Jackson’s friends and their families bake assorted hot cross buns for his Easter party. Liam’s foster parents use his most memorable Scottish ingredient, and Dimitri’s dad adds Greek mahlepi spice. Some have rainbow colours for all to see and a sweet Jamaican bun and cheese recipe! One by one, the children arrive with hot cross buns for everyone.

Yolanda T. Marshall is an award-winning Guyanese-born Canadian author of diverse, inclusive, festive children's literature. She ventured into the world of publishing in 2008. Yolanda is currently a traditionally published and agented author of seventeen books, including, A Piece of Black Cake for Santa, Miles Away in The Caribbean, Sweet Sorrel Stand, C is for Carnival, Hot Cross Buns For Everyone and one of CBC's best Canadian picture books of 2020 and TD’s Top Recommended Reads for 2023 - My Soca Birthday Party: with Jollof Rice and Steel Pans. Yolanda is also a columnist/editor for Canada's Caribbean Camera printed newspaper ‘Lit Corner’ where she promotes the books of other marginalized, Canadian authors. She has read for over 25,000 students annually, for the last few years in Canada and was recently invited by a New York school board into their classrooms. Yolanda appeared in numerous Television interviews, magazines and news articles and is a recipient of the Caribbean media Loop Awards: Author of the Year 2022, CIBWE Top 100 Black Women to Watch 2017, one of Canada’s 100 Accomplished Black Women in 2022 and the My People Award: Outstanding Contributions to Canadian Literature in 2023. She is a Membership Chair on the CANSCAIP Board (Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers), a professional member of The Writer's Union of Canada and a PAL member of the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Wr

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Daria Lavrova is an artist and illustrator born in St.Petersburg, Russia. She began drawing in early childhood, so the decision to send her to drawing school was apparent. After 10 years of classical studies of drawing, painting, and applied arts, the decision was nevertheless made to try herself in a distant sphere. Daria has finished the faculty of law at the State University and worked some time as a legal adviser. However, art was not forgotten: parallel to work and studies, the beginning artist attended painting classes, becoming afterwards a member of the Union of Artists in St.Petersburg, taking part in various group artistic shows. During this period, cubistic manners and constructivism influenced her style, the basis for many Russian underground art movements. In her works, she reveals a great interest in the object’s inner structure, tries to build the most vivid composition and thus captures the energy of the object’s interaction and intersection, no matter what it is - a still-life or a landscape. That analytical approach, the ability to reveal and re-construct a scene's logic and harmony, also remains in later works. After the birth of children, she started her path in a fascinating world of children’s book illustration. She illustrated over 30 books published in Russia, Canada, the USA, and the Netherlands, collaborating with publishing houses and independent authors. IIlustrating books, in its turn, broadened the range o

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