Lebox, Annette 1943-

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LeBOX, Annette 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born April 21, 1943, in England; married Edward Bates, 1970 (divorced); common-law wife of Michael Sather; children: (first marriage) Christian Bates, Sara Bates. Education: Simon Frasier University, bachelor of education, 1984; University of British Columbia, M.F.A. (creative writing), 1996. Hobbies and other interests: Conservation.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—21837 Laurie Ave., Maple Ridge, British Columbia V2X 7V9, Canada.

CAREER:

Novelist and author of children's books.

MEMBER:

Writers Union of Canada, British Columbia Federation of Writers, British Columbia Teachers' Federation, Pitt Polder Preservation Society, Burns Bog Conservation Society, International Crane Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS:

First prize, Maple Ridge Poetry Contest, 1995, for "i steal flowers"; Environmental Excellence Award (education), Burns Bog Conservation Society, 2003; Skipping Stones Book Award (nature and ecology), 2003, for Salmon Creek; Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Miss Rafferty's Rainbow Socks (picture book), illustrated by Heather Holbrook, HarperCollins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

The Princess Who Danced with Cranes (picture book), illustrated by Kasia Charko, Second Story Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.

Miracle at Willowcreek (young adult novel), Second Story Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

Wild Bog Tea (picture book), illustrated by Harvey Chan, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

Salmon Creek (picture book), illustrated by Karen Reczuch, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

Also author of poem "i steal flowers." Contributor of poetry to numerous literary magazines, including Dry Crik Review, Prairie Journal, Whetstone, Canadian Writer's Journal, and Poetry Canada; contributor of short stories to Grain and Fiddlehead. Short story "Man Watching His Sarongs Dry" included in Vintage '93, The League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Contest Anthology.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Mei-li's Journey, "a young-adult novel about a young Chinese girl who travels across the sea on a smuggler's ship and ends up working as a seamstress in a New York sweatshop. Magic realism and facts are blended into a tale of adventure and search for a family."

SIDELIGHTS:

Environmental activist and author Annette LeBox has combined her interests in several of her books for children and teens. Her second picture book, The Princess Who Danced with Cranes, is the story of a nature-loving princess who is slow to realize what she has lost when her father drains the local marsh to create larger playing fields for Gullywhupper, a sport played with a ball and mallet. When Princess Vivian realizes that the cranes that once lived in the marsh are nearly gone, she begins to tear down the dam that blocks water from entering the marsh, even though she too loves to play Gullywhupper. InThe Princess Who Danced with Cranes, LeBox's "smooth prose, with hints of poetry and humor, delivers a clear ecological message without becoming preachy," Christine Linge wrote in Canadian Book Review Annual. Similarly, Quill & Quire reviewer Barbara Greenwood found that the author's use of "a strong central image" and "a story form built around archetypal characters" allows her to "deliver a message without seeming didactic."

LeBox's next picture book, Wild Bog Tea, "demands more of the reader" than The Princess Who Danced with Cranes, Wendy A. Lewis commented in Quill & Quire, "but it's worth it." In Wild Bog Tea, LeBox illustrates the life cycle of a wetland as it evolves from marsh to peat bog to forest, parallel to the life cycle of a boy who enjoys visiting the area with his grandfather. After the boy has become an adult and a parent himself, he looks back on the time that the two spent walking together among the wetland's plants and animals, eating cranberries and plucking sprigs of Labrador tea to make the wild bog tea of the title. The story is "an interesting look at a unique habitat as well as a sensitive intergenerational tale," noted School Library Journal reviewer Judith Constantinides.

In Salmon Creek, LeBox for the first time tells an environmental story from the point of view of an animal rather than a human. The tale's hero is Sumi, a female coho salmon whom the reader first encounters as a freshly laid egg. Sumi hatches, is carried downstream past the predators who would make a meal out of the baby salmon, grows to adulthood, and then returns to the stream three years later to lay her own eggs. Told in rhythmic language that shifts between rhyme and free verse, Salmon Creek is a "stellar picture-book combination of fiction, science, and ecology," Ellen Mandel wrote in a review for Booklist.

