Two iconic Toronto bookstores hit hard times

Two of Toronto’s longstanding independent bookstores will face major changes in 2012.

This morning, Sue Houghting, owner of The Book Mark in the city’s Kingsway neighbourhood, announced she will close shop after 46 years in business. In a press release, Houghting cites an “unaffordable rent increase and high property taxes” as factors that have made the bookshop, believed to be Toronto’s oldest surviving indie, unsustainable. Houghting is aiming to shut down by Jan. 21, “but if stock dwindles before that we will close earlier,” she says.

News of The Book Mark’s demise follows reports that Glad Day Bookshop, the city’s iconic LGBT bookseller, is seeking new ownership. Last week, owner John Scythes told the Toronto Star he’s hoping to find a buyer within his customer base before opening the sale up to the general public.

Glad Day, the world’s oldest existing gay and lesbian bookshop, has struggled financially throughout most of its 42 years. A 2010 social media campaign by store staff brought its money problems to public attention. At the time, co-manager Sholem Krishtalka chalked them up to a steady decline in book sales, combined with significant legal fees left over from a decades-long censorship battle with the Ontario Film Review Board.

Ontario Library Association announces Forest of Reading award shortlists

The Ontario Library Association has announced its shortlists for its 2012 Forest of Reading program. The winners, as chosen by Ontario school children, will be announced during the Forest of Reading Festival, May 15–16, 2012.

Here are the English-language nominees:

Blue Spruce (Grades K–2)

• A Flock of Shoes, Sarah Tsiang; Qin Leng, illus. (Annick Press)
• Giraffe and Bird, Rebecca Bender (Dancing Cat Books)
• Kiss Me! (I’m a Prince!), Heather McLeod; Brooke Kerrigan, illus. (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• The Little Hummingbird, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Greystone Books)
• Making the Moose Out of Life, Nicholas Oldland (Kids Can Press)
• Noni Says No, Heather Hartt-Sussman; Geneviève Côté, illus. (Tundra Books)
• One Hockey Night, David Ward; Brian Deines, illus. (North Winds Press)
• Rosyln Rutabaga and the Biggest Hole on Earth!, Marie-Louise Gay (Groundwood Books)
• Small Saul, Ashley Spires (Kids Can)
• Stanley’s Little Sister, Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin, illus. (Kids Can)

Silver Birch Fiction (Grades 3–6)

• Better Than Weird, Anna Kerz (Orca Book Publishers)
• Crossing to Freedom, Virginia Frances Schwartz (Scholastic Canada)
• Ghost Messages, Jacqueline Guest (Coteau Books)
• Ghosts of the Titanic, Julie Lawson (Scholastic Canada)
• The Glory Wind, Valerie Sherrard (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• The McGuillicuddy Book of Personal Records, Colleen Sydor (Red Deer Press)
• Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze, Alan Silberberg (Simon & Schuster)
• Neil Flambé and the Aztec Abduction, Kevin Sylvester (Simon and Schuster/HarperCollins Canada)
• That Boy Red, Rachna Gilmore (Simon and Schuster/HarperCollins Canada)
• Undergrounders, David Skuy (Scholastic Canada)

Silver Birch Non-fiction (Grades 3–6)

• 50 Poisonous Questions: A Book With Bite, Tanya Lloyd Kyi; Ross Kinnaird, illus. (Annick)
• Africans Thought of It: Amazing Innovations, Bathseba Opini; Richard B. Lee (Annick)
• Animals That Changed the World, Keltie Thomas (Annick)
• Case Closed? Nine Mysteries Unlocked by Modern Science, Susan Hughes; Michael Wandelmaier, illus. (Kids Can)
• Don’t Touch That Toad & Other Strange Things Adults Tell You, Catherine Rondina; Kevin Sylvester, illus. (Kids Can)
• Game Day: Meet the People Who Make It Happen, Kevin Sylvester (Annick)
• Highway of Heroes, Kathy Stinson (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• Mathemagic! Number Tricks, Lynda Colgan; Jane Kurisu, illus. (Kids Can)
• Totally Human: Why We Look and Act the Way We Do, Cynthia Pratt Nicolson;Dianne Eastman, illus. (Kids Can)
• Who Wants Pizza? The Kids’ Guide to the History, Science & Culture of Food, Jan Thornhill (Maple Tree Press)

Silver Birch Express (Grades 3–6)

• All Aboard! Elijah McCoy’s Steam Engine, Monica Kulling; Bill Slavin, illus. (Tundra)
• Banjo of Destiny, Cary Fagan; Selçuk Demirel, illus. (Groundwood)
• Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot; Ian Wallace, illus. (Groundwood)
• The Gargoyle Overhead, Philippa Dowding (Napoleon & Company)
• The Last Loon, Rebecca Upjohn (Orca)
• Our Earth: How Kids are Saving the Planet, Janet Wilson (Second Story Press)
• Saving Arm Pit, Natalie Hyde (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• The Time Time Stopped, Don Gillmor (Scholastic Canada)
• Uumajut: Learn About Arctic Wildlife! Simon Awa; Anna Ziegler; Stephanie McDonald; Leah Otak, trans.; Romi Caron, illus. (Inhabit Media)
• When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew: Tales of Ti-Jean, Jan Andrews; Dušan Petričić, illus. (Groundwood)

