Featured Author: Anna Maria Kerz

Bibliography at Orca

The Mealworm Diaries: Mealworms are small creatures that live in dark secret places. Jeremy is a bit like that when he leaves his home in rural Nova Scotia and moves to Toronto with his mother. Lots of things keep him from enjoying his new life, but the worst is his science partner, Aaron, who is more annoying than sand in a bathing suit. Jeremy is also burdened by the secret he carries about the motorcycle accident that injured him and killed his father. Although Jeremy is haunted by his past, he starts to feel at home in Toronto when he realizes he has some skills he can share with his classmates. And when his mealworm project yields some surprising results, Jeremy is finally able to talk about his part in the fatal accident.

Interview

At what point in your life did you decide to start writing? When I was small I listened to stories told around our kitchen table, on the radio, at school, and at the library; and then I started to read, and never stopped. I didn’t do a lot of writing, because to write well you had to know how to spell, and you had to be neat. I was a lousy speller, so I used easy words and kept my stories short. That way I didn’t have to spend too much time rewriting the good copy. Luckily, I always had friends that loved to ‘pretend’ and we turned our games into stories.As a teacher, I did some storytelling in the classroom, and when I taught primary grades I wrote little books the students could read on their own. They weren’t hugely exciting, but the topics fit the classroom curriculum. And then I retired. Knowing that I’d miss working with children I took courses to develop my telling and writing skills and now I work as a professional storyteller. I share my tales with listeners of all ages, and I write books for children. It’s possible that those books still fit a curriculum, but I no longer worry if they don’t.. 

Do you put your family and friends in your books? Different people in my family appear in my picture book: When Katie Comes to Visit and some of the events in The Gnome’s Eye are based on real events, but nobody I know is in The Mealworm Diaries. The settings are real but the characters and the plot came out of my imagination.

Did you enjoy reading as a child? Thinking back on things, I’m actually surprised that I love books. As I remember it, learning to read was a traumatic, painful experience. That happened because I brought home my grade one reader to show my parents how much I knew. I was pretty proud of myself. I could rattle off the words in that book at a great rate of speed. But then I got a little ahead of myself, and I ‘read’ so fast, that I was reading the words on the next page before my mother turned it over, and my parents realized I wasn’t reading at all. I had memorized the text. That evening, and for several evenings thereafter, they made me read my book again, and again, and again; back to front, bottom to top, word by painful word. I cried and cried, but between my tears I learned to read.

Biography

Anna Kerz loves stories that touch the heart and tickle the funny bone. Now that she's retired from teaching, she fills her time by working as a storyteller, telling tales to audiences of all ages, and by writing books for children. She lives in Scarborough, Ontario.