Adrift at Sea

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's award-winning books for young people include Last Airlift, a Red Cedar Information Book Award winner and OLA Red Maple Honour Book. Its sequel, One Step at a Time, won the OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award. Her YA novel Dance of the Banished was a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2015. In 2008, in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the development Ukraine's culture, Marsha was awarded the Order of Princess Olha. She lives in Brantford, Ontario. Tuan Ho escaped Vietnam at age six in 1981 among thousands of other boat people refugees. Through author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch in the picture book Adrift at Sea, he has told the story of how he, his mother, and two sisters survived five days adrift on the ocean with dwindling fresh water before being rescued by a U.S. aircraft carrier. Joining the rest of his family in Canada, he went on to attend school in Toronto and is now an accomplished physiotherapist. Tuan and his wife Edae have two young daughters, Madeline and Emily. Brian Deines is a fine artist and the award-winning illustrator of over 20 children's books, including A Bear in War, Bear on the Homefront, The Road to Afghanistan, and On a Snowy Night. Dragonfly Kites, part of a trilogy written by Tomson Highway, was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for illustration and the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award. A graduate of the Alberta College of Art, Brian lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and daughter.