Jackson Reads

I spent a wonderful day today at A.Y. Jackson Secondary School in North York (part of Toronto), as the guest author for the "Jackson Reads" celebration.

I did events all day long: an assembly for all the grade-10 students in the morning; lunch (Swiss Chalet chicken!) with the faculty; and two afternoon sessions, one with ESL (English as a Second Language) students, and one with a mixed group, including Writers' Craft (creative writing) students. It was a blast, and I had a great time -- and, to my surprise, sold a ton of books to students!

Special moment: one of the students brought along a copy of the Chinese edition of Calculating God for me to sign (Jackson is a very culturally diverse school).

The students were polite, intelligent, and asked really tough questions, ranging from "Do you believe in God?" to "How much money do you make?" (I got a laugh when I said, "More than your principal.")

I started my talk to the grade-10s by saying I'd spent the summer 30 years ago at their school (the North York Board of Education had a special summer enrichment program for the top 30 math/science students who had just finished grade 11 drawn from all the Board's schools back then; it was held at A.Y. Jackson) -- and I told them how I'd taken a girl I'd met at Jackson on a date to a little SF movie that summer called Star Wars ...

Truly a great day!

Above: sign on a display of my books in the Jackson library; below, the grade-10 assembly in the cafetorium.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site