What a season we have before us. September starts off with a hoard of new and exciting fiction by children's and young adult writers as diverse as Arthur Slade, Mary Sheppard, Cora Taylor, Michael Bedard, Julie Johnston, Brian Doyle, Teresa Toten, Cary Fagan, Sarah Withrow and Eva Wiseman. The picture book set will be delighted with visually stunning offerings including Teddy Jam and Ange Zhang's The Kid Line, Celia Barker Lottridge and Joanne Fitzgerald's Little Rooster and the Diamond Button, Dennis Lee, Toronto's Poet Laureate, and Gillian Johnson's The Cat and The Wizard and Nothing Beats a Pizza, a new and totally wacky collection of poetry by Loris Lesynski.

September also offers the launch of two exciting new historical fiction series. Scholastic's Dear Canada starts off with a bang with the first two books by Jean Little and Sarah Ellis while Penguin's Our Canadian Girl has four titles including new books by Kathy Stinson and Julie Lawson. And the fall season is only beginning tooùwe have Canadian Children's Book Week to look forward to in November with an exciting on-line art auction of original illustrations by some of Canada's finest children's book artists.

But perhaps the most exciting news of all is that the Canadian section of the International Board on Books for Young People has just announced that author Dennis Lee and illustrator Michele Lemieux are being nominated for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. This year is turning out to be quite the year for Canada's children's books and the best is yet to come! Check out the next issue of Books in Canada for our top choices for the fall and profiles of writers Michael Bedard and Brian Doyle.

Jeffrey Canton, Editor, Children's Books Section