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Defining Canadian Children's Literature -Reply
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From: Perry Nodelman <perry.nodelman>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:48:33 -0500
Martha says:
No problem, as we say up here in the frozen north. One of the key facts about the relationship between my country and yours is that we here in Canada tend to know a lot--way too much, some people think-?out what's going on the states, whereas Americans tend to know not very much at all--way too little, some (Canadian) people think-?out what's happening here in Canada. I turn on my TV and nine times out of ten what I see is made in the US. Indeed, I'm probably seeing it on a US channel brought to me by my local cable company; at some times of the day it's easier for me to find out the local news in Minneapolis MN, Rochester NY or Fargo ND than what's happening here in Winnipeg. The movies available for me to see currently in Winnipeg are overwhelmingly American--even the ones shot in Canada usually pretend to be set in the States in order to make American audiences feel at home. Oh, there is right now a British movie on about Grey Owl, which represents a peculiarly Masterpiece-ish Theater vision of the wilds of Canada and the wonderful and wonderfully handsome Englishman who comes to teach the value of their land to uncomprehending Canadians.
And Canadian bookstores are filled with American books. That, in fact, might explain a lot about Canadian children's literature. It has to compete in its own home market with many books from a foreign country--yours. The American books are often cheaper than the Canadian ones--they've been produced to be profitable in terms of wide sales in a vast North American market, whereas the Canadian books need to make their profits in a much smaller domestic market-?r fewer of them are likely to sell in the US than are American books likely to see well here in Canada.
And yet, increasingly, they MUST sell in the US. With cutbacks in government support programs for publishing, the reductions in profit margins caused by the influx of big box bookstores, free trade arrangements that allow American books to flow across the border without restriction or duties, and a variety of other economic factors, Canadian publishers are finding that they must either try to sell to the whole North American market or perish. Thus, a Canadian publisher turned down my YA novel Behaving Bradley because it was already being published in the US by Simon and Schuster, and they felt they couldn't make a profit on it from just the Canadian market alone. I ended up giving the Canadian rights to Simon and Schuster, which puts me in the peculiar position of being a Canadian writer whose books have to be imported into Canada from their American publisher. Peculiar--but becoming more common these days.
If Canadian books have to work for the entire North American market, then they are likely to become less distinctly Canadian--for I suspect American children and American adults interested in children's books will want to read them not in order to find out about a foreign country with interesting differences from their own, but, rather, just to assume that the book is about people like themselves in a place like their own. Canadian children's books are becoming more completely Americanized just as Canadian life and culture in general s becoming more completely Americanized. This distresses me--not because there isn't much I admire in American culture (there is), but because this sort of homogenization and reduction of differences and distinctions is making Canada and the world in general a less complex and less interesting place.
Nevertheless, there still tend to be significant differences between Canadian and American life, Canadian children's books and American ones. One important one relates to the humility and reticence and sometimes low self-esteem that comes from our being a small and unimportant group of people sharing a continent with the most powerful nation in the world. Our books tend to be uncertain and ambiguous and often express the ironic viewpoint and the self?precating sense of humor that tend to emerge from our sense of being outsiders in the culture we more or less live in and our perceptions of our relative insignificance. Many of our best writers do comedy: Brian Doyle, often (as in Angel Square), and Robert Munsch and Mordecai Richler, author of Jacob Two-Two. I try to do it too, in my own books and in the ones I write with Carol Matas. Many others--Jean Little, Janet Lunn, Kevin Major, Martha Brooks, Margaret Buffie--work to create senses of specific places and times that are distinctly Canadian. Still others tend to explore outsider anti-conventional positions in ways that tend to be more forceful than those offered in most books by Americans--as Major does, as Carol Matas frequently does in her own books, and as I try to do in mine.
I'm happy for these differences. I hope that, despite all odds, they continue to exist. As a Canadian and a Canadian writer for children, I'm grateful for CCBC's interest in Canadian children's books. I thank you all.
