Contemporary Canadian Picture Books

Front matter

CR St nh GA IE N E W LELTERACIE S

Contemporary Canadian Picture Books

Beverley Brenna, Richard Dionne and Theresa Tavares

Contents

Acknowledgements 1x About the Authors x

Traditional Tales and Modernised Folk Literature Dual Language Books 51 Predictable Books 58

Newcomer Experiences 87

Introduction

Some of us love picture books because they mark important times in our lives:

— early childhood, when others shared favourite stories with us;

— revelations of saying J can read, whether that involved “reading” the pictures, memorised text or actual decoding; and

— insights from particular books that changed us in some way — Virginia Woolf calls these “moments of being” and James Joyce calls them “epiphanies.”

Fast forward and these books are the first ones we will read to our own children, and later, if we are lucky, to eager grandchildren. Indeed, picture books bring us full circle. We promote them in libraries, we share them in classrooms, and we sing their praises for older as well as younger readers.

Canada has a wealth of world class picture books waiting to be read. From a feast for the senses in Julie Flett’s Wild Berries... to the repetitive refrain of Joanne Oppenheim’s Have You Seen Birds? (illustrated by Barbara Reid)... to romping child-friendly texts by Robert Munsch... to the lyrical, narrative celebration of the natural world in Susan Vande Griek’s Loon (illustrated by Karen Reczuch)... to the strong underpinnings of rhyme and rhythm exemplified in the work of Dennis Lee, whose Alligator Pie (and other works) resounds with language play... and to mature themes about equity and independence in Nan Gregory’s How Smudge Came (illustrated by Ron Lightburn), Canadian picture books have for generations made us laugh and cry, learn new things, and imagine what if...

But do we really know what a picture book is? What do we really know about Canadian picture books?

And what can a group of newer titles, published between 2017-2019, tell us about common patterns and themes in picture book publishing?

1 Contents of This Book

In this volume we share many of the best, new Canadian picture books on the market as well as spotlight a dozen contemporary authors and illustrators. We also celebrate a list of our favourite timeless national classics. Our focus throughout is on writers and artists living in Canada who publish in English with Canadian publishing houses, and while we undoubtedly have missed

© BEVERLEY BRENNA, RICHARD DIONNE AND THERESA TAVARES, 2021 DOI: 10.1163/9789004465107_001 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc By-NC 4.0 License.

exceptional work published elsewhere and in ways other than through traditional publishers, our work is based on a research study that used this particular lens to focus on brand new books.

Our audience includes preservice and in-service teachers, teacher-educators, and librarians, but we encourage anyone who champions children’s literature to enjoy this resource! We hope that families find titles here to fuel shared reading experiences, and we anticipate that researchers will draw many of our suggested titles into school-based studies. We want readers to be aware of what a rich and diverse body of content we have in Canada; we want to see these books in classrooms, libraries, and homes; we want Canadian titles on recommended reading lists; and, above all, we want these books in the hands of young people.

Our readers will find titles organised through particular themes that connect well to Canadian school curricula. Families will find fuel for conversations and inspiration for artistic play. Children will “meet” 12 authors and illustrators, relatively new to the field of picture books, whom we introduce in Chapter 13 and whose responses to our interview questions provide fascinating insights into picture book creation. Chapter 13 also connects nicely to classroom studies of authors and illustrators related to English Language Arts outcomes, supporting teachers in unit development. Writers and artists can find support in this volume as well — the best advice we have for those who wish to create picture books is to read widely, explore contemporary offerings, and develop stories that mean the most to them.

We have grouped many of our new titles — books with copyright dates between 2017 and 2019 — in thematic chapters to help readers navigate the range of content. While some books could logically fit under more than one theme, we have limited inclusion to single chapters, trusting our readers to make further connections among titles. Chapters 2 to 10 present excellent books in the following categories: identity themes; places near and far; traditional tales — including creation stories, trickster stories, and other narratives with folktale roots; titles where English is accompanied by at least one other language; predictable books, with child-friendly repetitions that encourage children to chime in; books about nature and our living Earth; stories that honour newcomer experiences; picture books that follow older characters — intriguingly interesting to both children and adult readers; and interesting facts and famous people presented in the picture book form. At the end of each summary, we have included suggested audience ages and used a + sign to indicate particular books that might appeal to wider age ranges.

