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WORK TITLE: Wise Up! Wise Down!
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CITY: Toronto
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COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
LAST VOLUME: SATA 400
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PERSONAL
Born June 11, 1968, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; son of James and Glen Lawson; married Amy Freedman (a family physician), 1997; children: Sophie, Asher, Joseph.
EDUCATION:Attended St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, 1987-88; McGill University, B.A., 1993; attended McMaster University, 1993; Humber College, TESL Certificate, 2001.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Beth Tikvah Group Home, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, group home counselor, 1992-96; McCarthy-Tetrault Law Firm, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, library clerk, 1996-97; University of Toronto, information services technician, 1997; ESL instructor, Humber College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, beginning 2002; Simmons University, Boston, MA, children’s poetry writing instructor; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, writing instructor.
AWARDS:Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry, four times, including 2007, for Black Stars in a White Night Sky, 2009, for A Voweller’s Bestiary, and 2013, for Enjoy It While It Hurts; Best Illustrated Children’s Books citation, New York Times, Governor’s General Literary Award for Best Illustrated Book, and Prix Libbylit (Belgium), all 2015, Alcuin Society Award, Notable Children’s Books designation, American Library Association, and Cybils Fiction Picture Book Award, all 2016, all for Sidewalk Flowers; Best Book for Kids and Teens selection, Canadian Children’s Book Centre, 2018, for Leap!.
WRITINGS
Contributor to The Chechens: A Handbook, edited by Amjad Jaimoukha, Routledge (New York, NY), 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Exile, Descant, and Madrugada. Author’s work has been translated into several languages, including Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch French, German, Korean, Japanese, and Spanish.
SIDELIGHTS
JonArno Lawson is a Canadian writer of Danish descent who has gained wide recognition for his children’s verse. Beginning with The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, Lawson’s evocative poetry collections include Black Stars in a White Night Sky, The Hobo’s Crowbar, Over the Rooftops, under the Moon, and Wise Up! Wise Down!, as well as illustrated picture-books such as Over the Shop, The Playgrounds of Babel, and the award-winning Sidewalk Flowers. Noting that Lawson’s “whimsical wordplay shows off his skills to advantage” in The Hobo’s Crowbar, Susan Waggoner in ForeWord added that the representative collection “does everything poetry should do, offering fresh perspectives on the familiar while teasing the imagination.”
Lawson was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and grew up in the town of Dundas. He credits a single year during childhood with sparking his writer’s imagination: At age eight, he lived in Florida and managed to avoid almost a year of school. Instead, he spent his days roaming local beaches in search of treasures; visiting nature parks where he saw parrots, monkeys, and other exotic creatures; and playing imaginary games in which he could be a ship’s captain wielding a sword and musket. Later in life, Lawson found further inspiration by studying the lyrics of contemporary songs penned by writers such as Jim Copp and Tom Lehrer. He began writing poetry while working in academic-oriented jobs, and he published his first poems for adults in the late 1990s.
Lawson’s debut verse collection for young readers, The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, was published in 2004, with illustrations by Sherwin Tjia. Here he shares forty-five poems that reviewers have compared to the work of such masters of the genre as Shel Silverstein and Karla Kuskin. His verses’ witty conceits are highlighted by inspired wordplay which often accentuates sound over meaning. The result, stated Booklist contributor Jennifer Mattson, is a collection that “revel[s] in intriguing nonsense fantasy” and appeals to a child’s innate delight in linguistic play.
Black Stars in a White Night Sky earned Lawson the 2007 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Often light and humorous, several of the poems here employ fascinating shifts in expectations and perceptions; others express simple but profound emotion. Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman deemed the collection “uproarious” and noted that it mixes “slapstick, puns, parodies, and sheer absurdity with lots of wry ideas.” For one example, Rochman cited the image of Humpty Dumpty perched atop a nest of eggs, trying but failing to protect his shell from breaking when the chick inside him attempts to hatch. Praising the poet’s “perfect rhythms, intelligence and playfulness,” Deirdre Baker added in the Toronto Star that in Black Stars in a White Night Sky Lawson “shows that poetry for children can be both approachable and profound.”
