psychologically realistic or historical, as, for instance, happens in Collura’s Winners or
Lunn’s The Root Cellar.
Given Canada’s history, one might have expected historical fiction to be a strong
feature of the national children’s literature, but the typical features of such fiction in
which events are privileged over character in an attempt to achieve accuracy, and in
which an instructive tone is adopted towards the reader, produce the same stilted and
didactic work in Canadian literature as in other national literatures. Besides, the growing
recognition that the term ‘historical fiction’ is a tautology, and that all history is no more
than the fictions we tell ourselves about the past, has begun to blur the lines between
so-called history and an imaginative rendering of the past. Of the more traditional kind
of historical fiction, John Hayes’ six books on events in Canada’s past, such as Treason
at York (1949) and Rebels Ride at Night (1953), present a standard approach to
historical ‘accuracy’. More interesting because they deal with a subject less than
common in children’s literature, labour troubles and union politics, Bill Freeman’s
Shantymen of Cache Lake (1975) and Trouble at Lachine Mill (1983) manage to be both
informative and entertaining at the same time. Whether set in a recognisable previous
time period, in the current era looking back, or in a constructed present, rendering the
varieties of Canadian culture, the ethnic groups and their reaction to each other—and
the contact between the native peoples and white Canadian culture—has been the kind
of ‘history’ that interests Canadian writers of children’s literature. James Houston and
Farley Mowat are writers of this kind, as are Roderick Haig-Brown in The Whale People
(1962), Edith Sharp in Nkwala (1958), and Barbara Smucker in Underground to
Canada. Jan Hudson’s Sweetgrass (1984), on a year in the life of a young Blackfoot
woman in the nineteenth century, has become recognised as a novel of note. And
Shizuye Takashima’s illustrated A Child in Prison Camp (1971), though not strictly
speaking historical fiction since it uses her own family’s story, skilfully and plainly
evokes a child’s view of the Canadian government’s internment of Japanese Canadians
during the Second World War. Telling the history of Canada as story rather than as event
will probably continue to be an important aspect of the mirroring and the making of
national identity for Canadian children.
Illustrated TextsSince the 1970s there has been a proliferation of excellent illustrated texts for children
under the age of 10, including single fairy tales and myths, alphabet books, poetry and
stories. So numerous now are Canadian illustrated books for children that it is impossible
to list more than a few. However, in their highly recommended critical guide to Canadian
children’s literature, The New Republic of Childhood (1990), Sheila Egoff and Judith
Saltman include a fifty-one page chapter, ‘Picturebooks and Picture-Storybooks’ that
provides a wealth of detail about categories, titles, authors and illustrators, many of
whom have won awards for their work. Another source of help in sorting out this
extremely rich field of work, up to 1988, lies in Canadian Books for Children: A Guide to
Authors & Illustrators (1988), by Jon C.Stott and Raymond E.Jones. Besides concise
short articles on individual authors, Stott and Jones list award-winning books and
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