The 3rd Blue Metropolis Children’s Festival presented by TD Bank Financial Group (April 21-25, 2010)

Montreal, March 30th, 2010 – The Blue Metropolis Children’s Festival presented by TD Bank Financial Group will be fanning out across Montreal! For the 3rd year, Blue Metropolis and TD Bank Financial Group are working together to celebrate children’s literature. Since its creation in 2008, more than 5,800 children aged 12 and under have discovered the joys of reading and writing at the Blue Metropolis Children’s Festival. This year, the Festival will be present in nearly 50 different places.

In 2010, the Children’s Festival activities are held in libraries, museums, bookstores and cultural centres across the city. Authors, storytellers and illustrators who will participate in this 3rd edition of the Festival include Marie-Louise Gay, Shane Peacock, and PJ Bracegirdle. This year, we can count on the valuable collaboration of Tundra Books and the network of Montreal public libraries. Children will have the chance to meet the amazing multilingual Indian author Sandhya Rao at the Delta Centre-Ville Hotel on Sunday, April 25th. There will be also an opportunity to discuss writing for children in a panel discussion organized in collaboration with Yesoui CANSCAIP and hosted by Raquel Rivera.

In libraries
For the third consecutive year, the Children’s Festival will be taking place in public libraries including Westmount, Pointe-Claire and Beaconsfield. Children can attend activities featuring authors and illustrators Jane Barclay, Bonnie Farmer, and Jennifer Lloyd. At Dollard-des-Ormeaux Library, children and their parents will celebrate World Book and Copyright Day on April 23rd with a performance of the literary show Karius & Baktus presented in French and in English by the Théâtre Bilingue de Montréal.

In bookstores
2009 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award finalist Shane Peacock will be at the bookstore Babar en ville to present his magical Boy Sherlock Holmes series. He will be at Babar in Westmount on Saturday, April 24 at 2:15 pm, and PJ Bracegirdle will be at Babar in Pointe-Claire village on April 24 at 11 am. Besides the events in French and in English, an activity in Italian with author Elettra Bedon will take place at Pages & Co in St-Léonard.

Special activities
The winner of the 2010 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix, Dany Laferrière presents the second book in his children’s series about the Haitian girl Vava, La fête des morts. He will be at the Maison culturelle et communautaire Library in Montreal-Nord on April 22nd. Dimitri Nasrallah will present Canada’s finest writers who were born in another country and who know how tough it can be to “fit in”. That’s at Lachine’s Saul Bellow Library. On April 24th, the Théâtre de l’Esquisse will welcome the Théâtre Bilingue de Montréal for Thorbjørn Egner’s classic Norwegian tale Karius & Baktus (in French and in English).

Blue Metropolis Foundation
Located in Montreal, Blue Metropolis Foundation is a non-profit organization established in June 1997. Its mandate is to bring people of different cultures together to share the pleasures of reading and writing. For more information on Blue Metropolis Foundation, please visit www.bluemetropolis.org.

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Source:
Alice Van Der Klei, Communications Director, Blue Metropolis Foundation

Media contact:
Christopher DiRaddo, 514-806-5087 / cd@christopherdiraddo.com