Illustrated by Nahid Kazemi, Over the Rooftops, under the Moon allows readers to follow the nocturnal wanderings of a white-feathered bird as it encounters a range of environments and the shifting seasons that drive it to migrate. Written in the second-person, Lawson’s text articulates the bird’s perceptions, its spare commentary “as porous and open to interpretation” as Kazemi’s “smudgy, mixed-media paintings,” according to a Kirkus Reviews writer. Characterizing Over the Rooftops, under the Moon as a “spare, introspective offering,” Lauren Strohecker added in School Library Journal that the poet’s “lyrical text” may inspire listeners to ponder what it means to be “both … an independent entity and … part of a community.”
In A Voweller’s Bestiary: From Aardvark to Guineafowl (and H), Lawson presents an off-beat version of the traditional abecedary. Rather than structuring his book around initial letters, he includes poems based on words with similar vowel combinations, such as “angry jays play abysmally” and “Hurry furry husky puppy!” In a contribution to the Porcupine’s Quill website, Lawson explained that such wordplay is too often dismissed as inappropriate in western culture, leading to a lack of awareness of the creative potential of words. “It interested me how etymologically unrelated synonyms and antonyms often shared exactly the same vowels (Magician/wizard; happy/angry …),” he noted. Sensitive to such amusing patterns, Lawson found it to be “a shame … that there wasn’t a collection of lipograms anywhere written for children in particular.” He intended that A Voweller’s Bestiary fill that niche in a way that is both original and inspiring.
Following a walk with his young daughter, Lawson conceived Sidewalk Flowers, a wordless story that was published with illustrations by Sydney Smith. It was late spring and the two were in urban Toronto, walking along Bathurst Street, when the girl began absentmindedly singing and picking stray flowers. Returning home, she used the flowers to decorate her mother’s hair and her baby brother’s hat, then gave some to her other brother before sweetly proceeding with her day. As Lawson later told Roger Sutton in Horn Book, “What struck me was how unconscious the whole thing was. She wasn’t doing it for praise, she was just doing it. I thought that would make a beautiful little book.” In the view of a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the poet’s work here offers “a reminder that what looks like play can sometimes be a sacrament,” while in Booklist, Sarah Hunter called Sidewalk Flowers “a quiet, graceful book about the perspective-changing wonder of humble, everyday pleasures.” The collaborative picture book received several honors, including Canada’s prestigious Governor’s General Literary Award.
Lawson shares another lyrical story inspired by his own family in Uncle Holland, a work featuring illustrations by Natalie Nelson. As a youth, Uncle Holland was a troublemaker and was caught by the police some thirty-seven times. Faced with the choice either to go to jail or enlist in the army, he chose the latter, and his stint in the military changed his life for the better, but in an unexpected way. The young man discovered that he had a talent for painting, and instead of stealing things he wanted, he could possess them by painting them. With enough practice, Holland was soon earning money with his artwork and sending it home to his parents. Nelson capture’s Holland’s evolution from ne’er do well to artist in digital collage illustrations that mix photographs, ink drawings, and charcoals. Writing in Resource Links, Tanya Boudreau suggested that Lawson’s “story of atonement is suitable for the youngest of audiences,” while Booklist writer Briana Shemroske called Uncle Holland “uncommonly droll and quietly thought-provoking” and “a delightfully offbeat testament to being delightfully offbeat.”
Illustrated by Josée Bisaillon, the award-winning Leap! finds Lawson appealing to a range of readers, both young children and their older storytellers. His animated verses chronicle a chain of animal reactions: an abruptly awakened flea jumps, startling a grasshopper, which startles a rabbit, and so on. Building momentum with each turn of the page, Leap! features a “propulsive verse” that builds “a crescendo of energy that eventually abates,” according to a Publishers Weekly critic. The book’s “liveliness … echoes the energy of the active-verb text,” observed Carolyn Shute in Horn Book Guide, but by the final page both Lawson’s animal characters and his young audience have regained a calm appropriate to storytelling time. The “vibrant, watercolor-inspired mixed-media illustrations” contributed by Bisaillon “capture the fullness of the domino effect of Lawson’s action-packed lyric,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews critic, also praising Leap!
