authors, and the names of the prizes they have won, by year, as well as suggestions of
books suitable for specific ages of children.
From among the many outstanding alphabet picturebooks for very young children one
might name Elizabeth Cleaver’s ABC (1984), Ted Harrison’s A Northern Alphabet (1982),
Ann Blades’s By the Sea: An Alphabet Book (1985) and Allan Moak’s A Big City ABC
(1984). In the category of picture storybooks for school-age children Ann Blades’s Mary
of Mile 18 (1971) and A Boy of Taché (1973) and William Kurelek’s A Prairie Boy’s Winter
(1973), A Prairie Boy’s Summer (1975), and A Northern Nativity (1976) stand out. Of
many recent publications, Mr Kneebone’s New Digs (1991), by Ian Wallace, presents
readers with a challenging text about urban poverty. Waiting for the Whales, by Sheryl
McFarlane and Ron Lightburn (1991), present very poignant text and pictures, and the
myth-poem Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall (1993), by Native artist Leo Yerxa, pictures
intensely and lovingly a Canadian annual experience like no other, the first snowfall just
after the autumn colours. Informed by the Egoff/Saltman and Stott/Jones guides,
readers of the Canadian illustrated text have a feast waiting for them.
Native myths, legends and storiesThere is a growing awareness among English-speaking Canadians that in a multiethnic
society, the cultures of all ethnic groups should be honoured. Thus a reluctance to be
seen as appropriators of Native culture has diminished the amount of work on native
subjects by non-Native writers that began to appear infrequently early this century and
more frequently between 1955 and the mid-1980s. In 1955 Cyrus Macmillan’s
Glooscap’s Country; in the 1960s Robert Ayre’s Sketco the Raven (1961), Kay Hill’s
Glooscap and His Magic (1963), Dorothy Reid’s Tales of Nanabozho (1963), Christie
Harris’s Once Upon a Totem (1963), and William Toye and Elizabeth Cleaver’s The
Mountain Goats of Temlaham (1969) and How Summer Came to Canada (1969); in the
1970s Harris’s Once More Upon a Totem (1974) and her Mouse Woman series, and Toye
and Cleaver’s The Loon’s Necklace (1977) and The Fire Stealer (1979); and in the 1980s
Alden Knowlan’s Nine Micmac Legends (1983), appeared as examples of successful
literary retellings for children, by non-Natives, of Indian oral stories. Versions of Inuit
material by non-Natives are much scarcer, the work of James Houston (who lived for a
decade in the Arctic in the 1950s) being by far the most important: his Tikta’liktak (1965),
The White Archer (1967), Akavak (1968), Wolf Run (1971), Kiviok’s Magic Journey (1973),
Long Claws (1981) and The Falcon Bow (1986) all reflect Houston’s knowledge of and
empathy for his material.
Although Native writers of adult text are growing in numbers, in children’s literature
this is happening more slowly, though there are some notable exceptions. Basil
Johnston is an Ojibway, an ethnologist, some of whose work, though intended for adult
Natives, is accessible to children, especially How the Birds Got Their Colours (1978) and
Tales the Elders Told: Ojibway Legends (1981), both of which are illustrated by Native
artists. George Clutesi’s Son of Raven, Son of Deer: Tales of the Tseshaht People (1967)
and Potlach (1969) were the work of a man dedicated to restoring to primary importance
cultural values that had been almost swamped by white traditions. Tales From the
Longhouse (1973), the work of Native children on Vancouver Island, and some
THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 855