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The question that comes to mind at this point, perhaps, is: why do they bother? Certainly it is not for the money. The situation is changing, but even at this point, there are very few children's writers and illustrators who can manage with books as their sole source of income. But ... partly they are like their readers: they get caught up in the stories, they too want to find out what will happen next. Partly there is that "something beyond" again -- an unknown that can be described only in terms of a compulsion to be engaged in the doing of this thing. Partly it is their way of giving. And ... the job satisfaction is enormous. Almost without exception, each one will talk enthusiastically about how much they love their work.
We should rejoice because although the stories they tell are their own and individual, they also come out of a collective consciousness that is on the one hand universal and on the other, as a nation, most especially ours. These children's writers speak for us, and with us -- not just when they are clearly and evidently telling our history as Janet Lunn does, or capturing the scenes of our cities like Stéphane Poulin, or focussing like Ann Blades on our countryside, but in each book they make. What is the story of Isis, for instance, but a story of isolation and pioneering straight out of our history, of the intolerance and prejudice that result from a failure to look beyond the skin, a crucial factor in our life right here and now?
We come at this point to the conclusion of our exploration, but in the conclusion it seems appropriate to look back to the words "The Secret Self" that form the title of it all. We see then that the secret self is not one but many. It lies within the children -- the readers -- who take the books, forming from and in them their own times and spaces; it lies within the influence of each day's shaping, changing; it lies within the writers and illustrators who watch and listen and reach out. There is a secret self in the books as well -- in the histories of their production. And ... there is the secret self of the purchasers -- the parents and librarians who are so often needed to start the books upon their way. Perhaps it is true too that when, through the books, all these so vital elements are united there is some other entity sparked into being. Perhaps there is no ending to the secret-secret selves.
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