Chapter 11 draws attention to teachable moments at home and at school, putting the following on centre stage in combination with some of the best, newest titles: shared reading with very young children; reader response activities to deepen comprehension; and critical literacy. Chapter 12 celebrates the best of the past, featuring many of our old favourites as Canadian “classics” not to be forgotten, as well as newer titles that we predict will stand the test of time.

With bibliographies of children’s literature at the end of each chapter, highlighting titles created by Indigenous authors or illustrators, and a comprehensive index, this volume will help readers find specific titles and information, and support researchers who wish to locate and study particular kinds of picture books and/or Canadians who publish for young people.

An Epilogue at the end of the book offers our final say on this topic (for now): roads left untaken, literature from other countries we recognise as impactful to the creative process here in Canada, and an apology to anyone whose work deserves to be in this compendium but is not. There were just too many titles to include in this one guide. And that’s a good thing for the status of Canadian picture books for children!

So... flip for key facts, or read cover to cover — this book is now at your service!

2 What Is a Picture Book?

We describe picture books here as titles of various shapes and sizes, combining words and illustrations, traditionally produced for younger children. And we agree with children’s literature scholar Perry Nodelman: picture books are unlike any other form of verbal or visual art.

In Kathy Stinson’s helpful book Writing Picture Books: What Works and What Doesn't, she indicates that a standard length is 32 pages, including the title page and copyright page. Image quality has become just as important as words when assessing children’s literature, and a range of media can be seen in Canadian books to include and even combine approaches such as digital art, acrylics, charcoal, oil paints, pencil, photography, and watercolour. The visual component of a picture book is vital to its success and impact.

While early picture books had limited illustrations that reflected particular aspects of the written story, contemporary picture books champion both the images and the words in carrying and extending the storyline. Pictures and words join to form a unique whole. In the history of Canadian publishing, Canadian houses could not initially afford to print their books in full colour. William Toye’s books with Oxford University Press, in the 1960s and 70s, with Elizabeth Mrazik Cleaver as artist, were pioneers of full-colour illustration in the Canadian picture book form. Yet, even today, many picture books do not include information about the media illustrators have used, and further talking about illustrations is an area where we encourage growth!

A completed picture book is the result of many hands at work: authors and illustrators, for sure, but also designers, editors, publishers, and multiple avenues of promotion and review.

Most picture books have the following elements: the book jacket, or cover; the spine, on which the title and author(s) /illustrator(s) are displayed; sometimes endpapers, and these may offer a visual introduction to the book’s contents; the title page; the copyright page, which is normally at the beginning of the book but sometimes at the end; often a dedication page; and then the story or informational text, not paginated unless there is a table of contents. Aligned in some way with the story is the interior art — either representing or extending the words, or as the full story in wordless picture books. Illustrations that accompany the text provide a rich level of narration — telling the story visually. For many children, picture books are their first introduction to evocative visual art, which covers the full range from literal images to quite abstract illustration.

Information about authors and illustrators is increasingly being included in additional back matter, as well as additional content pieces. Non-fiction titles, for example, often include glossaries and indexes as well as links to related websites and organisations. Most of the time, bilingual stories also have glossaries to aid the reader in navigating the languages. In addition, some titles have invitations encouraging activities that further extend the impact of the book outside the reading experience.

Picture books now appear in a wide variety of genres including, but not limited to: realistic fiction; fantasy; historical fiction; and non-fiction. Subcategories of non-fiction include biographies, autobiographies, and narrative non-fiction — where the information unfolds in a story-like manner. A variety of choices related to poetry and prose are also apparent in writing style, and these sometimes involve rhymed or unrhymed verse, with various attention to meter. It’s important to note that unless a picture book is for very young children, where rhymed text can support chiming in, rhymed work for children is very much out of date.