In Think Again, Lawson aimed his poetry specifically at middle graders, moving away from word and letter games and focusing on relationships. Featuring preteens and young teenagers talking about parents, siblings, friends, and romantic interests, the poems he shares here help readers reflect on relationships in their own lives. A Kirkus Reviews writer declared of Think Again that “ever playful, the poet’s pithy quatrains distill relational truths to their essence.” Daniel Kraus observed in Booklist that Lawson’s “humble and poignant collection” is “an ideal book for wandering, wondering romantics.”
The Playgrounds of Babel was inspired by an incident from the author’s childhood. Following a six-month stay in Germany, Lawson’s best friend returned home unable to remember the English language, making it nearly impossible for the two boys to communicate. When Lawson was later introduced to the Tower of Babel story from the book of Genesis, which explains the origins of the world’s different languages, he recognized the similarities between that narrative and his own experience.
Illustrated by Piet Grobler, The Playgrounds of Babel offers “a simple, heartening tale about myth, ingenuity, and the human need to connect,” in the words of Quill & Quire reviewer Emily Donaldson. A group of children listen as an elderly woman recounts a story; one boy has difficulty understanding her and another offers to translate. The woman’s story, a reimagining of the Biblical tale, concerns a pair of girls who discover a special way to communicate with one another even though they speak different languages. “Conveyed entirely through dialogue, back-and-forth questioning between listening child and translating child moves the action forward but also prompts musings on belief and story,” a writer observed in Kirkus Reviews.
Another wordless tale by Lawson, Over the Shop features detailed ink-and-watercolor artwork by Qin Leng. Hoping to find a tenant for the dilapidated apartment above their tiny family store, a youngster and her cantankerous grandparent place a “For Rent” sign in the window. Most of the prospective occupants find the space too shabby and grubby for their liking, but after a biracial, nongender couple expresses an interest in the apartment, the little girl must convince her gruff caretaker to let them have the flat. “This meticulously detailed tale spreads a heartwarming message of renewal, hope, friendship, and compassion,” Mary Lanni noted in School Library Journal, and aPublishers Weekly critic described Over the Shop as “a story about warmth, hospitality, and the way human beings can learn to change at any age.”
Larson collaborated again with Leng on the wordless picture book A Day for Sandcastles. Here, a family of five takes a bus to the beach. There, the adults relax underneath an umbrella while the three children commence building sandcastles near the water. Alas, when the waves continually beat down the castles, forcing the children to rebuild, the adults recommend a building site further away from the water. However, the kids find that they enjoy the process of building and rebuilding. “Lawson creates a portrait of the best kind of childhood learning curve—slow, cooperative, independent, and made with little more than sand and water,” noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. A Kirkus Reviews contributor also praised the volume, remarking, “A wondrous wordless picture book that will make readers want to grab a sand bucket and head to the beach.”
In addition to his work for children, Lawson has penned several poetry collections for adults and also compiled the anthology Inside Out: Children’s Poets Discuss Their Work. Here he invited a range of poets to submit one original poem together with an explanation of their motive and approach in writing it. Elizabeth Bird, in a review in School Library Journal, recommended Inside Out for displaying “a brilliant cross-section of style, levels, and reasons why people write poetry for children and what both they and their audiences get out of the experience.”
(open new)The poetry collection, Wise Up! Wise Down!: A Poetic Conversation, presents a conversation between poets living on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, where Lawson collaborated with poet John Agard and illustrator Satoshi Kitamura. The paired poems give commentary on a range of diverse themes, including pigeons, fingers, hats, and pets. At the end of the book, there are instructions for young readers wishing to create their own set of paired poems. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that the book of poetry offered “stimulating exchanges, often veering off in unexpected directions.(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 15, 2006, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, p. 45; February 15, 2008, Hazel Rochman, review of Black Stars in a White Night Sky, p. 76; March 15, 2010, Daniel Kraus, review of Think Again, p. 40; March 15, 2015, Sarah Hunter, review of Sidewalk Flowers, p. 80; April 1, 2017, Briana Shemroske, review of Uncle Holland, p. 84; November 1, 2020, Carolyn Phelan, review of Over the Shop, p. 66.
Canadian Review of Materials, November 1, 2019, Kristen Ferguson, review of The Playgrounds of Babel; March 5, 2021, Todd Kyle, review of Over the Shop.
Children’s Bookwatch, August 1, 2008, review of A Voweller’s Bestiary: From Aardvark to Guineafowl (and H); March, 2015, review of Sidewalk Flowers.