LeBox's first picture book, Miss Rafferty's Rainbow Socks, is unique among her works in not having an environmental theme. The title character, Miss Aldona Rafferty, receives a magical pair of rainbow-colored socks for her seventh birthday. Every time she puts the socks on, she wants to dance, and since the socks keep getting bigger as she does, she never outgrows them. When Miss Rafferty is an old woman, she becomes friends with the little girl next door, Winnie Latham, and turns her rainbow socks into a marvelous doll for the child. As Bridget Donald wrote in a review of Miss Rafferty's Rainbow Socks for Quill & Quire, "The prose is delightfully rhythmic: flowing and elaborate in some places, sharp and tapping in others."

LeBox is also the author of the young-adult novel Miracle at Willowcreek, "a real treat for nature lovers," claimed Quill & Quire critic Hadley Dyer. Tess De Boer is an outsider in rural British Columbia. She grew up in the big eastern city of Toronto and only visited her grandfather's farm at Willowcreek in the summers. But after her grandfather dies, Tess and her mother move to the farm with her Uncle Randall. Tess's mother does not like being outdoors, and her uncle is hoping to sell the land to developers who want to build an amusement park there. Despite this, Tess makes friends with some locals who are trying to prevent a local flock of sandhill cranes from dying out, a project that conflicts directly with her uncle's plans. At the center of the plot is a baby crane named Miracle that Tess and her friends strive to raise and re-release into the wild. "Details about cranes and other aspects of nature are meticulously researched and threaded seamlessly into the text," providing an environmental education in addition to the book's "impressive …portrayal of the affinity that can exist between humans and animals," commented Canadian Book Review Annual contributor Sheree Haughian.

LeBox told CA: "I have come to writing late, only ten years ago. Once I discovered writing, I wanted to learn the craft as quickly as possible so I went back to school and earned my master's of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. I like my books to inspire as well as inform, which means that I spend a great deal of time doing research to ensure my books are accurate.

"I live near a beautiful wetland called the Pitt Polder that is home to an abundance of plants and wildlife. The Polder is a place that nourishes my spirit and inspires my writing. My second book, The Princess Who Danced with Cranes, is an allegory about the choices we make when we drain wetlands to build golf courses. When a housing development threatened the Polder in 1996, the issue sparked a fierce debate in our community. A small flock of greater sandhill cranes, only ten in total, were in danger of dying out if they lost their habitat. In an effort to prevent the rezoning by the municipality of Pitt Meadows, we formed an organization called the Pitt Polder Preservation Society. Against all odds, our society took the municipality to the Supreme Court of Canada and won our case. This experience inspired me to write the young adult novel Miracle at Willowcreek.

"In 1998 our group fought to protect Blaney Bog, the inspiration for my picture book Wild Bog Tea. Two years later, the bog was set aside as a regional park. For the past two years, we have been working to protect Blaney Creek, a salmon-bearing creek running through the Codd Island Wetlands. This fish habitat will be destroyed by a cranberry operation if it is not set aside as a conservation area. My latest book, Salmon Creek, is a plea to protect special places and the salmon that inhabit them. Sometimes fighting for a place I care for becomes overwhelming, and my art suffers. Yet for me, art and activism seem so closely intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. My challenge is to strike a balance between the two."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2001, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Wild Bog Tea, p. 740; January 1, 2003, Ellen Mandel, review of Salmon Creek, p. 881.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 1996, Ted McGee, review of Miss Rafferty's Rainbow Socks, p. 6055; 1997, Christine Linge, review of The Princess Who Danced with Cranes, pp. 479-480; 1998, Sheree Haughian, review of Miracle at Willowcreek, p. 512.

Canadian Materials, November 29, 2002, Valerie Nielsen, review of Salmon Creek.

Quill & Quire, June, 1996, Bridget Donald, review of Miss Rafferty's Rainbow Socks, p. 54; May, 1997, Barbara Greenwood, review of The Princess Who Danced with Cranes, p. 42; June, 1998, Annette Goldsmith, review of Miracle at Willowcreek, p. 61; June, 2001, Wendy A. Lewis, review of Wild Bog Tea, p. 51.

Resource Links, October, 2001, Gillian Richardson, review of Wild Bog Tea, p. 4; December, 2002, Jennifer Batycky, review of Salmon Creek, pp. 25-26.

St. Catharines Standard (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), November 14, 2001, Lian Goodall, "The 2001 Governor's General Award for Illustration."

School Library Journal, September, 2001, Judith Constantinides, review of Wild Bog Tea, p. 193.