In this issue
- Letter from CELA’s Executive Director
- Awards update!
- The Festival of Literary Diversity
- On our blog
- Celebrating Independent Book Stores
- Reading in the news
- Webinars for you
- Featured title for adults: The Women: A novel
- Top five books
- Featured title for kids: See It, Dream It, Do It
- Top five for kids
- Top five for teens
- Visit CELA during the White Cane Week Expo!
- Holiday hours
- New videos for you!
- Stay connected!
Letter from CELA’s Executive Director
This month, and all year long, we are celebrating CELA’s 10th anniversary. When CELA was formed on April 1, 2014, the reading landscape was much different for people with print disabilities. Over the past 10 years so much has changed. Everything from our collection, which now has more than 1.3 million titles, to the technology like EasyReader and Envoy Connect, and who we can serve, has evolved to improve access for the 5.2 million people who have difficulties reading print.
These changes have come about for many reasons.
Collaborations with libraries, publishers, awards programs and colleagues in accessible reading have been instrumental in moving our services forwards. Support from our users, and from advocacy groups who represent them help us tailor our services to meet the diverse needs of people with print disabilities. And funding from all levels of governments helps us build stable services and undertake important projects to ensure we can continue to offer choices in accessible reading.
If you haven’t seen it, I invite you to visit our blog to read about 12 ways the equitable reading landscape has changed over the past decade. If you’ve got stories to share about CELA since its inception we would love to hear them. You can send them to our feedback@celalibrary.ca address.
Even as we celebrate the last ten years, our work continues to improve accessible reading options for our users. We are working on some new and important projects, including developmental work for the smart speaker solution which was tested last year as part of our Expanded Delivery Options Project. Because of the complexity, this project will take us some time, but our goal is to provide our users with an additional option to listen to their audio books. As always, we commit to keeping you informed about any new services we will be adding.
We have recently welcomed some new folks to CELA. Natalie MacDonnell has joined us as a Project Coordinator, Denise Scott is working to support our Summer Reading Club programs and Matthew Twohig is our practicum student joining us from the Library & Information Technology program at Langara College. As we look back on the past decade I wanted to thank our Board, and our staff, some of whom have been with CELA since its inception, for their continued commitment to serving our users. We wouldn’t be where we are without them.
Happy Reading!
Laurie Davidson, Executive Director
Awards update!
Congratulations to illustrator Sydney Smith who is the first Canadian to win the Hans Christian Andersen Award. We have his beautiful books in our collection. Read more about the award winning author and illustrator in the Canadian Children's Book Centre's article.
Congratulations to the authors nominated for the Carol Shields Prize shortlist which celebrates the creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States. The winner will be announced May 13, 2024.
The nominated authors include:
• Eleanor Catton for Birnam Wood
• Claudia Dey for Daughter
• Kim Coleman Foote for Coleman Hill
• V. V. Ganeshananthan (Brotherless Night),
• Janika Oza for A History of Burning
Read them in accessible formats in our collection.
Congratulations to the poets on this year's Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist. We are delighted to have 4 of them in our collection.
The Festival of Literary Diversity
CELA has been a partner of the Festival of Literary Diversity (The FOLD) since its early days. This year, we are excited to congratulate the FOLD on it's ninth anniversary. The FOLD is Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and storytellers. It provides one-of-a-kind events for kids and adults that engage readers, inspire writers, and empower educators by highlighting important and underrepresented voices.
We are delighted to have a number of featured FOLD titles in our collection.
Check out the FOLD's website to learn more about the events which are offered both in person and virtually. The FOLD runs April 28 to May 5th.
On our blog
How have things changed in the ten years since CELA was established?
Check out our latest blog to read 12 of the most notable changes to accessible reading and to CELA’s services.
Celebrating Independent Book Stores
For Canadian Independent Bookstore Day, April 27th, 2024, we want to celebrate the work that small and indie book sellers do day-to-day to support and nurture Canadian publishers, authors, and illustrators.
