awards
A Silver Birch Award for The Third Eye
Photo taken at Forest of Reading® Festival of Trees™ at Harbourfront Centre
Yesterday, I found myself outside amongst screaming fans numbering in the thousands … was I playing hooky from work and attending an outdoors concert? Nope, rather I was at the Festival of Trees, the culmination of the Forest of Reading Program, at the Habourfront Centre in Toronto, where Dundurn’s very own Mahtab Narsimhan won the Silver Birch Award Fiction for her novel The Third Eye! Congratulations Mahtab!
All I can say is WOW! It was a truly spectacular event!  More than 250,000 students province wide voted for their favourite book and it all culminates in a two day festival.  The Habourfront grounds were filled with tents set up for author signings, face painting, and carnival like games and were overrun with more than 6000 students who were all there to cheer on their favourite author in seven different categories. The first thought that came to my head, after thinking how on earth am I going to locate our authors was I so would have loved this when I was a kid/teen. I’ve often described my job to my friends as being part cheerleader. And it was nice being surrounded by a group of kids who love and support not only The Third Eye but also Reading the Bones by Gina McMurchy-Barber which was also nominated for a Silver Birch Award, and Perilous Passage by B.J. Bayle which was nominated for the Red Maple Award as much as I do. And I must confess that I found myself hollering and clapping as loud as the students were when The Third Eye won!
Mahtab with her award
Next up for Mahtab is The Silver Anklet, the second book in the Tara Trilogy. Watch this blog for an upcoming video interview with Mahtab.
And the winners are:
The Blue Spruce Award (kindergarten – grade two): Chester, written and illustrated by Melanie Watt (Kids Can Press)
Silver Birch Award Fiction (grade three – six): The Third Eye by Mahtab Narsimhan (Dundurn)
Silver Birch Award Non-Fiction (grade three -six): Gold Medal for Weird by Kevin Sylvester (Kids Can Press)
Silver Birch Award Express (grade three – six): Dear Sylvia by Alan Cumyn (Groundwood Books)
The Red Maple Fiction Award (grade seven – eight): Out of the Cold by Norah McClintock (Scholastic Canada)
The Red Maple Non-Fiction Award (grade seven – eight): Royal Murder: The Deadly Intrigue of the Ten Sovereigns by Elizabeth MacLeod (Annick Press)
The White Pine Award (high-school): Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (TOR)
Tags: About the author
Erin is a publicist for Dundurn Press. She reads a wide variety of books (maybe even too many!) and wields a vast amount of positively optimistic power over what should and shouldn't be done in the universe.
Discussion
4 comments for “A Silver Birch Award for The Third Eye”
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Not only is Mahtab a talented writer, she’s a genuinely warm, gracious and kind human being.
I’m thrilled for her!
[...] For instance The Third Eye by Mahtab Narsimhan. Last week, I wrote about The Third Eye winning the Silver Birch Award. And as promised here is a video interview with Mahtab discussing the Silver Birch, The Third [...]
I thought this was an awesome book and there’s absaloualy amazing charecters. My favourite was Tara. She’s awesome, adventurus and brave. She’s very helpful and she’ll do anything to save her family and her family back togrther.
[...] of them to be exact, of: Pilgrim in the Palace of Words, Something Remains, Minerva’s Voyage, The Silver Anklet, Polish Orphans of Tengeru; and a hardcover box of Frances Gage. That’s a lot of books! And [...]