picturebooks, such as Freda Ahenakew and George Littlechild’s How the Birch Tree Got
Its Stripes (1988), and How the Mouse Got Brown Teeth (1988), and Jacquelinne White’s
Coyote Winter (1991) are excellent Native literary retellings of myths.
In fiction, books by Natives are few, though the Inuit Markoosie’s 1970 Harpoon of the
Hunter, Maria Campbell’s People of the Buffalo (1975), Little Badger and the Fire Spirit
(1977) and Riel’s People (1978), and Beatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree
(1983) and Spirit of the White Bison (1986) are very strong examples of the type.
PoetryAlthough there is only a limited amount of poetry specially written for children in
Canadian literature, what there is, often illustrated by noteworthy artists, is of some
merit. Also, adult Canadian poetry suitable for children has been published in two
children’s anthologies, The Wind has Wings (1968) and The New Wind Has Wings (1984),
edited by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson, and illustrated by Elizabeth
Cleaver. Probably the best known books of Canadian children’s poetry are by Dennis
Lee, a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His nursery rhymes in Wiggle
to the Laundromat (1970), and his witty, psychologically perceptive poems in Alligator Pie
(1974), Nicholas Knock and Other People (1974) and Garbage Delight (1977), all
illustrated by Frank Newfeld, Jelly Belly (1983), illustrated by Juan Wijngaard, and a
single-poem book Lizzy’s Lion (1984), illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay, have been
important to the growth of reader interest in Canadian children’s literature. Some
children’s poetry has been written by Canadian poets better known for their adult
poetry. Among these works are Desmond Pacey’s The Cat, the Cow and the Kangaroo:
The Collected Children’s Verse of Desmond Pacey (1968), Irving Layton’s A Spider Danced
a Cosy Jig (1984) and B.P.Nichol’s Moosequakes and Other Disasters (1981), Giants,
Moosequakes and Other Disasters (1985) and his three single-book poems for younger
children: Once: A Lullaby (1983), To the End of the Block (1984) and On the Merry-Go-
Round, published posthumously in 1991. Other illustrated books of poetry of some note
include Phoebe Gilman’s Jillian Jiggs (1985), Robert Heidbreder’s Don’t Eat Spiders
(1985), and Sean O Huigan’s Scary Poems for Rotten Kids (1982), The Ghost Horse of the
Mounties (1983), The Dinner Party (1984) and Atmosfear (1985). Apart from O Huigan’s
free verse, most Canadian children’s poetry to date is marked by strong rhythm and
rhyme, and much of it is humorous or nonsense verse.
Those who spend their lives dealing with children’s literature are aware that a nation’s
cultural and political past and the growth in its civilised values are often more acutely
reflected in its children’s literature than in its traditional history books. The way a
culture treats its young is inevitably displayed in its children’s books, and that treatment
also demonstrates, usually unconsciously, what the general populace accepts as
important in its national character. Contrary to the common perception that children’s
literature is ‘just’ for kids, those who work in the field know that it is a major conveyor
of cultural and political ideologies. This is specially important in Canadian children’s
literature, given Canada’s cultural and political history.
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