There are plenty of variations on the picture book form, as well. For the youngest audiences, popular choices are board books, with heavy cardboard or plastic pages that stand the rigours of time and hands-on use; look/say toddler books, providing a context for the recognition and naming of common items; and counting and alphabet books with repeated characters and/ or settings and an overarching theme. Hybrids combining elements of both the picture book and the graphic novel forms are also increasingly common — for example, Kelly Collier’s A Horse Named Steve and its sequel, Team Steve. Blended genres are also steadily more apparent — seen in creative non-fiction, for example, as well as the continuum of historical fiction that offers varying degrees of truth telling. Paul Yee’s Ghost Train, illustrated by Harvey Chan, is an example of historical fiction/fantasy where fact is combined with fiction to create a moving fantasy about the Chinese workers who died building North American railroads.

As well as identifying what picture books are, it’s important to recognise what picture books are not. They’re not simply “easy stories for little people,” and they're not a label for books written with a controlled “levelled” vocabulary such as educational titles created for the beginning reader. If you see a “storyline” such as “The fat cat sat with a hat on a mat...” reject it. This is not a picture book. Picture books are written for the readers’ interest and appreciation, not to a narrow reading level or for the sole purpose of decoding individual words.

In this guide, we have omitted collections of poetry unless they featured a single storyline or fit well under non-fiction headings (even though poetry anthologies such as Shannon Bramer’s Climbing Shadows, illustrated by Cindy Derby, are spectacular). We have also omitted board books and many of the counting and alphabet books available as new titles although a handful of counting/alphabet books with highly original elements and/or exceptional illustrations have been included. Most of our chapters dwell on books originally published in English in the target years 2017-2019, and this has meant we are not focusing on Canadian titles earlier published in French.

Some picture books, such as That Squeak by Carolyn Beck and illustrated by Francois Thisdale — a story about the death of a friend, for ages 8 to u — carry complex characters and information intended for older, mature readers. A number of titles speaking to older age groups carry more text — verging on the 2000 word mark — than the typical picture books of a few hundred words designed for younger audiences.

Contemporary picture books are also not merely words with corresponding pictures, as they may have been in years past. Many new picture books have illustrations that take readers far beyond what is presented in the text — and some “wordless” picture books don't use text at all in favour of stand-alone visual information, requiring a different kind of attention on the part of readers. Sidewalk Flowers, winner of the 2015 Governor General’s Award in the category for children’s illustrated books, illustrated by Sydney Smith, was authored by

JonArno Lawson although no written words at all appear on any of its pages.

3 Finding Great Picture Books

Noting authors and illustrators with multiple titles can offer a foundation for locating great books. Ruth Ohi, for example, has authored and illustrated over 20 books, and illustrated many others. Perusing award lists, and shortlists, is another good way to locate terrific titles. While the Amelia Frances

Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award was discontinued in 2015, the booklist is still

a good one and there are a number of artists who have won it multiple times:

https://bookcentre.ca/awards/amelia-frances-howard-gibbon-illustrators-award. Here are a few current awards to note, and a few recent winners.

Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award

This $1000 award was established in 1985 through an endowment by one of Canada’s pre-eminent illustrators and administered through the International Board on Books for Young People (1BBY) Canada. Recent winners include Rachel Wada who illustrated The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota’s Garden (written by Heather Smith), Julie Morstad for Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli (written by Kyo Maclear), and Julie Kraulis for A Pattern for Pepper.

Governor General’s Literary Awards for Young People’s Literature — Illustrated Books (English)

The Canada Council for the Arts is responsible for administering and promoting the Governor General's Literary Awards, which recognise Canada’s best English and French books, in a variety of categories, with prizes of $25 000 plus funding to publishers for promotion costs. Recent picture book winners include: Small in the City by Sydney Smith; They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki; and When We Were Alone by David A. Robertson, illustrated by Julie Flett.

Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award

Charles Baillie established this $20 ooo prize, administered by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, in the name of his wife, Marilyn Baillie, an award-winning children’s book author and an early learning specialist. Recent recipients have included Shauntay Grant (author) and Eva Campbell (illustrator) for Africville; Paul Harbridge (author) and Matt James (illustrator) for When the Moon Comes; and Jennifer McGrath (author) and Josée Bisaillon (illustrator) for The Snow Knows.

TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award

This prize of $50 ooo for the “most distinguished book of the year,” administered through the Canadian Children’s Book Centre in partnership with the TD Bank Group, has recently acknowledged the work of Joanne Schwartz (author) and Sydney Smith (illustrator) for the winning title Town Is by the Sea. Recent “honour books” have included Mustafa by Marie-Louise Gay as well as Barbara Reid’s Picture the Sky.

Other Noteworthy Awards Across the country, various provinces and territories offer annual literary prizes that are voted on by children. Information for Ontario, for example, is available at the Forest of Reading site: https://forestofreadingfestival.ca/. Information on Saskatchewan readers’ choice awards appears here: https://willowawards. ca/. A complete index of various other Canadian children’s literature awards is here: https://bookcentre.ca/resources/canadian-childrens-award-index.

Other Noteworthy Books

To find additional excellent titles beyond awards’ records, we also recommend seasonal lists of best books or titles sorted by topic. Best Books for Kids and Teens, published by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (ccBc) (https:// www.bookcentre.ca), has a section specifically for picture books. The International Board on Books for Young People via 1BBY Canada (https://www.ibby. org/) lists books by topic, including a digital catalogue of picture books by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors and illustrators. The ccBc has regional libraries that are situated in various institutions, including universities, as well as a quarterly magazine: the Canadian Children’s Book News.

Locate even more titles through online reviews. cM Magazine (https:// www.cmreviews.ca) is an electronic reviewing journal that comes out every Friday from September to June, supported by Dr. Dave Jenkinson, cm Editor and Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba.

Other popular and well-sourced websites that post reviews online include: — 49th Shelf (49thshelf:com); and — Quill & Quire (quillandquire.com);

— or search regionally, such as through Atlantic Books Today (atlanticbookstoday.ca), Prairie Books Now (prairiebooksnow.ca), or BC Bookworld’s Book-

Look (bebooklook.com).

In addition, Canlit for Little Canadians (canlitforlittlecanadians.blogspot.com) is a blog we recommend. It’s run by Helen Kubiw, a reputable source with a respected website.

And of course, bookstores across the country, and online, support children’s literature. While numbers of independent children’s bookstores have diminished over the past twenty years, it’s still worth locating the few nearest you that still exist. Another great source for book suggestions is through your local library — public librarians are always willing to help.

4 A Brief History of Children’s Literature

Before the 19th century only a few books in English were written for children, so young people read books intended for adults, understanding whatever they could. This has certainly changed, and the professional publication of Canadian picture books has risen to approximately 200 new titles every

year. Now, some of the Canadian picture books intended for children are even

claimed by adult readers — Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever, for example,

illustrated by Sheila McGraw, was created over two decades ago and has sold

more than 30 million copies — many of them for adults. Another Munsch title,

The Paper Bag Princess, illustrated by Michael Martchenko, has just celebrated

its goth anniversary, and it dislodges gender stereotypes, asserting a feminist

message for all ages.

Up until the 18th century, a variety of books in languages other than English

reached multiple audiences, including children, such as:

— Panchatantra (800 BCE), an ancient collection of animal fables in prose and poetry, authored by Indian scholar Vishnu Sharma;

— Aesop’s Fables (600 BCE), moralistic animal tales invented by Aesop (Atawnog — Aisopos), a slave and storyteller in Ancient Greece;

— Arabian Nights (folktales created prior to the gth century), by authors of Middle Eastern or Indian descent;

— Kathasaritsagara (uth century), a collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold by court poet and Sanscrit writer Somadeva; and

— Orbis Pictus (1658), authored by John Amos Comenius and published first in Latin and German - the earliest known picture book specifically for children.

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer is the title of what is considered to be the very first fiction children’s book in English. It was released in 1744 by British publisher John Newbery, for whom the American Newbery Award in Children’s Literature is named. Thomas Boreman’s ten-volume series, the “Gigantick Histories,” was issued between 1740 and 1744 and designed to instruct, although many of the included facts were deemed incorrect by readers.