Red Maple (Grades 7-8)

• Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom, Susin Nielsen (Tundra)
• Dust City, Robert Paul Weston (Puffin Canada)
• Fanatics, William Bell (Doubleday Canada)
• Fly Boy, Eric Walters (Puffin canada)
• Half Brother, Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins Canada)
• Haunting Violet, Alyxandra Harvey (Bloomsbury)
• Home Truths, Jill MacLean (Dancing Cat)
• No Safe Place, Deborah Ellis (Groundwood)
• Thunder Over Kandahar, Sharon E. McKay; Rafal Gerszak, photog. (Annick)
• Torn from Troy, Patrick Bowman (Ronsdale Press)

White Pine Fiction (Grades 9–12)

• Ashes, Ashes, Jo Treggiari (Scholastic Canada)
• Beat the Band, Don Calame (Candlewick Press)
• Blood Red Road, Moira Young (Doubleday)
• Chance to Dance for You, Gail Sidonie Sobat (Great Plains Publications)
• Death Benefits, Sarah N. Harvey (Orca)
• The Fifth Rule, Don Aker (HarperCollins Canada)
• The Gathering, Kelley Armstrong (Doubleday Canada)
• Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, Drew Hayden Taylor (Vintage Canada)
• Something Wicked, Lesley Anne Cowan (Puffin Canada)
• The Way It Is, Donalda Reid (Second Story)

White Pine Non-fiction (Grades 9–12)

• The Book of Awesome, Neil Pasricha (Penguin)
• Call Me Russell, Russell Peters (Doubleday Canada)
• Wars: An Illustrated History, Jonathan Webb; J.L. Granatstein, illus. (Scholastic)
• Hockey Now! Mike Leonetti (Firefly Books)
• I.D.: Stuff that Happens to Define Us, Kate Scowen; Peter Mitchell, illus. (Annick)
• Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World, Tom Rand; Dave Clark, eds. (Eco Ten Publishing)
• Nice Recovery, Susan Juby (Viking)
• Stick to Your Vision: How to Get Past the Hurdles and Haters to Get Where You Want to Be, Wes “Maestro” Williams  (McClelland & Stewart)
• Two Generals, Scott Chantler (M&S)
• Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival, Les Stroud (Collins Canada)

Golden Oak (adult)

• Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot (Groundwood)
• Fatty Legs: A True Story, Christy Jordan-Fendon and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton; Liz Amini-Holmes, illus. (Annick)
• Highway of Heroes, Kathy Stinson (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• No Safe Place, Deborah Ellis (Groundwood)
• Our Earth: How Kids Are Saving the Planet, Janet Wilson (Second Story)
• Out of Darkness: The Jeff Healey Story, Cindy Watson (Dundurn Press)
• Second Wife, Brenda Chapman (Raven Books/Orca)
• Viola Desmond Won’t Be Budged, Jody Nyasha Warner; Richard Rudnicki, illus. (Groundwood)

B.C. ecologist Don Gayton wins Peace Corps Travel Book Award

British Columbian ecologist Don Gayton’s Okanagan Odyssey: Journeys Through Terrain, Terroir and Culture (Rocky Mountain Books) has won the 2011 Peace Corps Travel Book Award. The prize is presented annually to an author with Peace Corps experience. Prior to moving to Canada from the U.S. in the 1960s, Gayton was a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Colombia.

Gayton receives a cash award and a special citation from the blog Peace Corps Writers.

Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

Canadian authors celebrated at the Lambda Awards

Four Canadian authors took home awards last night at the 23rd Lambda Literary Awards in New York City. “The Lammies”  celebrate the best in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writing for books published the previous year.

First-time novelist Amber Dawn won the Lesbian Debut Fiction award for Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press). Zoe Whittall won in the new Transgender Fiction category for her novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (House of Anansi Press). Anna Swanson took the Lesbian Poetry Award for her collection, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books). And S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein took home the award for best LGBT Anthology for Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press).

Read the complete list of winners.

Freedom to Read Week event round-up

Much of the debate preceding this year’s national Freedom to Read Week (Feb. 20-26) has focused on Alabama publisher NewSouth Books’ edited version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. No doubt this sensitive topic will be raised again at the Book and Periodical Council’s free event, “Challenging Books: Who Should Decide What Our Children Read?” on Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. (To get primed, read George Elliott Clarke’s take, “N-Word Wickedness,” from NOW Magazine).

