Last call for kids’ book club star reviewers

Parents of young readers: it’s not too late to get the kids signed up for the Free Press Summer Reading Challenge for Kids.

McNally Robinson Booksellers has curated four books for each of the three selected age groups (7-9 years, 10-12 years and 13-15 years); once kids have read the books, they’re encouraged to submit a review (with star rating out of five), which could be featured later this month in the Free Press books pages. (We try to get every young reader in at least once.)

The first batch of Summer Reading Challenge reviews ran on July 26 and can be read at wfp.to/il2; the next round is slated to run Saturday, Aug. 30. For the complete list of books, the reviewer guidelines and to register, see wfp.to/kidsbookclub.

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Winnipeg author Jason Pchajek is hanging out on the West Coast this weekend as part of this year’s WorldCon in Seattle, Wash.

Pchajek will be talk about and signing copies of his debut novel, 2023’s Bounty, published by Ravenstone (an imprint of Turnstone Press), at the annual American sci-fi convention, according to a recent social media post by the publisher.

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Set in Winnipeg in 2120, the novel follows a bounty hunter working for an eco-terror task force who gets tangled up with a troubling new face in the city’s anti-establishment scene.

In one of his own social media posts, Pchajek indicated a sequel to Bounty, which he referenced as Bounty 2, has been written and is awating notes from the publisher. And in another post, he mentioned having written a “fantasy heist novel” he’s shopping around to publishers.

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A major LGBTTQ+ literary award has is mired in controversy after a number of nominated authors withdrew their works from the prize’s long list due to the inclusion of an anti-trans author.

John Boyne, who is gay but refers to himself as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), was included on the 2025 Polari Prize long list for his novella Earth. This prompted almost half of the 24 authors in contention for the prize to withdraw, including Sacha Coward, Jason Okundaye, Sanah Ahsan and others.

In an Aug. 11 statement on social media, the Polari Prize apologized for “the hurt and anger caused,” but that they are “committed to going forward this year” and “will be undertaking a full review of the prize processes.”

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Canadian-adjacent author and musician Daniel Levitin has landed on the six-book short list for the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize, which was announced on Aug. 12 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The California-born Levitin, who is the James McGill professor emeritus of psychology, neuroscience and music at Montreal’s McGill University, was shortlisted for his book Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness its Therapeutic Power (published in Canada as I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine), his follow-up to the bestselling 2006 book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

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The other finalists for the Trivedi Science Book Prize, which comes with a £25,000 (around $46,700), are Tim Minshall’s Your Life is Manufactured, Neil Shubin’s Ends of the Earth, Simon Parkin’s The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad, Sadiah Qureshi’s Vanished and Masud Husain’s Our Brains, Our Selves.

The winner will be announced Oct. 1.

books@freepress.mb.ca