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Irene Watts first subtly referenced her experiences as a child survivor in The Fish Princess (Tundra 1996): "No one knew from where she had come or to whom she belonged. The villagers feared the child, for she was not of their kind."
Later, in her autobiographical novel Good-bye Marianne, with her father gone into hiding, 11-year-old protagonist Marianne Kohn keeps hoping her situation will improve. But it's cold in Berlin. ARYANS ONLY says a sign on a shoe repair shop. A billboard warns AS OF DECEMBER 10, 1938, JEWS ARE PROHIBITED FROM LIVING IN THIS BUILDING. PLEASE VACATE APARTMENT TWO BY DECEMBER 9TH AT TWO O'CLOCK. HEIL HITLER. AS OF TODAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1938, JEWISH STUDENTS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ATTENDING GERMAN SCHOOLS. A notice on a boarded-up clothing store is more succinct in its hatred: KEEP OUR STREETS JEW FREE. Subject to cruel taunts, hate propaganda and her mother's warnings not to be noticed, Marianne must eventually travel without her mother, via Holland, to arrive at Parkstone Quay, Harwich, England aboard De Praag, in December of 1938.
Good-bye Marianne won the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction and Isaac Frischwasser Memorial Award for Young Adult Fiction. Like her heroine, Watts once lived at Richard Wagnerstrasse 3, Charlottenburg, Berlin until she went to England--at age seven-and-one-half--on the Kindertransporte trains that evacuated approximately 10,000 Jewish children (none of them accompanied by parents) from continental Europe prior to the outbreak of war in September, 1939. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1931, Irene Watts emigrated from England to Alberta in 1968. Since coming to B.C. in 1976, she has published an impressive array of book and gives workshops as a storyteller in schools.
Her debut volume, A Chain of Words, is a collection of six Japanese folktales. In the 1980s she released several titles with the Playwrights' Union, including an adaptation of Robert Munsch's stories. Other titles are The Great Detective Party, Just a Minute and Making Stories. A Telling Time recalls the Biblical story of Purim from the Book of Esther. When the Bough Breaks and Flower are about 'Home Children' who were sent from Britain to Canada as either or orphans or as children whose parents could not fully provide for them. Her anthology Tapesty of Hope, co-edited by Lilian Boraks-Nemetz, includes writing from Jewish Canadian writers such as Ellen Schwartz, Karen Levine, Kathy Kacer, Mordecai Richler and Leonard Cohen. It won the Canadian Jewish Book Award, a Yad Vashem award for Holocaust Studies and was nominated for the BC Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction and for the Canadian Library Association Award for Young Adult Fiction. Kathryn E. Shoemaker co-authored her Good-Bye Marianne: The Graphic Novel, the illustrated version of Watts' poignant story about the Kindertransporte. Also illustrated by Shoemaker and authored by Watts, No Pets Allowed is about a boy who moves to Vancouver from the country with his mom, and smuggles his dog Lucky into his new apartment building. When Lucky scares off a burglar, other tenants argue the country dog should be allowed to stay. No Moon is Watts' young adult novel about a servant aboard the doomed Titanic. Watts's Touched by Fire recalls the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911, during which 146 garment workers lost their lives due to fire, smoke inhalation or jumping from the building in which the doors had been locked by the employers. Watts follows one family's flight from the pogroms of Russia, to Berlin, onto steerage passage to Ellis Island, then onto New York's Lower East Side, through the eyes of teenager Miriam who gratefully lands a job as a cuff setter at the factory.
To mark the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport exodus in 2013, Watts re-released her three volumes of juvenile fiction on the subject, made available for an omnibus edition entitled Escape from Berlin, including Goodbye Marianne, Remember Me and Finding Sophie. Worth $10,000 each, the national Vine Awards for Jewish Literature in Canada are presented by the Koffler Centre for the Arts in four categories. The 2017 winners for Children's/Young Adult were Watts and Shoemaker (illustrations) for Seeking Refuge, another graphic novel arising from the Kindertransport. The story depicts the protagonist's estrangement in England as a refugee, missing her family and needing to learn English. "I came to London, England, in December 1938," says Watts, "as a seven-year-old refugee. When War broke out, I was evacuated with three million British children to the safety of the countryside, to Lanelly, S. Wales, where I was educated. I did not come to Canada with my husband and four children until 1968. Seeking Refuge is not my personal story, however it is based on the kinds of experiences many of the refugee children went through."
