Forest of Reading Virtual Celebrations

Meredith Tutching

Well, 2021 has been quite a year and another one full of so many pivots. As much as we were hopeful we would all be back together at events, we realized early that wasn’t going to happen. The Forest of Reading staff and volunteers had to get creative. Along with our publishing friends and amazing authors and illustrators, we developed a suite of virtual programs to celebrate this year’s award nominees.

The Forest of Reading Festival was delivered virtually again in 2021 in partnership with CBC Books. Nine ceremonies were presented on May 18, 19 and 20, 2021 in French and English, hosted by CBC comedian Ali Hassan. Over 110 authors and illustrators, from across the country, participated in creating virtual content that was edited and curated by CBC Books.

In addition to the award ceremonies, the Forest of Reading was able to program other virtual celebrations thanks to a grant from Canadian Heritage’s Book Fund. The Ontario Library Association was excited to deliver such incredible content by Canada’s best creators and below is a list of what was created and delivered in April, May and June:

• Ten English Read-Aloud programs for Blue Spruce nominees

• Ten French Read-Aloud programs for Le prix Peuplier nominees

• Six virtual events for Yellow Cedar nominees

• One White Pine event with eight authors for high school students

• Five virtual illustrator presentations

• Three Forest of Reading kid and teen committee book lists released in June

• Six interviews with the Forest of Reading winners hosted on Curio.ca (Four interviewers were children and Ali Hassan hosted the Red Maple and White Pine winners)

Additionally, this year we saw the highest number of virtual author visits presented through the Forest Fridays and Mercre-Lit programs. Twenty-four English-language nominees and 16 French-language nominees presented their books and we streamed these weekly from January to May. z