of th ie »i 'a m et d, re, "There's nothing direct about a highland Scot," a key which she said gave her the insight she needed to make her characters as real as possible. "If they think you want to know something, that's the thing they won't tell you." "A friend of ours who was a Scot, said, 'if you want to watch something really funny, you want to watch one highland Scot trying to get the time of day out of another without actually asking for it*. That's what 1 found." Raised to ask straightforward questions and get straightforward answers is a trait she says she shares with New Englanders. It's also part of what being a writer is all about. She recognizes that she did not write the story as a highland Scot, but feels she accurately portrayed "the sense of alienation that exists between some people and the loss of geography," which occurs when someone goes to another country, as so many early Canadian settlers did. Janet Lunn is most interested in tales of history and time. She enjoys Continued on Page 62 Janet Lunn was born Dec. 28, 1928, in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Herman Alfred, a mechanical engineer, and Margaret Alexander Swoboda. Educated at Queen's University, Kingston, 1947-50, she is a freelance author and editor. Married to Richard Lunn, a former Prince Edward Collegiate Institute teacher, retired chairman of the journalism department at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, and unsuccessful Prince Edward County candidate for the New Democratic Party in the 1971 Ontario election, they have five children: Eric, Jeffrey, Alexander, Katherine, and John. They have nine grandchildren. A member of the Writers Union of Canada, she was its chairman for 1984-85 and vice-chairman for 1983-84. Awarded a Canada Council Prize for Children's Literature for 1986-- presented in 1987-- for Shadow in Hawthorn Bay, which also won her the Canadian Library Association Children's Book-of-the-Year Award, the Saskatchewan Library Association Award for Young Adult Fiction and the National Chapter of the International Order of the Daughters of the Empire award for children's literature. The Canada Council provided grants in 1967 and 1986, and there have been several Ontario Arts Council grants. The IODE, Toronto branch, gave her its Children's Book Award for 1979 for The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The Canadian Library Association awarded her its 1982 Book- of-the-Year for The Root Cellar. The same year, she won the 1981 Vicky Metcalf Award for the body of her children's writing. Shadow in Hawthorn Bay is included in the 40 recommended books for children published in 1987 by the International Children's Library, in Munich, Germany. Her work has been translated into French, German and Swedish and will soon appear in Danish. Both she and Richard review books for The Whig-Standard in Kingston. County Magazine 27