Directed by Elizabeth Ball, Goodbye Marianne premiered at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in 1994 and received a Jessie Award for outstanding original script for Young Audiences. It has since been re-mounted many times in the U.S. and Canada, and was published by Scirrocco Drama. "It was the first time that I had dramatized a play of this nature," she says, "though I had been writing for children's theatre for many years, for Citadel on Wheels, and also for Green Thumb and Neptune Theatre in Halifax where I was the founding Director of their Young Company. " In 2001, Watts was honored with a Playwrights' Union of Canada lifetime membership for her outstanding contribution to Canadian theatre. She has won three Canadian Jewish Book Awards and her novels have been translated into several languages including French, Italian, Dutch and Korean. Watts was also Program Director of the first International Children's Theatre in Vancouver, where she lives.
BOOKS:
Seeking Refuge (Tradewind 2016) $18.95 9781926890029
Escape from Berlin (Tundra 2013) $19.99 978-1-77049-611-8
Touched by Fire (Tundra 2013) $19.99 978-1-77049-524-1
No Moo (Tundra Books 2012) 9780-88776-971-9
No Pets Allowed (Tradewind, 2010) 978-1-896580-94-4 $8.95
When the Bough Breaks (Tundra Books 2007) $12.99 978-0-88776-821-7
Flower (Tundra Books, 2005)
A Telling Time (Tradewind, 2004). Illustrated by Katherine E. Shoemaker.
Tapestry of Hope (Tundra Books, 2003)
Finding Sophie (Tundra Books, 2002)
One for Day/One for Night (Tundra Books, 2002) Based on the stories by George MacDonald. Illustrated by Mark Lang.
Solo, We'll Be Fine; Two for the Show (Playwrights Canada Press, 1999)
Good-Bye Marianne (Tundra Books, McClelland & Stewart Young Readers / Tundra 2008) 978-0-88776-830-9
Good-Bye Marianne: A Story of Growing Up in Nazi Germany (Tundra Books, 1998)
The Fish Princess (Tundra Books, 1996). Illustrated by Steve Beattie
The Magic Sieve (Within My Reach, Celebrate Reading, Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993)
Making Stories (PPL, 1992)
Great Theme Parties For Children (USA: Stirling, 1992)
The Great Detective Party (PPL, 1989; Stirling USA; Orient Paperworks, Delhi, India)
A Chain of Words (Talonbooks, 1978)
ALSO:
Holocaust Writing for Young People (co-editor with Lillian Boraks Nemetz, Floris Books, U.K.)
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Later, in her autobiographical novel Good-bye Marianne, with her father gone into hiding, 11-year-old protagonist Marianne Kohn keeps hoping her situation will improve. But it's cold in Berlin. ARYANS ONLY says a sign on a shoe repair shop. A billboard warns AS OF DECEMBER 10, 1938, JEWS ARE PROHIBITED FROM LIVING IN THIS BUILDING. PLEASE VACATE APARTMENT TWO BY DECEMBER 9TH AT TWO O'CLOCK. HEIL HITLER. AS OF TODAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1938, JEWISH STUDENTS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ATTENDING GERMAN SCHOOLS. A notice on a boarded-up clothing store is more succinct in its hatred: KEEP OUR STREETS JEW FREE. Subject to cruel taunts, hate propaganda and her mother's warnings not to be noticed, Marianne must eventually travel without her mother, via Holland, to arrive at Parkstone Quay, Harwich, England aboard De Praag, in December of 1938.
Good-bye Marianne won the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction and Isaac Frischwasser Memorial Award for Young Adult Fiction. Like her heroine, Watts once lived at Richard Wagnerstrasse 3, Charlottenburg, Berlin until she went to England--at age seven-and-one-half--on the Kindertransporte trains that evacuated approximately 10,000 Jewish children (none of them accompanied by parents) from continental Europe prior to the outbreak of war in September, 1939. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1931, Irene Watts emigrated from England to Alberta in 1968. Since coming to B.C. in 1976, she has published an impressive array of book and gives workshops as a storyteller in schools.
