By Mike Levin

Like most successful writers, Ottawa’s Tim Wynne-Jones is overtly cynical about literary awards. His body of work runs to 30 books, mostly for children and young adults, which have won dozens of trophies and plaques, including two Governor General’s Awards for children’s literature.

Tim Wynne-Jones. Photo by Mike Levin

Yet he’s treating his recent nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Award with kid gloves. The nomination is for the contribution that his entire written repertoire has made to the youth genre. “In my world it means so much,” is pretty much all Wynne-Jones will say about the world’s most-prestigious citation in children’s writing. It’s almost as if he really wants to win it and doesn’t want to jinx his chances.

There are 27 other writers from 27 other countries on the Andersen short list. (Canadian Stephane Jorisch is competing against 30 others in the illustrator’s category). And therein may lie the reason for Wynne-Jones’ reticence.

“It’s an odd award because it’s truly international, and children’s books are so culture-specific,” he says. It seems almost impossible to choose among writers whose literary protagonists wander through life scenarios with wildly varying socioeconomic assumptions. Being categorized by the  International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) on the same page as Sweden’s Lennart Hellsing or Brazil’s Bartolomeu Campos de Queiros, both internationally renowned poets and writers, has to be intimidating.

Then again, unlike literature for adults, maybe kids book reveal how similar a globalized world can be.

The nomination is sweet for Wynne-Jones because 12 years ago his writing well “was empty. All I could see was this threat of copying myself.” His creativity did return, but he’s never forgotten the reminder that there are no sure things.

Which is why, when the Andersen winners are announced in March, he’ll be on a year’s furlough in England with wife Amanda Lewis, executive director of the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama (OSSD).

Amanda Lewis. Photo by Mike Levin

“Neither of us is going to get a chance to retire, so we decided we’d better get the batteries up to full for the next part (of our lives),” says Wynne-Jones , who was born in the U.K. He says they have assiduously avoided making specific plans for the year, although he wants to walk England’s southwest coast and she wants to sit in cafes and pubs, listening and watching.

For Lewis it will be a chance to reconnect with the reasons why she ventured into arts in the first place. “In (my) job there are no boundaries between who I am and what I do. It’s how I’ve always structured my life. I need this time to write and think, to stretch and breathe.”

Erin Downey-Silcoff will take over as the OSSD’s artistic director while Lewis is away. She’s a producer of TV and documentary films and is currently the director of the Montreal Children’s Theatre.

England will give the couple a chance to spend time with daughter Maddy, who runs the Tempered Body Dance Company in London. It also coincides with the U.K launch, in the fall, of Wynne-Jones’ newest book Blink and Caution.

There’s another piece of the puzzle that no matter how hard he tries, Wynne-Jones won’t be able to avoid. He is, after all, a writer, with a fourth, and final, Rex Zero book in process. In Deep is due out next summer, and he won’t be able to stay away from it. The elements that made the IBBY take notice of his body of work are also the ones that have made the Rex Zero series so popular – great narrative mixed with cultural context.

The first book took place in 1964 during the Gulf-of-Tonkin incident that ultimately committed the United States to full involvement in the Vietnam War. In Deep happens  two years later and uses the Cold War as a young-adult spine chiller. “He’s 13 now and falls in love,” Wynne-Jones says of Rex. “I’m going to leave it there.”

Which is exactly what he wants to do this August – just leave everything there, for at least 12 months. What comes after is as cryptic as Rex Zero’s love life: “Once you take that first pill, there’s no sure thing anymore,” he says.

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Arts Park in Hintonburg is one of those neighbourhood festivals that brings out the exceptional artistic and musical talent that most people don’t know much about. Last year local Amanda Rheaume (left) was the stage headliner. No word yet on this year’s lineup for May 28 next to the Parkdale Market. But it will be good.