Landon Colvin is 10-years-old. He has one book, Spirit Wolf, to his credit and is working on a sequel.
The Vernon Grade 6 student, who says he was inspired by Nancy Yi Fan, an American school girl who wrote Swordbird in 2008 when she too was 10-years-old, will be at the Salmon Arm branch of the Okanagan Regional Library at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 3 to read and talk about writing his book.
Spirit Wolf took eight months to write.
“It all started when I went for a walk around the neighbourhood with my mother and we talked about what I could do … the book came out of that. I’d always liked wolves. So I decided to write a book about wolves,” says Colvin. “It was going to be my great-grandpa’s 92nd birthday and I wanted to give it to him for a present. So I started writing. He really liked it.”
Colvin writes about wolves in the mountains near Vernon where the north and south packs must battle for territory and recover a stolen pup. The wolf characters have their own personalities, motives, relationships and concerns.
Some surprising alliances are made as the story moves to a thoughtful and surprising conclusion.
“I had to do a lot of research about wolves, about how they would live and behave. It feels like these guys are real and I want to go and meet them,” he said.
Colvin’s parents had Spirit Wolf published for him for his birthday.
“It was really exciting to see the book. We gave the first copies to family and friends and then other people wanted to read it so we had to get more copies made.”
Colvin is donating half of the proceeds from the sale of the book to Jerseys for Africa, an organization that provides soccer equipment and clothing for youth in rural Zimbabwe.