Prior to the 20th century, most of the published books for children in Canada came from elsewhere. Local authors and illustrators produced materials for magazines as well as unpublished manuscripts for family and friends. One of the best known originally unpublished early Canadian manuscripts for children is Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon’s An Illustrated Comic Alphabet, dated 1859, and given as a Christmas gift. Oxford University Press published the book in 1966.

In the late 19th century, improvements to paper production, along with other inventions, supported English book publishing on a wider scale, and made books for a variety of audiences available cheaply. At this time, writing for children was shaped specifically to teach moral and didactic lessons, particularly through religious tracts. This old-fashioned approach to children’s literature has gone out of style in terms of contemporary Canadian picture book publishing, although there are still many authors — primarily unsuccessful ones — who attempt to direct heavy handed moral or otherwise didactic lessons through their work.

It wasn't until the late 19th and early 2oth centuries that the children’s library movement across North America advocated for quality publications for children, as agents of social influence. Professional recognition of children’s librarians as specialists also occurred at this time. As demand increased for quality children’s materials, production increased for North American children’s books, firstly in the United States. With a few exceptions (including Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne” books), there wasn’t a thriving book industry in Canada until the late 1970s. The surge here followed by some years the rise of Canadian adult literature — children’s books came second. Our beginnings were small and shaky, combatting the prevailing notion that, as Canadians, we didn’t have real stories to tell. Once the industry for Canadian children’s literature took hold, it faced steep competition from imported materials as well as from the rising educational publishing market.

In the 1960s, advocacy for children’s literature heightened. Sheila Egoff, a children’s librarian and the first tenured faculty member to teach children’s literature at the Canadian university level, inspired William Toye and Elizabeth Cleaver to collaborate on the first real picture books published in Canada. These included the Indigenous creation stories How Summer Came to Canada (1969) and The Loon’s Necklace (1977), supported by the National Archives of Canada and published by Oxford University Press. A thorough history of Canadian picture books was published in 2010 by Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman, and is definitely worth reading for a thorough discussion of the evolution of picture book publishing in this country.

As we ask about the importance of picture books today, many responses come to mind. All said, the best picture books serve a number of purposes, the most important of which is to tell riveting stories in a tightly composed form that impels readers to turn the page, anticipating what happens next. In addition, they:

— seek to inform and/or entertain, increasing knowledge and building a foundation for lifelong reading;

— support vocabulary development;

— expand children’s grammar and options for sentence structure;

— offer a rich context for adult-child talk, further developing language;

— demonstrate patterns for writing;

— introduce young people to fine art, which they can closely examine and which will set a foundation for personal enrichment and lifelong appreciation; and

— provide mirrors and windows on our lives and the lives of others — deepening ideas about personal identity and encouraging empathy.

In Canada, modern picture books have commonly told stories and presented information for ages 4 to 8, although suggested age groups for picture books vary around the world. Audience-age appears to be changing in Canada where picture books for older readers or all ages are given special attention on library shelves outside the children’s department. Increasingly, some picture books present mature themes and diverse characters, appealing to older audiences including those who are learning English.

A few remarkable titles, such as Melanie Florence’s Missing Nimdmé, illustrated by Francois Thisdale and published by Clockwise Press in 2017, engage intergenerational reading: Missing Nimâmå is the story of a missing Indigenous woman, and her daughter, offering insight to the realities of a national tragedy; Matt James’ The Funeral, published in 2018 by Groundwood Books, provides perspective on specific rituals seen through the eyes of a young child; Jennifer Lanthier’s The Stamp Collector, with illustrations by Francois Thisdale, presents a mature story about freedom of expression; and Danielle Daniel's Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox, published in 2015 by Groundwood Books, offers insight into the traditions of the Anishinaabe culture.

As previously mentioned, sometimes picture book stories unfold through the illustrations alone and these are labelled wordless picture books. Dave Whamond’s Rosie’s Glasses, exploring our attitudes about how we see the world, is a spectacular example of how a story can unfold through pictures. Many titles with or without words include characteristics of digital reading — such as informational or narrative sidebars, with cues embedded in font and colour. This is where the role of the designer, alongside author and illustrator, becomes especially vital in a collective goal of making meaning, with the book’s editor charged in assessing the product in its entirety.

