Photos: Kids Can Press’s 40th anniversary at Forest of Trees

Franklin the Turtle and Scaredy Squirrel made appearances at Kids Can Press’s 40th anniversary party on May 16, joining thousands of children at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre as part of the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading Festival of Trees.

Click on the thumbnails to see photos from the day.

Atlantic Book Award winners announced

The winners of the Atlantic Book Awards were announced last night at a celebration hosted by CBC Radio’s Louise Renault.

The winners are:

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature
Live to Tell, Lisa Harrington (Dancing Cat Books)

Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini, Bruce McNab (Goose Lane Editions)

Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil, Susan Dodd (Fernwood Publishing)

Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction in Memory of Robbie Robertson
French Taste in Atlantic Canada 1604–1758: A Gastronomic History/ Le goût français au Canada atlantique 1604-1758: une histoire gastronomique, Anne Marie Lane Jonah and Chantal Véchambre (Cape Breton University Press)

Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing
In Search of R.B. Bennett, P.B. Waite (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

E.J. Pratt Poetry Award
Paradoxides, Don McKay (McClelland & Stewart)

Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
Anna from Away, D.R. MacDonald (HarperCollins Canada)

Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration
I Is for Island:  A Prince Edward Island Alphabet, Hugh MacDonald; Brenda Jones, illus. (Sleeping Bear Press)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Dirty Bird, Keir Lowther (Tightrope Books)
atlantic-book-award-winners-announced

Rogers Communication Award for Non-fiction 
In the Field, Joan Sullivan (Breakwater Books)

Canadian Eliza Robertson wins regional Commonwealth prize, Nobel Prize speculation, and more

• Canadian writer Eliza Robertson named regional Commonwealth short-story prize winner 
• Tweet reveals five Nobel Prize in Literature candidates
• Amazon U.K. receives more grant money than it pays in taxes
• Hilary Mantel prefers books with action, gets impatient with romance
• Publishers experiment with digital-only titles

Forest of Reading winners announced

A monster crowd was on hand for the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading festival at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. The two-day kidlit event featuring signings, readings, and workshops also included ceremonies for its signature prizes.

The winners are:

Blue Spruce Award
Kate & Pippin, Martin Springett; Isobel Springett, photog. (Puffin Canada)

Silver Birch Express Award
Margaret and the Moth Tree, Brit Trogen and Kari Trogen (Kids Can Press)

Silver Birch Fiction Award
Making Bombs for Hitler, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (Scholastic Canada)

Silver Birch Non-fiction Award
No Shelter Here: Making the World a Kinder Place for Dogs, Rob Laidlaw (Pajama Press)

Red Maple Fiction Award
The Vindico, Wesley King (Putnam/Penguin)

Red Maple Non-fiction Award
Real Justice: Fourteen and Sentenced to Death, Bill Swan (Lorimer)

White Pine Award
Dark Inside, Jeyn Roberts (Simon & Schuster)

Le Prix Tamarac
Le mystère des jumelles Barnes, Carole Tremblay (Bayard Canada)

Le Prix Tamarac Express
Billy Stuart: 1. Les Zintrépides, Alain M. Bergeron; Sampar, illus. (Éditions Michel Quintin)

Le Prix Peuplier
Le zoo de Yayaho, Geneviève Lemieux; Bruno St-Aubin, illus. (Bayard Canada)

DoJ claims “straightforward” case against Penguin, Poetry in Voice finals, and more

• State attorney’s “straightforward case” against Penguin in ebook price-fixing case
• High-school students compete in national poetry contest
• Qantas releases books for airline travel
• Digital book signings help authors’ careers
• Obama’s memoirs earn big money

Big Six publishers to testify against Apple at ebook price-fixing trial

All Big Six publishers are expected to testify in U.S. federal court against Apple during its ebook price-fixing trial, which begins June 3.

According to a court document filed yesterday, executives from Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Random House, and Simon & Schuster will admit to conspiring with Apple to adopt the controversial agency model, in an attempt to increase ebook prices and quash Amazon as a competitor.

Last August, Hachette, HarperCollins, and S&S settled with the U.S. government, reimbursing ebook consumers for more than $69 million. Penguin settled in December and Macmillan in February, leaving Apple as the sole defendant. The original lawsuit filing alleges that the publishers colluded in “private dining rooms of upscale Manhattan restaurants,” an accusation denied by all parties in affidavits submitted to the court.

Toronto Star nominated for long-form journalism awards, Dan Brown frenzy in Toronto, and more

• Toronto Star’s eReads series nominated for online media awards
• Dan Brown’s Inferno craze hits Toronto
• Self-published book shortlisted for Commonwealth book prize
• The real cost of self-publishing
• Brooklyn Library to create oral history project

Rabagliati, Collier, and Bunjevac win Doug Wright Awards

The winners of the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian comics were announced at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on May 11.

The winners of the awards, which recognize the best in Canadian English-language comics, were chosen by jurors Joe Ollmann, Pascal Girard, Jonathan Goldstein, Natalia Yanchak, and Julie Delporte.

The ceremony was hosted by actor and comedian Scott Thompson. The evening also saw Albert Chartier inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

Best Book was won by Michel Rabagliati, the author of The Song of Roland (Conundrum Press). In 2006, Rabagliati won the Doug Wright Award in the same category for his novel Paul Moves Out (Drawn & Quarterly).

Nina Bunjevac was a first-time DWA nominee and her book Heartless (Conundrum Press) won the The Spotlight Award (aka “The Nipper”).

David Collier’s Hamilton Illustrated (Wolsak & Wynn) won the Pigskin Peters Award, which recognizes experimental and non-narrative efforts. In 2005, Collier’s The Frank Ritza Papers was nominated for a Doug Wright Award for Best Book.

Maclean’s publishes “inside story” on Chris Hadfield mission

If you’re experiencing withdrawal since Chris Hadfield parachuted back to Earth last night, Maclean’s has you covered.

The weekly news magazine has launched its latest ebook, Chris Hadfield: #Good Morning, Earth, by reporter Kate Lunau. The book combines Lunau’s original reporting from NASA’s Johnson Space Center with Hadfield’s Twitter diary, photos, and space experiments.

Rumours are circulating that Hadfield has also signed a book deal, but there’s no word as to which publisher landed the deal.

Since February 2012, Maclean’s has published more than 20 digital titles, including most recently Maclean’s on Justin Trudeau and Maclean’s Portraits.

Danuta Gleed Literary Award shortlist revealed

The Writers’ Union of Canada has announced the nominees for the 16th annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

The award recognizes the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author. Authors Bill Gaston, Alexander MacLeod, and Carol Malyon made up this year’s jury and chose the shortlist from 29 submissions.

The nominees are:

• Bobcat and Other Stories, Rebecca Lee (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
• Ether Frolics, Paul Marlowe (Sybertooth Inc.)
• The Iron Bridge, Anton Piatigorsky (Goose Lane Editions)
• Floating Like the Dead, Yasuko Thanh (McClelland & Stewart)
• Bull Head, John Vigna (Arsenal Pulp Press)