A Bookish Summer Project: Exploring Canadian Awards for Children’s and Young Adult Literature (Part One)

Crippling social anxiety and imposter syndrome aside, on February 12, 2025, I pressed send on a painstakingly crafted Instagram message to Susan Pi. Earlier that month, I’d learned that Susan was launching her own publishing house, Rebel Goose Books, and immediately told my husband, Jeremy. I was floored by the feat, especially since she was doing it all within her first year of motherhood.

While chatting with Jeremy (ever-encouraging and acutely aware of my interest in publishing), he suggested I message Susan to “put out some feelers” and see if she had any work. Cue a week and a half of nervous sweats and overthinking whether I should actually hit send.

I first met Susan in 2023 at a local dance studio. We were both in an adult contemporary class. She was trying something new, and I was revisiting an old love. Over several months, we learned and performed a dance to Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” a song about childbirth. Fast forward two years: We’re both moms to beautiful toddlers, just months apart in age.

I didn’t expect anything from messaging Susan beyond a polite “I’ll keep you in mind.” So when, by May, she asked me to create a spreadsheet of Canadian awards for children’s and YA literature, I was elated. Susan may be horrified to learn that I (a millennial–Gen Z cusp kid raised on technology) had never actually used a spreadsheet before. But I was armed with an “I’ve given birth to a human; how hard can this be?” mindset and the belief that every skill is learnable if you’re willing to learn.

Together we decided that the deadline for completing the project would be the end of summer. I was also asked to include columns for information like submission protocols, award genres, eligibility, and so on. Beyond these directions, I was given the freedom to run with the project and create whatever schedule made sense for me. Since having my son, I’ve been a full-time stay-at-home mom. Before that, I spent my whole life in school. First theatre, then history and English, with a focus on disability studies and minority identities. Suffice it to say, as my first foray into work postpartum, stepping into a project that was essentially organizing research felt like putting on a favourite old sweater–comforting, familiar, methodical.

Over the course of the summer, I learned to maintain focus and momentum, even with the occasional interruption from a rambunctious toddler eager to help Mama work on the “puter.” I gathered and organized all the necessary information, refining the spreadsheet as I went. As the summer progressed, my spreadsheet skills improved, my fear of cold emailing faded (thanks partly to exposure therapy and partly to the realization that good things really can come from putting yourself out there), and my confidence in balancing work and motherhood grew.

I tucked away all of the needed information into the designated columns on the spreadsheet, made the information as uniform and digestible as possible, and on August 20 I sent it all off to Susan for approval.

Hitting “send” felt like the perfect closing chapter to a summer project that left me with a deep appreciation for Canadian book awards and the people behind them. They all go beyond simply celebrating literature. They uplift stories by amplifying minority voices and diverse perspectives, helping them reach a wider audience. These awards give authors the means to keep creating and sharing their ideas, and they introduce young readers to books that can broaden their worldviews, spark their imagination, and open them to experiences different from their own.

This project was such a joy to work on. Not only did it help me to rekindle the scholarly piece of myself that I had let go dormant in motherhood, it gave me a new appreciation for how much literature is being made in my own backyard. It also, fortunately and unfortunately, gave me an ever-growing list of books to add to my family’s children’s library.

In Part Two, I’ll share five Canadian children’s and YA book awards that every book lover (and future author) should know about and why they matter.