Freedom of sexual expression also generates plenty of public discussion. Here are a few national FTRW events that peer between the sheets:

• Censoring Manga for Fun and Profit (Feb. 23, Toronto Public Library, Lillian H. Smith Branch)
• Sexual Outliers: Censorship, Advocacy Journalism and the Gay Press (Feb. 23, Toronto Public Library, Yorkville Branch)
• Freedom to Read … Out Loud: Risky and Risqué Stories for Adults (Feb. 24, The ARTery, Edmonton)
• Banned Books: Madame Bovary (Feb. 28, Toronto Public Library, Deer Park Branch)

For a complete list of national events, visit freedomtoread.ca.

Daily book biz round-up: gay YA; Gaiman YA; and more

Quiet out there today:

• Charles Taylor Prize taps original jurors for 10th anniversary
• Department of unfortunate word choices: “Jewish people don’t own the Holocaust” – Yann Martel
• The growing popularity of gay-themed YA
• Neil Gaiman wins Carnegie Medal
• Lee Siegel says that fiction has become “culturally irrelevant.” Discuss.

The Writers’ Trust of Canada presents 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Grant to Nancy Jo Cullen

Poet Nancy Jo Cullen has won the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Grant for best emerging gay writer in Canada, with honours of distinction presented to fiction writers Lisa Foad and George K. Ilsley. The jury was made up of writers Brian Francis and Suzette Myer, and grant founder Robin Pacific.

Cullen is the author of three books of poetry: Science Fiction Saint, Pearl, and Untitled Child, all published by Frontenac House. She has received an Alberta Book Publishing Award and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry, the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Steffanson Award for Poetry, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

Established in 2007, the annual award is presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada to an emerging gay or lesbian writer “who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of exceptional quality.” It is sponsored by donor Robin Pacific, in honour of her late best friend Dayne Ogilvie, an editor, writer, and passionate supporter of literature. The prizes will be presented at a ceremony during Pride Week in Toronto.

Free speech advocates defend anthology about teen homosexuality

Egypt is not the only place where authors run afoul of censorship. It also happens with distressing regularity in the so-called Land of the Free to Canada’s south. In the latest instance, the New Jersey chapter of conservative pundit Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project has succeeded in getting an anthology of writing and art focusing on teen homosexuality removed from Rancocas Valley Regional High School. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, 9.12 member and local grandmother Beverley Marinelli challenged the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology for being “pervasively vulgar, obscene, and inappropriate.”

Marinelli might have a fight on her hands. An article in the Guardian claims the issue has galvanized free speech and pro-GLBT organizations, which are rallying in support of Revolutionary Voices and two other books Marinelli’s group is attempting to get banned:

“There are undoubtedly GLBTQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning] students at Rancocas Valley High School, regardless of whether they are openly recognised. Removing any of these titles would send a clear message to those students that they are the objects of social disapproval – different, vulnerable, and marginal – whose needs for information of particular relevance to their lives are not respected,” wrote the directors of a collection of organisations to the school’s board. The letter, the signatories to which include the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN America, added that there was “no question that these books are not obscene.”

Marnielli, who insists that she “is not a homophobe,” is also trying to get Revolutionary Voices removed from the Lenape Regional High School District, New Jersey’s largest high school district.

When not trying to ban books, Marinelli spends her time protesting “indoctrination” of vulnerable American youth. The Philadelphia Inquirer points out that she recently participated in a demonstration at New Jersey’s B. Bernice Young Elementary School after seeing a video of schoolchildren singing a song praising U.S. president Barack Obama.

She told the Philadelphia Daily News: “We did it for the children.”

Riverdale reaches for the rainbow

The Internet is buzzing with the news that on Sept. 1, Archie Comics’ Veronica will introduce the series’ first openly gay character: a blond-haired, blue-eyed knockout named Kevin Keller. The initial storyline, titled “Isn’t it Bro-mantic?”, has the new Riverdale resident competing in – and winning – a burger-eating contest against Jughead, while newly single Veronica (apparently that whole “marriage” thing didn’t work out) flirts obliviously. The Washingon Post reports that her friends continue to let her squirm:

“Everyone seems to know where Kevin is coming from except Veronica,” says Victor Gorelick, editor in chief of Archie Comics. “They don’t tell Veronica – they let her stew in it for a while. But he hangs out with Jughead – they seem to have a connection as far as food goes.”

So what does this mean for the future of Archie Comics? Archie is already dating Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats, one of the comic’s few black characters, and in the Toronto Star, Jon Goldwater, CEO of Archie Comics, says Kevin will “probably” have a romance at some point. Might that romance be with perpetually single Jughead? Or perhaps shy, nerdy Dilton Doiley?

Unfortunately, no. Despite ongoing suspicions among many that Jughead has been in the closet all this time, the Post quotes Archie writer and artist Dan Parent as saying “traditional Riverdale characters won’t be coming out.”