In 2021, CELA refocused where we purchased many of the print books that would be turned into the DAISY, braille, printbraille and e-text formats you love and enjoy reading. This also supports our ongoing work as an organization to be more inclusive, diverse, and equitable.
Since 2021 CELA has focused on purchasing Canadian Indigenous titles, books by authors from racialized communities and titles with an LGBTQ2S+ focus from similarly focused independent Canadian bookstores. We’re happy to report that more than 200 individual print copies have been purchased since the project began. We want to thank the booksellers we work with for their support and their commitment to offering customers like us a wide selection of excellent books to choose from.
Reading in the news
The CBC recently ran a news piece on the popularity of Romance books. The story features a book club which is encouraging other lovers of romance books not to hide or be ashamed of their reading!
We whole heartedly agree. Romance is one of CELA's most popular categories. We think you should read what you love!
Watch the CBC story
Webinars for you
We host a series of webinars to help users access CELA services, to stay up to date on new technologies and to learn more about accessible reading.
On the Webinars for you page, you will find upcoming webinars. On that same page you will find links to other CELA video resources available on our YouTube channel.
Starting with CELA: finding and getting books and magazines
Have you recently registered for CELA or would you like a refresher on how to find and read books and magazines? We’re pleased to share how you can use the near 1 million titles available to you in this 45-minute webinar.
Thursday May 30 1:00-2:00pm EDT
- Discover how to access a book or magazine using CELA’s site: log in, search and choose a book
- Do you prefer to choose books by phone? Find out how you can learn about new titles and request the ones you like
- Learn about our loaning rules and how to return materials
- Find tutorials and videos for more help
Thursday May 30 1:00-2:00pm EDT
Featured title for adults: The Women: A novel
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women —at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided. Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing.
But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant.
In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
Read The Women by Kristin Hannah.
Top Five Books
The Whispers: A Novel by Ashley Audrain, Suspense and thrillers- Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page, Biography
- The Fury by Alex Michaelides, Suspense and thrillers
- The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (Molly the Maid #2) by Nita Prose, General fiction
- The Bittlemores by Jann Arden, General fiction
Featured title for kids: See It, Dream It, Do It
From award-winning author Colleen Nelson, and literacy advocate Kathie MacIsaac, twenty-five profiles present a plethora of jobs, and people, making it easier than ever for young people to see their dreams and to live their dreams!
Top five for kids
The Barren Grounds (The Misewa Saga Book #1) by David A. Robertson, Fantasy- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, Fantasy
- Harry Potter: Cinematic Guide by Felicity Baker, General non-fiction
- The Secret River by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Award-winning fiction
- The City of Ember: The First Book Of Ember by Jeanne Duprau, Science fiction
Topy Five for Teens
Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) by Sarah J. Maas, Adventure stories- The Giver (The Giver Quartet #1) by Lois Lowry, Science fiction
- One of Us is Lying by Karen M McManus, Mysteries and crime stories
- Hatchet: Hatchet series, book 1 by Gary Paulsen, Adventure stories
- A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks, Bestsellers (fiction)
Visit CELA during the White Cane Week Expo!
If you are in the Toronto area for the White Cane Week Expo, we would love to see you!
Celebrated during Vision Month in May, the White Cane Week Experience Expo is Canada's major exposition and consumer show for people with vision loss in Canada.
CELA will be at the Expo on Saturday, May 25.
The Expo opens to the public at 11AM and closes at 3:00PM and is located at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, 750 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 2J2.
Holiday Hours
CELA and its Contact Centre will be closed on Monday, May 20 for the Victoria Day weekend. We will resume usual hours on Tuesday, May 21. Enjoy your holiday!
New videos for you!
We have recently added some new videos to our YouTube channel including:
- Deliver Students with Dyslexia Accessible Reading Experiences
- Navigating the CELA website with JAWS or NVDA
- Envoy Connect: A New Accessible and Affordable Audiobook Player
Stay connected!
Visit CELA's social media, including Twitter, Facebook and our blog, for more news about what's happening in the world of accessible literature.