Canada’s picture book industry shows the impact of our digital world, with an ongoing evolution in terms of new forms and formats, perspectives, and boundaries, demonstrating what American academic Dr. Eliza Dresang calls Radical Change. Keeping up with modern times, picture books must be clever, authentic, dynamic and engaging in order to survive the competition of other forms of reading, both handheld and online.

INTRODUCTION 11 5 Picture Book Research

This book was produced with acknowledgements to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, in conjunction with a SSHRC Insight Grant associated with Dr. Beverley Brenna’s work at the University of Saskatchewan. Bev’s research team explored patterns and themes in picture books published in Canada by professional publishing houses during the copyright years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Either the author or the illustrator (or both) were living in Canada at the time of publication. Some of the books discovered as part of this study appear in chapters of this guide as particularly important titles to note. We apologise in advance for any exceptional titles we may have missed in our process.

As our study progressed into the spring of 2020 with restrictions on social activity due to COvID-19, Bev was able to bring all 500 picture books within the three-year-copyright period into her front porch, where they could be explored and re-explored at her leisure, although not all were available to the other authors of this text. For this reason, any errors in detail or interpretation found in this volume are likely Bev’s.

These books are formidable in their entirety, a solid reminder of the important work Canadians are doing in picture book publication. Realistic fiction and fantasy genres appear to be the most common, but non-fiction is also a popular genre, comprising just under a third of the picture books published in 2017, for example. Common themes in the three-year set of books presented in this guide involve identity, and depictions of the natural world. We cheered at the diverse characterisations in these books, and saw representations of many human realities. While a few titles included secondary characters with physical exceptionalities, however, characterisations including disability were almost entirely absent — definitely an element to watch in future years.

Topics such as friendship, commonly found in picture books of the past, were not as common in this set, although some stellar new titles such as Isabelle Arsenault’s Albert’s Quiet Quest, where the storyline unfolds through speech bubbles, and The Magic Boat by Kit Pearson and Katherine Farris, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard, impressed us with their original perspectives on being a friend and needing a friend. Possibly since Canada already has many children’s books about friendship, publishers are now seeking titles that represent different themes.

And now, a few points about cost. Printing a picture book, in full colour, is perhaps one of the most expensive printing processes there is. Consequently, publishers have to consider whether proposed picture book projects can earn back the money that goes into the production. Frequently, the printing process does not take place in Canada, but off-shore — i.e. usually in Asia where the costs are significantly lower. This is technical stuff, but it does come into the whole story of picture books and the fact that they are still being produced, despite the competition from more digital-based projects that, at times, seem to threaten the continuing production of printed books.

We are delighted that handheld picture book production is currently alive and well in Canada! The numbers of English titles released each year by professional publishing houses is one trend to note in the graphic that follows, updated from recent data (Brenna, Khan, & Morstad, 2020), and includes comparative information related to Indigenous authors and illustrators that also demonstrates an increase over time in Indigenous perspectives. Even with increases seen here in Indigenous content, there is still room for growth in comparison to total numbers of books produced each year. In addition, while some of the many Indigenous populations of Canada are represented in this literature, others are not yet present.

As part of each chapter’s bibliography we have used an asterisk * to highlight books with Indigenous authors/illustrators, anticipating that readers will be especially excited to locate this content in the spirit of indigenising collections of resources for young people. Not only does this signage recognise Indigenous authors and illustrators, but it is intended to encourage and honour these Indigenous titles in circulation.

We have also included information about Indigenous author and illustrator backgrounds in our summaries of books. At times, regional spellings of cultural significance may be different from summary to summary as we have replicated exactly the information from each specific text and language background. The decision made to inform audiences about the Indigenous cultures of authors/illustrators included in this volume is an effort to extend awareness of books that carry Indigenous voices and narratives, and it comes here as part of our response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action.

Number of Canadian Picture Books by Canadian Authors and Illustrators

2005 2015 2017 2018

E Total Number of Canadian Picture Books Produced

E Titles by Indigenous Authors and/or Illustrators