Prairie Horizons

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.

The titles promise more than the slight and episodic storylines deliver in these books, which use the device of fiction to convey factual information about four Canadian families and their surrounding communities. Directed at grade three social studies classes, the books could be used by individuals, small groups, or entire classes. With the exception of Capital Tale, each work utilizes two children of opposite sex as central characters. The families show variety in such things as structure, socioeconomic standing, and ethnicity. For example, Montreal’s Pierre lives in row housing; Lloydminster’s Andrew moves to a house trailer; and a family breakup propels Ottawa’s Janice into an apartment. Surnames such as Wong, Krawchuk, Lesage, Obobwe, and Macdonald unobtrusively reveal Canada’s ethnic mosaic. The selected communities are also diverse, ranging from the metropolis of Montreal to the tiny New Brunswick fishing village of Richibucto. Recurring themes include community services, industries, modes of transportation, friendship, and tolerance of others.

The various episodes involving the children occur over a span of time and are a combination of the children’s participating in everyday events (such as going to the store or playing in a local park) and more tourist-like behaviors (such as visiting the Parliament Buildings or a reconstructed Acadian village). In the last portion of Prairie Horizons and Capital Tale, Neering has her central character undertake a holiday in a different province. While such trips introduce Winnipeg’s Folklorama and Vancouver’s Chinese food, the jaunts interrupt the unity of works which to that point have dealt with the environs of Lloydminster and Ottawa.

At the conclusion of each of the books’ four or five episodes, a section entitled “Think It Over calls for readers to answer factual recall questions or to respond to open-ended questions or activities that extend beyond the books. Each of the titles incorporates some basic map-reading tasks, and all conclude with a “Think About Your Community” page that requires readers to compare and contrast their community with the one described in the book.

Unfortunately, the full color used on the cover illustrations does not extend into the books. Instead, the two-column pages of text are generously broken up by a combination of black-and-white, uncaptioned photographs and ink drawings, with the latter’s starkness being relieved by the addition of tones of another color. In some instances, photographs would have conveyed the information more effectively than the drawings; upon occasion, however, photo details are too small to permit children to answer questions based on the photographs.