How many authors have the pleasure of seeing their work chewed to bits? Emil wrote two board books for Annick Press in 2014 — A Button Story and A Pebble Story — both illustrated by Cindy Revell and both honoured by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre as amongst the Best Books for Kids & Teens 2015.
Emil’s debut young adult novel, Young Man With Camera, was published in Fall 2015 by Scholastic Canada and Arthur A. Levine Books in the U.S. Emil had the great pleasure of working with AALB executive editor Cheryl Klein and Scholastic Canada senior editor Anne Shone in shaping this story about a 13-year old with facial burns and a passion for photography who bears witness to an assault by a trio of adolescent terrors and comes face-to-face with a moral dilemma: does he share the incriminating photographs and put his best friend’s life at risk? “You will grow larger from having read this book,” writes acclaimed author Gary D. Schmidt.
Emil has two picture books in the works that will be published in the next few years: a story about a lost mitten, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher, comes out with Scholastic Canada in 2016. A story that unfolds entirely through sticky notes — Away — will be illustrated by Qin Leng and published by Groundwood Books in 2017.