ForeWord, May 15, 2017, Susan Waggoner, review of The Hobo’s Crowbar.
Horn Book, May 1, 2015, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Sidewalk Flowers, p. 91; May 1, 2017, Minh Le, review of Uncle Holland, p. 80; March 1, 2021, Megan Dowd Lambert, review of Over the Shop, p. 63.
Horn Book Guide, March 22, 2013, Rebecca Reed Whidden, review of Old MacDonald Had Her Farm, p. 34; September 22, 2018, Carolyn Shute, review of Leap!, p. 13.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2008, review of Black Stars in a White Night Sky; March 1, 2010, review of Think Again; September 15, 2012, review of Old MacDonald Had Her Farm; January 15, 2015, review of Sidewalk Flowers; February 1, 2017, review of Uncle Holland; July 15, 2017, review of Leap!; January 15, 2019, review of Over the Rooftops, under the Moon; May 1, 2019, review of The Playgrounds of Babel; October 15, 2020, review of Over the Shop; March 15, 2022, review of A Day for Sandcastles; December 15, 2024, review of Wise Up! Wise Down!: A Poetic Conversation.
Publishers Weekly, January 12, 2015, review of Sidewalk Flowers, p. 57; July 24, 2017, review of Leap!, p. 56; October 19, 2020, review of Over the Shop, p. 66; November 23, 2012, review of A Day for Sandcastles, p. 12.
Quill & Quire, September 1, 2019, Emily Donaldson, review of The Playgrounds of Babel.
Resource Links, February 1, 2015, Tanya Boudreau, review of Sidewalk Flowers, p. 5; April 1, 2017, Tanya Boudreau, review of Uncle Holland, p. 6.
School Library Journal, October 1, 2006, Kristen Oravec, review of The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, p. 179; April 1, 2008, Lauralyn Persson, review of Black Stars in a White Night Sky, p. 165; March, 2019, Lauren Strohecker, review of Over the Rooftops, under the Moon, p. 86; July, 2019, Clara Hendricks, review of The Playgrounds of Babel, p. 58; December, 2020, Mary Lanni, review of Over the Shop, p. 82.
Toronto Star, November 11, 2007, Deirdre Baker, “From Lion and Unicorn: A Torontonian’s Second Collection Bewitches a Jury with Delights for Both Mind and Ear.”
Voice of Youth Advocates, April 1, 2011, review of Think Again, p. 11; October 1, 2018, Kelly Caswell Metzger, review of Sidewalk Flowers, p. 10.
ONLINE
Cybils Awards, http://www.cybils.com/ (May 10, 2016), “Interview with JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith.”
Horn Book, http://www.hbook.com/ (March 16, 2015), Roger Sutton, “JonArno Lawson Talks with Roger.”
Miss Rumphius Effect blog, http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/ (April 10, 2010), Patricia Stohr-Hunt, “Poetry Makers—JonArno Lawson.”
National Public Radio website, https://www.npr.org/ (May 22, 2022), Samantha Balaban, author interview.
Porcupine’s Quill blog, http://porcupinesquill.ca/ (September 28, 2012), “A Quirky Chat with JonArno Lawson.”
School Library Journal, http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/ (April 27, 2009), Elizabeth Bird, review of Inside Out: Children’s Poets Discuss Their Work; (March 12, 2015), Elizabeth Bird, review of Sidewalk Flowers.
Toronto Quarterly blog, http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.com/ (February 17, 2014), author interview.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
JonArno Lawson
Born June 11, 1968 (age 56)
Hamilton, Ontario
Nationality Canadian
Citizenship Canadian and American
Occupation Author
JonArno Lawson is a Canadian writer who has published many books for children and adults, was born in Hamilton, Ontario and raised in nearby Dundas. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife and three children.[1]
Career and education
Lawson has a BA in English Literature from McGill University. He also studied briefly at St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe), and at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has taught children's poetry in the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Program at Simmons University, Boston, and at University of British Columbia School of Information.[2]
He has been recognized for his nonsense poetry.