Yrs., Perry Nodelman perry.nodelman at uwinnipeg.ca http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~nodelman
Received on Fri 01 Oct 1999 11:48:33 AM CDT
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:48:33 -0500
Martha says:
No problem, as we say up here in the frozen north. One of the key facts about the relationship between my country and yours is that we here in Canada tend to know a lot--way too much, some people think-?out what's going on the states, whereas Americans tend to know not very much at all--way too little, some (Canadian) people think-?out what's happening here in Canada. I turn on my TV and nine times out of ten what I see is made in the US. Indeed, I'm probably seeing it on a US channel brought to me by my local cable company; at some times of the day it's easier for me to find out the local news in Minneapolis MN, Rochester NY or Fargo ND than what's happening here in Winnipeg. The movies available for me to see currently in Winnipeg are overwhelmingly American--even the ones shot in Canada usually pretend to be set in the States in order to make American audiences feel at home. Oh, there is right now a British movie on about Grey Owl, which represents a peculiarly Masterpiece-ish Theater vision of the wilds of Canada and the wonderful and wonderfully handsome Englishman who comes to teach the value of their land to uncomprehending Canadians.
And Canadian bookstores are filled with American books. That, in fact, might explain a lot about Canadian children's literature. It has to compete in its own home market with many books from a foreign country--yours. The American books are often cheaper than the Canadian ones--they've been produced to be profitable in terms of wide sales in a vast North American market, whereas the Canadian books need to make their profits in a much smaller domestic market-?r fewer of them are likely to sell in the US than are American books likely to see well here in Canada.
And yet, increasingly, they MUST sell in the US. With cutbacks in government support programs for publishing, the reductions in profit margins caused by the influx of big box bookstores, free trade arrangements that allow American books to flow across the border without restriction or duties, and a variety of other economic factors, Canadian publishers are finding that they must either try to sell to the whole North American market or perish. Thus, a Canadian publisher turned down my YA novel Behaving Bradley because it was already being published in the US by Simon and Schuster, and they felt they couldn't make a profit on it from just the Canadian market alone. I ended up giving the Canadian rights to Simon and Schuster, which puts me in the peculiar position of being a Canadian writer whose books have to be imported into Canada from their American publisher. Peculiar--but becoming more common these days.
If Canadian books have to work for the entire North American market, then they are likely to become less distinctly Canadian--for I suspect American children and American adults interested in children's books will want to read them not in order to find out about a foreign country with interesting differences from their own, but, rather, just to assume that the book is about people like themselves in a place like their own. Canadian children's books are becoming more completely Americanized just as Canadian life and culture in general s becoming more completely Americanized. This distresses me--not because there isn't much I admire in American culture (there is), but because this sort of homogenization and reduction of differences and distinctions is making Canada and the world in general a less complex and less interesting place.
Nevertheless, there still tend to be significant differences between Canadian and American life, Canadian children's books and American ones. One important one relates to the humility and reticence and sometimes low self-esteem that comes from our being a small and unimportant group of people sharing a continent with the most powerful nation in the world. Our books tend to be uncertain and ambiguous and often express the ironic viewpoint and the self?precating sense of humor that tend to emerge from our sense of being outsiders in the culture we more or less live in and our perceptions of our relative insignificance. Many of our best writers do comedy: Brian Doyle, often (as in Angel Square), and Robert Munsch and Mordecai Richler, author of Jacob Two-Two. I try to do it too, in my own books and in the ones I write with Carol Matas. Many others--Jean Little, Janet Lunn, Kevin Major, Martha Brooks, Margaret Buffie--work to create senses of specific places and times that are distinctly Canadian. Still others tend to explore outsider anti-conventional positions in ways that tend to be more forceful than those offered in most books by Americans--as Major does, as Carol Matas frequently does in her own books, and as I try to do in mine.
I'm happy for these differences. I hope that, despite all odds, they continue to exist. As a Canadian and a Canadian writer for children, I'm grateful for CCBC's interest in Canadian children's books. I thank you all.
Yrs., Perry Nodelman perry.nodelman at uwinnipeg.ca http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~nodelman
Received on Fri 01 Oct 1999 11:48:33 AM CDT
