The winners of the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards were announced today at North Kipling Junior Middle School in Etobicoke. The winner in the Children’s Picture Book Award category is A Hen for Izzy Pippik (Kids Can Press), by Aubrey Davis and illustrated by Marie Lafrance. Susin Nielsen won in the Young Adult/Middle Reader Award category for her book The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (Tundra Books). They are all first-time winners.

By Megan Philipp

Riverside Drive (Dundurn Press) rumbles through the Border Cities during the difficult years following the Great War," says Windsor-born author Michael Januska of his debut novel and the first in his Border City Blues crime series. Scheduled to be released on May 25, 2013, the novel is set during the Prohibition era in six Ontario communities located along the Detroit River; they included the rural community of Ojibway, the town of Sandwich, the commercial centre of Windsor, the factory town of Walkerville, Ford City (the birthplace of Canada’s automobile industry) and the residential community of Riverside. Today, the Border Cities still exist as neighbourhoods within the city of Windsor. Januska is knowledgeable about the time period, explaining that before the 1920s, veterans returned home in search of opportunities in a time when there weren’t many — there had been a recession, an influenza epidemic, and food and energy shortages. This is where Riverside Drive begins, as Januska’s lead character Jack McCloskey returns home from the war, working jobs in factories and dockyards before turning to bareknuckle boxing for money and therapy. From there, a gang leader working a second job as a boxing promoter scouts out McCloskey for professional boxing matches, and later recruits him as his heavy, which Januska describes as “the kind of guy an ambitious bootlegger” would have needed “to get things done.” The early days of Prohibition, Januska explains, was a time when people were all about claiming territory, and veterans like McCloskey would have “found themselves back in the trenches, so to speak.” In contrast with Jack McCloskey is Vera Maude Maguire, a young librarian who wants to escape the industrialized Border Cities but lacks the will to do so; she instead plays the role of detective, suspecting a neighbour of being a bootlegger. “It was a time of great social unrest,” Januska enlightens, “and there were those who sought to exploit situations for their own material gain and political power. Towards the end of the story a new breed of criminal descends on the Border Cities posing new challenges not only for local law enforcement but also for the underworld’s establishment.”

In case you missed it, here is an update of all the interviews and features on Open Book: Toronto this week.

Andrew Kaufman, author of All My Friends are Superheroes (Coach House Books), answers the Proust Questionnaire. He tells Open Book about the shores of Lake Huron, the office that he allows himself even though he could write in his living room, and he reveals his favourite flower, which is inspired by a well-known musician. Read the interview here.