ENGL 3903 X1 - Andrea Schwenke Wyile

CANADIAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: Re-Discovering Canada
a Women's & Gender Studies program credit

Barbara Hehner describes our Canadian literary heritage as a kaleidoscope, in which "each little piece of glass keeps its shape and colour, but together they constantly shift and overlap to form something new. At times, some of the pieces are hidden in the larger design, but just a slight shift in viewpoint and they leap out again, plain to see. And the beauty and symmetry of a kaleidoscopic image is, of course, fragile." The Arrogant Worms maintain that Canada is basically rocks and trees, rocks and trees, rocks and trees, and w a t e r. We'll investigate what such an environment translates into when represented on paper from a variety of human perspectives, eh?

Issues to be considered include representations of and relations to community and country, diverse people and languages, as well as debates regarding age appropriateness, and the foundational and aspirational nature of children’s literature. Integrated into these matters are the adult shaping of and challenges to children's literature (read: censorship). The assigned readings explore an array of recent and contemporary Indigenous and Canadian works for younger and older children (read: borderline adults), from the late 1970s onward. The course's central objectives are to explore the possibilities and variety inherent in children's literature and its contribution to our understanding of (so-called) Canadian places and the stories and identities of the people living there.