“LUGE MIGHT not be the first sport that comes to mind for an athletic-themed picture book,” writes Cheri Hanson in her profile of sports broadcaster and author Lisa Bowes in this month’s kidlit spotlight (p. 22). This sentence delights me, and not just because I’ve always fantasized about racing headfirst down an ice track. It’s because Hanson is right: luge is probably one of the last sports you would expect to kick off a series of books designed to introduce kids to the joy of physical activity. That’s what makes Orca Book Publishers’ decision to lead Bowes’s picture-book series, Lucy Tries Sports, with a title focusing on luge so special. The risk paid off.
Perhaps one of the biggest risk takers in the Canadian book industry right now is our cover subject, Jael Richardson (p. 14). This May, the author-activist will launch the inaugural Festival of Literary Diversity. While any new venture is a gamble, one of the biggest unknowns for Richardson is whether readers outside of Brampton will travel to the southern Ontario city for the three-day event.
FOLD board chair Léonicka Valcius admits she initially was worried about hosting the event in Brampton, which isn’t a major publishing centre (it currently doesn’t even have a local indie bookseller). But Richardson, Valcius, and the other FOLD organizers believe bringing authors to the city is a risk worth taking. After spending a morning touring the festival’s historic venues – including the airy Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives, where our cover was shot – I understand and applaud their decision to host it there, and hope readers do too.