TORONTO, ONTARIO — The pale woman with blush on her face (hastily applied it seems) sits in front of the Queen’s Quay Terminal, a district shopping mall in downtown Toronto. As the sunlight bends around the gently undulating crowd, short, tiny blunted shadows touch the sidewalk, reaching out towards the Toronto River, where a couple of mid-sized boats are docked.

McDonald’s has partnered with the Detroit Public Library to launch McDonald’s Books & Backpacks, a program that supports literacy in Detroit and offers local grade school children incentives for checking out books at the Detroit Public Library and its 23 branch locations.  The program runs through the end of the year and is designed to encourage reading and build on the reading skills children acquire in school.