The Ontario Library Association's 2011 Forest of Reading nominees were announced earlier in the week and it's exciting to see who the nominees are this time around!

What's special about the Forest of Reading program is that not only are the awards geared especially to Ontario students, but all of the nominees are by CANADIAN authors! Those who participate through their schools or libraries simply have to read 5 of the 10 nominated novels in a program  by the end of April 2011, and in May, an awards event takes place over two days in Toronto where the winners are announced and readers can even meet the authors!

The two programs I pay extra attention to though are the Red Maple and White Pine categories, seeing as these novels are YA. So, without further ado, here are the nominees (all links lead to Goodreads!):

In the Red Maple Award fiction category (there's also non-fiction category too), aimed towards grades 7-8, the nominees are: 

• The Agency: A Spy in the House - Y. S. Lee (Random House) 
• Ghost Ride - Marina Cohen (Dundurn) 
• Haunted - Barbara Haworth-Attard (HarperCollinsCanada) 
• My Name Is Henry Bibb - Afua Cooper (Kids Can Press) 
• Nieve - Terry Griggs (Biblioasis) 
• Not Suitable for Family Viewing - Vicki Grant (HarperCollinsCanada)  
• Only in the Movies - William Bell (Random House) 
• POP - Gordon Korman (Scholastic Canada, Ltd.) 
• The Summoning - Kelley Armstrong (Random House) 
• Wounded - Eric Walters (Penguin Group Canada)

In the White Pine Award category, aimed towards grades 9-12, the nominees are:

• Borderline - Allan Stratton (HarperCollinsCanada) 
• Fear the Worst - Linwood Barclay (Random House) 
• Fishtailing - Wendy Phillips (Coteau Books) 
• Gravity Brings Me Down - Natale Ghent (Random House) 
• Hearts at Stake - Alyxandra Harvey (Penguin Group Canada) 
• The Monkeyface Chronicles - Richard Scarsbrook (Thistledown Press) 
• The Second Trial - Rosemarie Boll (Second Story Press) 
• Some Girls Are - Courtney Summers (HB Fenn) 
• Swim the Fly - Don Calame (Random House) 
• The Worst Thing She Ever Did - Alice Kuipers (HarperCollinsCanada)

There are some great books announced and I've already read a few so that will give me a bit of a head start! I'm going to be trying to read as many as the White Pine books as I can!

Another thing I want to note about this program is a lot of times, the nominees will be books I've never heard about, so I like how this program spreads my reading tastes, encouraging me to try new novels that I might have either never read nor heard about before.

To learn more about the Forest of Reading program or see more of the nominees in the other age group categories, you can visit the official website here.