The Ontario Library Association has announced the nominees for the 2025 Forest of Reading.

The 10 nominees in the Blue Spruce category (JK–Grade 2) include The Little Regent (Owlkids Books) by Yewande Daniel-Ayoade and illustrated by Ken Daley, and Mandeep’s Cloudy Days (Annick Press) by Kuljinder Kaur Brar and illustrated by Samrath Kaur.

In the Silver Birch Express category (Grades 3–4), Uma Krishnaswami is nominated for Birds on the Brain (Groundwood Books), as are Candace Savage and Rachel Wada for Always Beginning: The Big Bang, the Universe, and You (Greystone Kids).

For the Yellow Cedar (Grades 5–8), which is the nonfiction category, the 10 nominees touch on a variety of topics, from disaster in The Halifax Explosion (Plumleaf Press) by Afua Cooper and illustrated by Rebecca Bender, to activism in Queer History A-Z: 100 Years of LGBTQ+ Activism (Kids Can Press) by Robin Stevenson and illustrated by Vivian Rosas.

The Red Maple category (Grades 7–8) includes Wali Shah and Eric Walters’s Call Me Al (Orca Book Publishers) and Deborah Ellis’s The Outsmarters (Groundwood Books).

The nominees for the White Pine category (Grades 9–12) include Stephanie Cooke and Mel Valentine Vargas’s Pillow Talk (Harper Alley) and Sarah Suk’s The Space Between Here & Now (Quill Tree Books).

The full 2025 Forest of Reading nominees are listed at forestofreading.com.