most democratic and unbiased process possible when the children make their choice. The program is administered by the Ontario Library Association and run by teacher-librarians and teachers in schools and by children's librarians in public libraries. But the choice belongs to the children. And, in their tens of thousands, they know what they are doing.

They most certainly do. Way to go, Edo!