Canadian Librarians Pick Summer's Top Recommended Reads for Kids

The TD Summer Reading Club's theme for the summer of 2016 is 'Wild'. Get wild reading some of these books. Registration for the TD Summer Reading Club starts July 4.

Don't forget to participate in our summer reading clubs for people of all ages.  Adults can have summer reading fun too!

Top Recommended Reads for Kids (CNW Group/TD Summer Reading Club) All-Canadian list is part of the annual TD Summer Reading Club.

                                                                                                                   

No one knows great reads like your local library staff. And with summer just around the corner, librarians across the country have picked their 2016 Top Recommended Reads to get kids started on their summer reading adventures. The all-Canadian list of 10 English and 10 French titles features both well-known and emerging authors and illustrators and is the highlight of the larger Recommended Reads list. These recommended titles are a key component of the TD Summer Reading Club, Canada's biggest, bilingual summer reading program for kids of all ages, all interests and all abilities.

The top 10 English titles are:

• Friend or Foe: the Whole Truth About Animals That People Love to Hate by Etta Kaner and David Anderson (Ages 8-10)
• Garbage Delight by Dennis Lee and Sandy Nichols (Ages 1-5)
• The Nest by Kenneth Oppel and Jon Klassen (Ages 8-12)
• The Night Gardener by Terry Fan and Eric Fan (Ages 6-10)
• Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith (Ages 4-7)
• The Skeleton Tree by Iain Lawrence (Ages 9-12)
• Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox by Danielle Daniel (Age 5-8)
• This is Sadie by Sara O'Leary and Julie Morstad (Ages 3-7)
• Sweetest Kulu by Celina Kalluk and Alexandria Neonakis (Ages 0-6)
• Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano and Kellen Hatanaka (Ages 5-9)

The top 10 French titles are:

• Bêtes de Guy Marchamps et Bellebrute (4-8 ans)
• La grotte de la déesse de Nancy Montour et Jared Karnas (6-9 ans)
• Papillons de l'ombre d'Agnès Grimaud et Camille Lavoie (10-12 ans)
• Quelle salade! de Virginie Egger (6-8 ans)
• Les vacances de Rhéa Dufresne et Orbie (3-6 ans)
• Billy Stuart, tome 4: Dans l'oeil du cyclope d'Alain M. Bergeron et Sampar (9-12 ans)
• L'arbragan de Jacques Goldstyn (6-9 ans)
• Pikiq de Yayo (5-8 ans)
• Le renard apprivoisé d'Alaine Stanké et Jocelyne Bouchard (9-10 ans)
• Le Pou d'Élise Gravel (4-6 ans)

All titles are featured on the TD Summer Reading Club website.

"These great Canadian titles were carefully chosen to encourage kids of all ages to escape their everyday, step outside their ordinary and seek the unknown and untamed through reading," said Lisa Heggum, Child and Youth Advocate at Toronto Public Library. "Whether it's outdoors, outrageous or out of bounds, the unexplored is calling, and with TD Summer Reading Club books, activities, and an unleashed imagination, kids can let go and find their wild this summer. There's simply no better way to get kids excited about summer reading."

Studies show that kids who keep reading throughout the summer do better when they return to school in the fall. The free program is co-created and delivered by over 2,000 public libraries across Canada. Developed by Toronto Public Library, in partnership with Library and Archives Canada and generously sponsored by TD Bank Group, the Club celebrates Canadian authors, illustrators and stories and is designed to inspire kids to explore the fun of reading their way – the key to building a lifelong love of reading.

SOURCE TD Summer Reading Club

Sarah Polley–directed Alias Grace set to film in Toronto

Quill and Quire May 17, 2016

Sarah Polley

Actor and director Sarah Polley will begin shooting her long-planned adaption of Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel, Alias Grace, in Toronto this August.
Polley originally announced the project as a big-screen motion picture in 2012, but in 2014 plans were revised to produced a six-hour television miniseries. Shooting will begin at Revival Studios on Aug. 15 and continue for three months. Casting details have not been announced.
This will not be Polley’s first CanLit adaptation – she received an Oscar nomination for her adapted screenplay of Alice Munro’s The Bear Came Over the Mountain, released in theatres in 2006 as Away From Her.
Atwood’s historical-fiction novel is based on the real-life 1843 Upper Canada murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. The book won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Atwood wrote an earlier version of the story for CBC Television in 1974.

What's Next for the Cast of Downton Abbey?

