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2004
finalists.

2004 Hackmatack

Children's Choice Book Award/Prix littéraire - le choix de jeunes

Of the 3,200 people who died during the smallpox epidemic in 1885, 2,500 of them were children under the age of 10. In A Season of Sorrow, smallpox, which lurked on the periphery of Dark Spring, descends upon Marie-Claire and her family. How they, their community and the church cope with the epidemic, as well as with the controversial vaccine meant to guard against it, is the focus of this story.

Kathy Stinson is the author of more than 20 books, including Red Is Best, a picture book that won the Toronto Chapter IODE Award; One Year Commencing, a novel nominated for B.C.'s Red Cedar Award; King of the Castle, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Silver Birch Award; and two novels in the acclaimed Our Canadian Girl series. In 1996 she received the Bicentennial Civic Award of Merit from the City of Scarborough. She lives in Everton, Ontario, a small hamlet near Guelph, where she continues to write full time.

Thematic Links

• Smallpox
• Illness and epidemics
• Montreal epidemic
• French-Canadians
• Louis Riel

Suggested Activities

• Write a letter to Marie-Claire telling her what surprised you most about life in Montreal in 1885. Invite her to come (if she could) to visit you where you live in present day. Mention what aspects of your home and community you think would surprise her.
• Offer to read the Marie-Claire books to women in a senior's residence in your community. Invite the women to talk about when they were girls. Ask them how things were different from, and the same as, both now and when Marie-Claire was a girl.