A Gift of Music

When he was a young boy, Emile Benoit dreamed of having his own fiddle. All he had was a toy with some thread for strings. But on his twelfth birthday, he got a big surprise! His father had made a fiddle out of old violin parts. Soon he was amazing everyone by playing tunes he wrote himself. And by the time he was an adult, he had played his instrument all over the world. Alice Walsh and Geoff Butler are the author and illustrator of the highly successful Heroes of Isle aux Morts, published by Tundra Books. Alice Walsh also won national acclaim for her YA novel A Sky Black with Crows, published by Red Deer Press. It was nominated for the prestigious Anne Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature in 2008, and was chosen as one of the Canadian Children's Book Centre's Best Books for Kids and Teens in 2008.