Via PBS, May 9, 2016

While we may never again see the Dowager launch a new zinger or Lady Mary raise a fresh eyebrow, we can look forward to seeing Downton's talented and hardworking cast for many years to come! Find out what's next for Downton Abbey's cast members, where you can see them, and how far their new roles are speculated to take them from their Downton Abbey characters!

Michelle Dockery
If Lady Mary's Liverpool assignation were a regular and casual event, conducted between cons, thefts, and prison stints, she might be closer to Michelle Dockery's next character, Letty Dobesh, the protagonist of the upcoming TNT series Good Behavior. Letty is contemporary, she's American, and she's a train wreck…How un-Mary, how vulgar!
Departure from Downton: 100%

Joanne Froggatt
She stole the hearts of millions of viewers as Lady Mary's loving and resilient lady's maid, Anna. Next up, she stars as infamous Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton, dispensing death from the spout of her teapot in the spine-tingling drama Dark Angel, coming to MASTERPIECE. From Downton's angel to angel of death, Froggatt does a 180 and shows us the breadth of her chops!
Departure from Downton: 100%

Hugh Bonneville
Hugh Bonneville may have left Downton behind, but he's not straying far from the aristocracy in his portrayal of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy in India, in the upcoming feature film Viceroy's House. While the film is set in India in 1947, and Bonneville's character is an historical figure, it does involve both a house and a turbulent historical backdrop.
Departure from Downton: 50%

Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith follows up her iconic role as Downton Abbey's Dowager Countess in the biographical feature film, The Lady in the Van. She plays Mary Shepherd, a homeless woman who, for 15 years, parks her van in the driveway of real-life playwright Alan Bennett, returning to the character she portrayed on the London stage. While Violet and Mary couldn't be more opposite in both their residences or refinements, the characters share one quality: both are forces of nature!
Departure from Downton: 95%

Laura Carmichael
Fans can look for Laura Carmichael in the feature film A United Kingdom, which is due to start shooting soon. Set in the 1940s, A United Kingdom is based on the true story of the future king (David Oyelowo) of Bechuanaland—formerly the British colony Botswana—and his marriage to a white British woman, Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike). Carmichael will play her sister, Muriel. The sibling of a marrying sister? There's an Edith connection after all!
Departure from Downton: 70%

Allen Leech
After feature film success in The Imitation Game, Leech is slated to head back to the big screen in Hunter's Prayer, an action-thriller based on a novel by Kevin Wignall, "For the Dogs." Leech goes from socialist to scoundrel as the boss of a hit man gone rogue.
Departure from Downton: 100%

Penelope Wilton
Wilton makes the leap from the small screen to the big screen in Steven Spielberg's upcoming children's movie The BFG, based on the book by Roald Dahl and starring MASTERPIECE alum Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall). She'll play the Queen of England, which is certainly a change from the wonderfully class-blind Isobel Crawley!
Departure from Downton: 100%

Kevin Doyle
From Downton Abbey's gentle philosopher-footman to present-day policeman, Kevin Doyle makes a 180 in portraying bad cop DS John Wadsworth in season two of Happy Valley (alongside The Paradise's Sarah Lancashire), on Netflix.
Departure from Downton: 100%

Elizabeth McGovern
Next up for the actress behind Lady Cora takes Elizabeth McGovern back across the pond to 1977 America in Showing Roots, a feature film about opening a small-town beauty shop for black and white clients after the broadcast of the miniseries Roots.
Departure from Downton: 100%

Lily James
Next up for Lily James, Downton's Lady Rose, is a WWII spy thriller, The Kaiser's Last Kiss, in which she plays the Jewish, Dutch love interest of a German soldier. After Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Departure from Downton: 60%) and Cinderella (Departure from Downton: 70%), in Rose-like fashion, James once again plays forbidden love. But this time the stakes are much, much higher.
Departure from Downton: 90%

Samantha Bond
Downton's feisty Lady Rosamund, Samantha Bond, is slated to return as Frances Burden, the heart and soul of the Women's Institute, in Home Fires Season 2 on MASTERPIECE. Like Rosamund, Burden has a commanding—and sometimes divisive—presence. But she has a lot more work to do!
Departure from Downton: 75%

Brendan Coyle
Brendan Coyle left Mr. Bates' cane and his conscience behind for his next television role—the actor behind Downton's longsuffering, loyal valet will play a vicious mob boss in the upcoming series Spotless (on the Esquire Network). A genuine baddie, instead of a falsely accused—what would Anna think?
Departure from Downton: 100%

Spring Time in Niagara

Don't we live in one of the most beautiful parts of Canada? I look forward to the flowering fruit trees in their spring glory.


Here is wonderful montage courtesy of Twenty Valley Tourism. Enjoy!