"I write for a child or children that I know. I try to divine their way of thinking, what they expect from a book, the magic that opens new worlds for them. If you're not ready to create magic or fantasy, you shouldn't write for children, because they know that reality is magic too." (Translation.)

Henriette Major. "Rencontre avec Henriette Major", Lurelu. Vol. 3, no. 2, Summer 1980, p. 15.

" . . . I dream of making children understand that imagination is their most precious possession. I don't know if I will succeed." (Translation.)

Cécile Gagnon. "L'imagination au pouvoir", Des Livres et des Jeunes. Vol. 7, no. 21, Summer 1985, p. 6.

Integral to all this has been a desire to have books that speak to children as Canadians, informing them of who and what they are. Despite indications to the contrary in the number of books that were being published, Canadianism has always been a guiding force. For instance, when Catherine Parr Traill, one of our earliest writers for adults, created our first known children's novel, Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains, her expressed aim was teaching young immigrants what to expect in their new land.

A similar wish to pass on information about Canada was very much at the heart of the substantial bodies of work produced by such French-Canadian writers as l'abbé Casgrain. It has had some unusual manifestations: Bob and Bill See Canada for example  --  the story in rhyme of a cross-Canada journey by two rabbits, produced in 1919. Certainly, it has been a factor in that "limitedness" that was noted earlier and which has caused children to complain in desperation, "It seems that all Canadian books have wilderness and are mostly about History" ³ and adults to add, "I would suggest publishers try to locate authors who can find some other subjects to write about besides 'the north' and Indians, or the American publishers will never have any competition".⁴

This urge to fill perceived gaps in knowledge intruded for a long time on our ability to see that what we really needed to do was to give our children not our information but our stories. This short-sightedness was somehow altered through the production of just one book. That book was Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie. It was full of our living and it made readers dance and skip and laugh. It proved once and for all  --  as had been so dramatically demonstrated in English Canada with Anne of Green Gables all those years before  --  that Canadian writing could be fun. Because it was fun, Alligator Pie sold. That was important because it gave the publishers a much-needed shot of hope.

Alligator Pie may have been an important book but it could not have worked its special magic for us all by itself. It came at a time when there were publishers more than ever determined to cherish the writers who were already writing and to encourage new ones too. The most important of these were again often in the small publishing houses. James Lorimer & Co. and The Women's Press have been mentioned already but there is an increasing number of others  --  Annick Press, for example, as well as Courte échelle.

At last, then, the stories are coming forth: the books that bear the message to embrace and enfold all others  --  the message that says to our children that our life as a nation is wondrous and varied, our life and our living count.

¹ A twelve-year-old girl, quoted in Children's Choices of Canadian Books, edited by Margaret Caughey (Ottawa: Citizens' Committee on Children, 1981), Vol. II, p. 58.

² A six-year-old girl, quoted in Children's Choices of Canadian Books, edited by M. Jane Charlton (Ottawa: Citizens' Committee on Children, 1985), Vol. IV, no. 1, p. 22.

³ A ten-year-old boy, quoted in Children's Choices of Canadian Books, edited by Margaret Caughey (Ottawa: Citizens' Committee on Children, 1979), Vol. 1, p. 38.

⁴ Parent of a seven-year-old reader, quoted in Children's Choices of Canadian Books, edited by Margaret Caughey (Ottawa: Citizens' Committee on Children, 1979 ), Vol. 1, p. 7.