After almost 170,000 votes tallied, here's the winning story of our Pick-A-Munsch contest!
In Fall 2010, Scholastic Canada launched a promotion that allowed young readers to help select the story by Robert Munsch to be published as his 30th book with Scholastic Canada. After close to 170,000 votes tallied, the fans have spoken — here are the details of the winning story:
Cheryl and her dad go ice fishing, but it turns out that the fish are pretty smart. They are trying to catch the people right back! In the end, Cheryl and her father bring home something really good . . . and it's not a fish at all!
This story was inspired by a young girl in Rigolet, Labrador. Twenty years ago Robert Munsch went ice fishing with a girl named Cheryl and her father, and this story was born. He has performed it live for many years now, but it has never appeared in book form before. Scholastic Canada is proud to bring this wonderful, whimsical tale to young readers everywhere!
Robert Munsch is Canada's bestselling author. Long before he started writing books, he was a storyteller. The first time he told his stories to a group of children was in 1972, when he was a student teacher at their nursery school. The children liked his stories, so he started telling them more often. He would often take the same story and tell it again and again, changing it a little bit each time, until it got to be really good. Kids liked how loud and animated he was while he told them stories, so he kept doing that, too. This would become his signature storytelling style.
Eventually, once his stories got really, really good, he wrote them down and sent them to a publisher. The publisher said “Yes!” to the story that became the book Mud Puddle. Today, more than 50 Robert Munsch books have been published. Some, like Love You Forever, became runaway international bestsellers. Some, like The Paper Bag Princess and Zoom!, challenge conventions and stereotypes. But nearly ALL of them are based on real kids that Robert Munsch has met, often on his tours and travels. Sometimes, as in Finding Christmas and Pyjama Day!, he even uses his own family. Each book is dedicated to the kid or kids it is based on.
While Robert Munsch has countless fans across North America (he receives about 10,000 letters a year!) his books are also popular around the world. They have been translated into over 20 languages, from Arabic to Swedish, including several First Nations languages. Robert Munsch has received many awards for his work as an author and storyteller. He has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the Order of Canada, and a school named in his honour!
Robert Munsch was even once a kid himself. He grew up in a large family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now that he’s grown up and has (grown-up) kids of his own, he lives with his wife in Guelph, Ontario, where you can often find him on long walks with his dog.
Michael Martchenko has always loved to draw. He started off drawing new pictures for his favourite comic books, then went to art school and became the art director at an advertising agency. His first picture book was Robert Munsch's The Paper Bag Princess. Now he writes and illustrates picture books full time from his studio in Toronto, Ontario. He has collaborated with Robert Munsch on many titles, including, Mmm, Cookies!, We Share Everything, Alligator Baby, Makeup Mess, Up, Up, and Down, Andrew's Loose Tooth, Playhouse, More Pies and Zoom! He has also illustrated his own books, and such popular titles as Oonga Boonga. Michael loves to include sub-plots and visual jokes in his books — watch for the chickens in Playhouse, and see if you can spot Michael and Robert Munsch at the bus stop in More Pies!
