Quill and Quire

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80 years of Q&Q: a look back at Canadian children’s publishing

80-45Roch Carrier’s Hockey Sweater holds up

The beloved story began as a CBC Radio essay, was published as a short story (translated by Sheila Fischman) by House of Anansi Press in 1979, made into an animated short film with art by Sheldon Cohen for the National Film Board of Canada in 1980, and was finally published as an illustrated children’s book by Tundra Books in 1984.

 


80-31Anne Shirley’s enduring appeal

Originally published in 1908 by L.C. Page and Company (Boston), Anne of Green Gables first appeared in a Canadian edition by the Ryerson Press in 1942 (just as author L.M. Montgomery died). That remained in print in several formats until the late 1980s. A 1981 mass-market Seal edition was retired just a short time ago and replaced by new editions from Tundra Books. Six more editions have appeared from a variety of Penguin Random House imprints, and a critical edition was published by Broadview Press in 2004.  –Benjamin Lefebvre, editor of The L.M. Montgomery Reader (University of Toronto Press)

 

 


Gordon Korman

Gordon Korman

Titans of kidlit, then and now

Dennis Lee
THEN Alligator Pie, illustrated by Frank Newfeld (Macmillan, 1974)
NOW Melvis & Elvis, illustrated by Jeremy Tankard (HarperCollins Canada, 2015), is Lee’s first new collection of original poems for children in almost a decade.

Robert Munsch
THEN Love You Forever, illustrated by Sheila McGraw (Firefly Books, 1986), has sold more than 26 million copies in print in North America alone.
NOW Pyjama Day, illustrated by Michael Martchenko (Scholastic Canada, 2014)

Kathy Stinson
THEN Red is Best, illustrated by Robin Baird Lewis (Annick Press, 1982)
NOW The Man with the Violin, illustrated by Dušan Petričić (Annick, 2013), won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award.

Gordon Korman
THEN This Can’t be Happening at Macdonald Hall! (Scholastic Canada, 1978) was written when Korman was 12 years old.
NOW Masterminds (HarperCollins, 2015)

Jean Little
THEN Mine for Keeps (Little, Brown & Co. Canada, 1962) won the Little, Brown Canadian Children’s Book Award.
NOW Do Not Open Until Christmas (Red Deer Press, 2014)