Meet Canadian Authors and Illustrators: 50 Creators of Children's Books

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Gertridge presents elementary- and junior-high-school students with
brief profiles of 25 authors, 5 illustrators, 24 author/illustrators,
and 1 author/translator, all creators of fiction and nonfiction for
Canadian children and, with the exception of Dayal Kaur Khalsa and Lucy
Maud Montgomery, all still alive. Arranged alphabetically from Warabé
Aska to H. Werner Zimmermann, each entry, which occupies a pair of
facing pages, includes the subject’s date and place of birth,
community and province of current residence, three to four columns of
text, and a bibliography. The contents of the texts vary widely, but
most of the creators explain how they came to write/illustrate and/or
they describe their work habits. Entries also include a black-and-white
photo and two book-cover reproductions. The “Selected Titles”
bibliography chronologically lists some or all of each creator’s books
and indicates awards won. A “Do It Yourself!” box, directed at young
readers and containing writing/illustrating ideas based on the
creator’s habits, concludes each entry.

The book’s remaining 20 pages might have been better given over to
more profiles, as the various lists and suggestions in them vary greatly
in their usefulness. For example, the “Additional Resource
Materials” section includes only 32 of the book’s subjects and omits
numerous obvious references. Though Gertridge does not explain how she
selected these particular 50 people or how she obtained her information
about them, this is, nonetheless, a useful, readable resource to add to
library collections. Recommended.