Background

Julie Lawson was born on November 9, 1947, in Victoria, Canada; the daughter of Charles A. Goodwin and Jean V. (Anderson) Goodwin.

Education

Julie Lawson graduated from the University of Victoria with a teaching certificate and a Bachelor of Arts in French and English in 1970.

Career

Lawson loved writing ever since she first learned how to do it. Her first published book, The Sand Sifter, was published in 1990 and would be followed within five years by six more picture books and two novels.

Lawson’s picture book The Dragon’s Pearl was inspired by a trip she took to China. Loosely based on a folktale from the province of Sichuan, The Dragon’s Pearl tells the story of Xiou Sheng, a poor boy who lives with his mother.

In Too Many Suns, which Lawson published in 1996, the youngest of ten brothers desire to capture the sun in a painting, while the youngest of ten suns wishes he could shine without having to rotate his position in the sky with his nine older brothers.

In addition to her numerous picture books, Lawson has also written a number of novels for older readers, among them White Jade Tiger, Fires Burning, and the trilogy that includes Goldstone, Turns on a Dime, and The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain. Fires Burning, published in the United States as The Danger Game, finds Beth, already pushed to her limit by younger brother Field, totally perplexed after her older cousin Chelsea is sent to spend the summer with them. Emotionally distant for reasons Beth cannot understand, Chelsea begins to come out of her shell by playing a game of risks the children call the Danger Game.

Like The Dragon's Pearl, White Jade Tiger was inspired by Lawson’s research into Chinese Dragon lore. In the book, which is a combination of time-travel story and historical novel, twelve-year-old Jasmine loses track of her class during a visit to a museum in Victoria, British Columbia. Going back in time to 1880, she suddenly finds herself in Fraser Canyon, among the Chinese workers building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Meeting a boy named Keung who is in search of a missing jade amulet, Jasmine disguises herself as a boy and aids Keung on his search, learning much about her own family history as well.

Lawson’s novel trilogy that begins with Goldstone takes place in the early twentieth century, as twelve-year-old Karin rebels against her mother’s traditional Swedish clothing and customs. When her mother is killed in a landslide, Karin is wracked by guilt over their relationship, but after wearing her mother’s goldstone necklace, the girl begins to dream of another, more deadly landslide and wonders if she is being given the chance to save lives.

In Turns on a Dime Karin’s necklace serves as a link, as it is passed down to Karin’s descendant Jo. Described by School Library Journal contributor Gerry Larson as "markedly naive and impetuous in keeping with the conservative but changing tenor" of the 1950s, Jo is out of sorts: her friends are caught up in the latest Elvis Presley recording, leaving her to the company of a new boy in her neighborhood. Then her babysitter winds up pregnant, pressure from her friends threatens her friendship with her neighbor, and the worst news of all hits when she learns she was adopted.

The goldstone pendant again changes hands in The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain, as Jo, now a mystery author, sends it to niece Ashley for her birthday. When Ashley discovers that dreams she has while wearing the heirloom foretell the future, she becomes nervous: one of her dreams is far from pleasant, and an avalanche near the novel’s end brings the trilogy full circle.

In addition to writing, Lawson gives talks and lectures to school children and library groups.

Prior to her writing career, Julie taught in France and was a school teacher in Saanich and Sooke.

Achievements

• Julie's work White Jade Tiger is the winner of the Sheila A Egoff Award and nominee for both the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award and the Silver Birch Award. No Safe Harbour is the winner of the Hackmatack Award and A Ribbon of Shining Steel was short-listed for the CLA Book Award.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Blinding Light

    (In A Blinding Light, the author tells a riveting story of...)

    2017
  • Ghosts of the Titanic

    (To mark the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the T...)

    2011
  • Destination Gold!

    (After his father dies, sixteen-year-old Ned Turner voyage...)

    2001
  • Cougar Cove

    (Sam is having a miserable time with her cousins on the We...)

    1995
  • Midnight in the Mountains

    (In a joyful celebration of both the mountains and winter,...)

    1998
  • A Morning to Polish and Keep

    (A real fish tale! When "the big one" gets away, Amy figur...)

    1992
  • White Jade Tiger 1993
  • The Dragon's Pearl 1992
  • Emma and the Silk Train 1998
  • Dear Canada: No Safe Harbour 2006
  • A Ribbon of Shining Steel 2002
  • Bear on the Train 1999
  • The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain 2000
  • Klondike Cat 2002
  • A Ribbon of Shining Steel 2015
  • Dear Canada: Where the River Takes Me 2012
  • Whatever you Do, Don't go Near that Canoe! 1996
  • Across the James Bay Bridge 2001
  • Turns on a Dime 1997
  • Kates Castle 1992

Membership

Julie Lawson is a member of the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers, Canadian Children’s Book Centre, British Columbia Children’s Writers and Illustrators and British Columbia Federation of Writers.

Interests

• traveling, hiking, reading

Connections

Julie Lawson married Patrick Lawson on August 24, 1972.

Father:

Charles A. Goodwin

Mother:

Jean V. (Anderson) Goodwin

Spouse:

Patrick Lawson