Carol-Ann Hoyte’s new book wins one prize, nominated for another

And the Crowd Goes Wild, a new anthology of children’s poetry about sports created, co-edited and self-published by Selwyn House Assistant Librarian Carol-Ann Hoyte, has won a bronze medal in the 2012 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Five Canadian titles were selected by a panel of educators, librarians, booksellers, and reviewers to receive the awards, which recognize the best in North American children’s and young adult writing and illustration.

This week it was announced that the book has also been nominated for the 2012 Cybils (Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) in the United States.

Subtitled A Global Gathering of Sports Poems, the book is a compilation of 50 poems on a sports theme, written by poets from Canada, the U.S., England, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Wales, Australia, Liberia and Ghana.

Her book is becoming a runaway success since its publication. It is already on the shelves of The Poetry Library in London, England and the New York Public Library. It has been listed among the top 100 children’s sports books on Amazon.ca.

The book has “taken on a life of its own,” says Carol-Ann, having already sold 100 copies in only three weeks. “And it’s really exciting to have won an award so soon”.

Carol-Ann says shehad always wanted to create a publishing opportunity for up-and-coming poets, and hit up on the sports poetry idea because people don’t often associate poetry with sports, even though there is a precedent for it in the works of ancient Greek poets like Pindar.

Initially, her idea was to feature only unknown poets, but when J. Patrick Lewis, the current U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate, asked to submit work for the book, she could not refuse him. “I’m a big fan of his,” she says, “so I was honoured.”

Carol-Annhad already made a name for herself as a children’s poet and writer about children’s literature. She has had poems published in The School Magazine, the premiere children’s literature magazine in Australia for nearly a century, has had three poems included in Poetry Friday, an anthology of 75 of today’s top poets writing for kids.

Her instincts told her the time was right to undertake her own book. Enlisting Heidi Bee Roemer as her co-editor and renowned children’s author, illustrator and CBC sportscaster Kevin Sylvester, she decided to go for self-publishing through FriesenPress in Victoria, B.C. “I didn’t want to leave it to someone else to decide whether or not the book would happen,” she says, “and I wanted to show you can self-publish something of quality.”

A portion of the proceeds from And the Crowd Goes Wild go to Right to Play, a global organization that uses the transformative power of playing sports and games to educate and empower children facing adversity.

The book is available at Babar Books in Westmount and Pointe Clair and on Amazon.ca, and is on the shelves of the Wanstall Library at Selwyn House and several public libraries, including the Westmount Public Library.