"Each
book
in
the
Owen Skye trilogy has its unique charm, but Dear Sylvia, Ottawa author Alan Cumyn's last book in the series, is his
best."
-- Aida Hudson, The Ottawa Citizen
Sylvia
Tull-- the girl whose very
glance turns Owen's face into a burning tomato -- has moved away from a
small village where Owen lives with his parents and two brothers. But he still has the
birthday
gift she gave him -- a stationery set, complete with stamped envelopes
-- because she wants him to keep sending her stories.
So Owen nervously begins to write Sylvia about all the things that are going on in his life. How his little brother, Leonard, got his head stuck in the bannister. The disastrous camping trip with his irritating girl cousins. How his new baby cousin will only stop screaming if Owen carries her.
And he tells her about the most bewildering drama to hit the Skye
household yet, when the boy's father quits his insurance job to write a
novel, and all the Skyes have to cope with the consequences.
Readers
and writers of all ages will easily identify as Owen wrestles with his
poor spelling, with his writer's insecurity, and with his deep desire
to tell Sylvia the truth about what is going on in his life, and in his
heart.
Winner
of
the
Silver
Birch Express Award ***** Short-listed for the
Canadian Library Association's Book
of
the
Year
for Children
"Cumyn's ear for
the poetry of children's
language – especially children's insouciant storytelling – gives Owen's
letters
perfect comic timing.... This book would make a superb object of study
for storytelling techniques, for teachers of all sorts of students. In
fact,
from a literary point of view, Dear Sylvia is a masterful
concoction
of theme, character, place, humour, pathos, an oh-so-remarkably nuanced
narrative voice and lots of other things.... Dear
Sylvia is
eventful, funny, openhearted and wise."
--Deirdre
Baker, The Toronto Star
"Cumyn's
prose is at its best in Dear Sylvia,
illuminating
Owen's
imagination,
his inner longings and the magic of
the budding writer in him. Each of his letters is a story, and yet his
collection of letters is also a tight-knit extended narrative, making Dear Sylvia a superb epistolary
novel.... "
--Aida
Hudson, The Ottawa Citizen
Listen to Alan
Cumyn reading from Dear Sylvia (4 minutes, 1.5 MB).
Read an excerpt.
Dear Sylvia is now on Youtube!
Return
to Alan Cumyn's
Homepage.