Canadian Books For Young People

This third, completely revised edition contains hundreds of new entries for a total of almost 2,000 children's books and magazines carefully selected and described by a team of children's librarians. Entries are arranged by subject, with reading levels indicated where necessary, and are also listed in a separate author-title index. A list of prize-winning Canadian children's books and a basic book list for librarians, teachers, and parents are included in this charmingly illustrated volume.

Examination Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Englisches Seminar), 65 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: “Since Canada’s literary tradition is fairly new, it is only natural that there should exist a genuine concern for identity.”1 Consequently, numerous works have addressed the question: What is Canadian about Canadian literature? A general answer is hard to find, among other reasons because the concept of Canadian identity as such is anything but trivial. The connections between national literature and national identity are generally acknowledged and have been thoroughly analysed. As Miriam Richter points out, [i]t is only very recently though, that the role of Canadian children’s literature in the process of defining national identity has come to be examined. Therefore, publications dealing exclusively with this topic exist to a comparatively small extent as yet.2 Despite the ongoing public and scholarly discussion of Canadian identity, it is important to ask whether the question of national identity is still a meaningful one when globalisation is changing the world and rendering national borders increasingly permeable. Economic alliances such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which facilitates trade between Canada, The United States and Mexico, could work towards a relaxation not only of legal but also of cultural borders. There are economists who claim that national boundaries are no longer meaningful concepts, but even though the role of the nation-state has certainly changed in the process of globalisation, the state remains a meaningful force in the modern world.3 Anderson argues that: the ‘end of the era of nationalism,’ so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.4 Besides the fact that there has been very little research done on the topic of identity in Canadian children’s literature, there is more reason to a substantiated interest in this area.

Adolescence, like childhood, is more than a biologically defined life stage: it is also a sociohistorical construction. The meaning and experience of adolescence are reformulated according to societal needs, evolving scientific precepts, and national aspirations relative to historic conditions. Although adolescence was by no means a “discovery” of the early twentieth century, it did assume an identifiably modern form during the years between the Great War and 1950. The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada, 1920 to 1950 captures what it meant for young Canadians to inhabit this liminal stage of life within the context of a young nation caught up in the self-formation and historic transformation that would make modern Canada. Because the young at this time were seen paradoxically as both the hope of the nation and the source of its possible degeneration, new policies and institutions were developed to deal with the “problem of youth.” This history considers how young Canadians made the transition to adulthood during a period that was “developmental”—both for youth and for a nation also working toward individuation. During the years considered here, those who occupied this “dominion” of youth would see their experiences more clearly demarcated by generation and culture than ever before. With this book, Cynthia Comacchio offers the first detailed study of adolescence in early-twentieth-century Canada and demonstrates how young Canadians of the period became the nation’s first modern teenagers.