Her debut volume, A Chain of Words, is a collection of six Japanese folktales. In the 1980s she released several titles with the Playwrights' Union, including an adaptation of Robert Munsch's stories. Other titles are The Great Detective Party, Just a Minute and Making Stories. A Telling Time recalls the Biblical story of Purim from the Book of Esther. When the Bough Breaks and Flower are about 'Home Children' who were sent from Britain to Canada as either or orphans or as children whose parents could not fully provide for them. Her anthology Tapesty of Hope, co-edited by Lilian Boraks-Nemetz, includes writing from Jewish Canadian writers such as Ellen Schwartz, Karen Levine, Kathy Kacer, Mordecai Richler and Leonard Cohen. It won the Canadian Jewish Book Award, a Yad Vashem award for Holocaust Studies and was nominated for the BC Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction and for the Canadian Library Association Award for Young Adult Fiction. Kathryn E. Shoemaker co-authored her Good-Bye Marianne: The Graphic Novel, the illustrated version of Watts' poignant story about the Kindertransporte. Also illustrated by Shoemaker and authored by Watts, No Pets Allowed is about a boy who moves to Vancouver from the country with his mom, and smuggles his dog Lucky into his new apartment building. When Lucky scares off a burglar, other tenants argue the country dog should be allowed to stay. No Moon is Watts' young adult novel about a servant aboard the doomed Titanic. Watts's Touched by Fire recalls the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911, during which 146 garment workers lost their lives due to fire, smoke inhalation or jumping from the building in which the doors had been locked by the employers. Watts follows one family's flight from the pogroms of Russia, to Berlin, onto steerage passage to Ellis Island, then onto New York's Lower East Side, through the eyes of teenager Miriam who gratefully lands a job as a cuff setter at the factory.
To mark the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport exodus in 2013, Watts re-released her three volumes of juvenile fiction on the subject, made available for an omnibus edition entitled Escape from Berlin, including Goodbye Marianne, Remember Me and Finding Sophie. Worth $10,000 each, the national Vine Awards for Jewish Literature in Canada are presented by the Koffler Centre for the Arts in four categories. The 2017 winners for Children's/Young Adult were Watts and Shoemaker (illustrations) for Seeking Refuge, another graphic novel arising from the Kindertransport. The story depicts the protagonist's estrangement in England as a refugee, missing her family and needing to learn English. "I came to London, England, in December 1938," says Watts, "as a seven-year-old refugee. When War broke out, I was evacuated with three million British children to the safety of the countryside, to Lanelly, S. Wales, where I was educated. I did not come to Canada with my husband and four children until 1968. Seeking Refuge is not my personal story, however it is based on the kinds of experiences many of the refugee children went through."
Directed by Elizabeth Ball, Goodbye Marianne premiered at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in 1994 and received a Jessie Award for outstanding original script for Young Audiences. It has since been re-mounted many times in the U.S. and Canada, and was published by Scirrocco Drama. "It was the first time that I had dramatized a play of this nature," she says, "though I had been writing for children's theatre for many years, for Citadel on Wheels, and also for Green Thumb and Neptune Theatre in Halifax where I was the founding Director of their Young Company. " In 2001, Watts was honored with a Playwrights' Union of Canada lifetime membership for her outstanding contribution to Canadian theatre. She has won three Canadian Jewish Book Awards and her novels have been translated into several languages including French, Italian, Dutch and Korean. Watts was also Program Director of the first International Children's Theatre in Vancouver, where she lives.
BOOKS:
Seeking Refuge (Tradewind 2016) $18.95 9781926890029
Escape from Berlin (Tundra 2013) $19.99 978-1-77049-611-8
Touched by Fire (Tundra 2013) $19.99 978-1-77049-524-1
No Moo (Tundra Books 2012) 9780-88776-971-9
No Pets Allowed (Tradewind, 2010) 978-1-896580-94-4 $8.95
When the Bough Breaks (Tundra Books 2007) $12.99 978-0-88776-821-7
Flower (Tundra Books, 2005)
A Telling Time (Tradewind, 2004). Illustrated by Katherine E. Shoemaker.
Tapestry of Hope (Tundra Books, 2003)
Finding Sophie (Tundra Books, 2002)
One for Day/One for Night (Tundra Books, 2002) Based on the stories by George MacDonald. Illustrated by Mark Lang.
Solo, We'll Be Fine; Two for the Show (Playwrights Canada Press, 1999)
Good-Bye Marianne (Tundra Books, McClelland & Stewart Young Readers / Tundra 2008) 978-0-88776-830-9
Good-Bye Marianne: A Story of Growing Up in Nazi Germany (Tundra Books, 1998)
The Fish Princess (Tundra Books, 1996). Illustrated by Steve Beattie
The Magic Sieve (Within My Reach, Celebrate Reading, Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993)
Making Stories (PPL, 1992)
Great Theme Parties For Children (USA: Stirling, 1992)
The Great Detective Party (PPL, 1989; Stirling USA; Orient Paperworks, Delhi, India)
A Chain of Words (Talonbooks, 1978)
ALSO:
Holocaust Writing for Young People (co-editor with Lillian Boraks Nemetz, Floris Books, U.K.)
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