Recognition and awards
Lawson has won The Lion And The Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry four times, in 2007, 2009, 2013, and 2014. The books were "Enjoy It While It Hurts," "A Voweller's Bestiary," "Black Stars In A White Night Sky," and "Down In The Bottom Of The Bottom Of The Box."[3] His book "The Man In The Moon-Fixer's Mask" was a finalist for this award in 2005.[3]
Lawson’s wordless picture book "Sidewalk Flowers" Sydney Smith (Illustrator), won the Governor General’s Award For Illustrated Children’s Books in 2015,[4] and was on the New York Times Best Illustrated Books List the same year.[5]
Published works
Source:[6]
Love Is An Observant Traveler (Exile Editions, 1997) (illus. Lui Liu)
Inklings (Exile Editions, 1999)
The Man In The Moon Fixer's Mask (Pedlar Press, 2004) (illus. Sherwin Tjia)
Black Stars In A White Night Sky (Pedlar Press, 2006) (illus. Sherwin Tjia)
A Voweller's Bestiary (Porcupine's Quill, 2008)
This (And That Was That) (Greenboathouse Press, 2009)
Think Again (Kids Can Press, 2010) (illus. Julie Morstad)
There Devil, Eat That (Pedlar Press, 2011)
Down In The Bottom Of The Bottom Of The Box (Porcupine's Quill, 2012) (illus. Alec Dempster)
Old MacDonald Had Her Farm (Annick Press, 2012) (illus. Tina Holdcroft)
Enjoy It While It Hurts (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013)
Aloud In My Head (Walker Books Ltd., 2015) (illus. Jonny Hannah)
Sidewalk Flowers (Groundwood Books, 2015) Sydney Smith (Illustrator)
The Hobo's Crowbar (Porcupine's Quill, 2016) (Illus. Alec Dempster)
I regret everything (Espresso Books, 2017)
Uncle Holland (Groundwood Books, 2017) (illus. Natalie Nelson)
Leap! (Kids Can Press, 2017) (illus. Josée Bisaillon)
But It's So Silly: A Cross-cultural Collage of Nonsense, Play, and Poetry (Wolsak and Wynn, 2017)
Over the Rooftops, Under the Moon (Enchanted Lion Books, 2019) (illus. Nahid Kazemi)
The Playgrounds of Babel (Groundwood Books, 2019) (illus. Piet Grobler)
Over the Shop (Candlewick Press, 2021) (illus. Qin Leng)
A Day for Sandcastles (Candlewick Press, 2022) (illus. Qin Leng)
Wise Up! Wise Down! (Walker Books, 2024) (a collaboration with John Agard) (illus. Satoshi Kitamura)
As Illustrator
A Vole on a Roll, by Nelson Ball (Shapes and Sounds Press, 2016)
As contributor
The Chechens: A Handbook (Routledge, 2005) by Amjad Jaimoukha
Lawson, JonArno WISE UP! WISE DOWN! Candlewick (Children's None) $18.99 3, 4 ISBN: 9781536238990
Sallies and responses in verse make up a dialogue between two poets living on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Many of the paired poems here have previously appeared in separate collections, but all are well integrated into this new work. Following introductory squibs ("I'm John Agard. / I'm supposed to be a poet." "Be on your guard with Agard, / and with Lawson, use caution"), the two exchange pithy, usually lighthearted observations on multiple themes from hats to fingers, pigeons to silly pets. Though Agard's love story of a cow and a cat prefaces Lawson's tale of a romance between an octopus and a seahorse, the connections are seldom so direct; Agard refers to "Salt" in one poem, for instance, and Lawson writes of "Peppercorn." Similarly, Lawson's cautionary tale of what happened when Humpty Dumpty took refuge under a chicken leads Agard to reflect on nature vs. nurture: "Was it a little gene / that caused Jack Sprat / to eat no fat / and his wife to eat no lean?" Kitamura opens with caricatures of the two authors, then goes on to add generally tongue-in-cheek monochrome images of relevant animals, human figures with paper-white skin, decorative bits of abstract patterns, or informally drawn spot items. A page of suggested activities at the end invites readers intrigued by this interplay of poems, pictures, and ideas to create similar conversations with their own words or pictures.
Stimulating exchanges, often veering off in unexpected directions.(Poetry. 7-11)
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"Lawson, JonArno: WISE UP! WISE DOWN!" Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A819570147/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d2e154ae. Accessed 14 June 2025.