literature in the classroom. In effecting this, federal money supporting Canada Council
publishing grants and literary awards, and the establishment of small presses and
publishing houses, have been crucial.
The symbiotic relationship between the cultural health of a previously-colonised
country and the commercial means to disseminate its art has been confirmed in the
recent success of small Canadian publishing houses and presses that specialise in
children’s books. Tundra Books, Orca Books, Kids Can Press, Annick Press,
Groundwood Books and Harbour Publishing, to name only a few, are vital to this
process. After many years in which Canada’s cultural identity in print was tightly bound
up with British publishing in a postcolonial relationship, to the detriment of a strong
national children’s literature, the growing presence of Canadian publishing houses since
the 1970s has greatly encouraged and enhanced the production of high-quality
children’s books in Canada.
Major WritersIn the usual definition of the word ‘major’, that is with respect not only to crafting and
influence but also to an international reputation, Canada has only a few major
children’s writers. L.M.Montgomery, perhaps the most famous, has a place beside Alcott
and Burnett because of Anne of Green Gables, if not for her other books in the Anne
series, her Emily of New Moon trilogy and Pat of Silver Bush, all published between 1908
and 1935. Roberts, Thompson, Mowat, Houston, Dennis Lee, Robert Munsch and
Monica Hughes are all known internationally, as are the illustrators Ted Harrison, Ann
Blades, Michael Martchenko and William Kurelek. Though it is hard to predict the
staying power of the newer novel writers, literary fame often being the result of odd
quirks of reader loyalty, Brian Doyle, Jan Truss, Janet Lunn, Kevin Major, Joan Clark,
Mary-Ellen Lang Collura, Maria Campbell and Beatrice Culleton have all produced at
least one novel that may survive.
FictionThe novel for young adults is the most flourishing of forms, encompassing psychological
realism, animal realism, adventure, mystery and detection, domestic realism, growth,
fantasy, science fiction and history. Since the 1970s there has also been a great growth
of illustrated texts for younger children. Crossovers among the categories are common,
realism often being combined with fantasy and history, as for example in Janet Lunn’s
excellent The Root Cellar (1981).
Probably because Canada’s small population has always had to live close to its vast
and dangerous landscape, right from the beginnings of Canadian children’s fiction one
feature has threaded its way through all the categories: the presentation of various faces
of the natural world. Whether Canadian writers are composing fictionalised animal
biographies, such as Seton’s The Biography of a Grizzly (1900), or Roberts’s Red Fox
(1905); adventure survival tales such as Roderick Haig-Brown’s Starbuck Valley Winter
(1943), Farley Mowat’s Lost in the Barrens (1956) or James Houston’s Frozen Fire (1977);
stories in which teenagers, troubled by domestic conflict, run to the wilds for comfort, as
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