The Art tells the Tale of Two Canadian Cultures

Kallie George

Kallie George is currently finishing her Masters of Children's Literature at the University of British Columbia. She is a part-time editor and writer of children's books.

The study of Canadian children's literature is expanding annually. English-Canadian children's picture books are being explored both historically as a whole genre and individually. Scholarly works such as articles in Canadian Children's Literature, Sheila Egoff and Judith Saltman's The New Republic of Childhood published in 1990, and Raymond Jones and Jon C. Scott's Canadian Children's Books published in 2000, have done textual and visual analyses of English-Canadian picture books. French-Canadian children's picture books, too, have been the focus of some research, for example Dominique Demers' La Bibliotheque Des Enfants published in 1999. What about research comparing French-Canadian picture books and English-Canadian picture books?

To compare French and English-Canadian picture books seems not only logical, but a beginning place for examining the differences and similarities of our bilingual country's cultures, especially since children's books are created, published and produced by adults for children and thus contain adult morés, which include culturally based morés.

As I looked at the Governor General's Literary Award winners, winners chosen based on peer assessment committees "composed of writers, critics and/or independent book professionals," that "examine the eligible books according to literary and artistic merit" (http://www.canadacouncil.ca/) I began to notice a difference in style: there is a distinct spread in artistic style from realism to abstraction when comparing the illustrations of the winners of the Governor General's English-language Illustration Award to the Governor General's French-language Illustration award over the past fifteen years. By categorizing these picture books into their different styles of art, and determining where French-Canadian versus English-Canadian books lie on this spread from realism to abstraction, we can learn something about the stories depicted and the cultures that choose such stories and styles.

Semiotic theorists like Roland Barthes decoded sign systems (style being one sort of sign system) to find out their cultural connotations. Children's literature theorists, like Perry Nodelman, have applied Barthes' semiotics to picture book illustrations. According to such theory, picture book illustrations can communicate meanings by drawing upon stylistic conventions that already have connotations, historically and otherwise (Pleasures of Children's Literature, 185). This essay will decode picture book styles in order to answer the following questions: What kind of styles do French-Canadian picture book artists use compared to those used by English-Canadian picture book artists? What kinds of different meanings are these different styles communicating, and what does this tell us about their stories? Regardless of story, does cultural heritage play a role in artist's choice of style?

As Egoff and Saltman say in The New Republic of Childhood, "consistent categories help in classifying the modes of [picture book] expression" (171). Egoff and Saltman created categories in order to classify Canadian illustrative styles. In particular they identified four types of Canadian illustrative styles: stylistic [identified by use of "specific medium for the transmission of idea and story" (171)]; magic realism (similar to surrealism); naïve art (self-taught art or art that imitates the self-taught); cartoon (exaggeration of figures, objects and situations) and romanticism [which "uses literary, historically remote and exotic subject matter and treats it in an emotional and dramatic manner" (179)]. These style categories work very well to categorize the picture books included in The New Republic of Childhood.

However, in this essay I will be using different stylistic categories to classify the books. Since I am discussing how Canadian illustrators use preexisting styles to convey meaning, rather than use Egoff and Saltman's categories, I shall use basic styles of representation regularly used in the visual world, including realism, cartoon and forms of abstraction including Dada, cubism, surrealism and abstract expressionism. Perhaps the necessity of including more categories for abstract styles is due to this essay's inclusion of French-Canadian picture book illustration.

To begin, I will look at those picture books that are realistic in style. Out of the fifteen English-Canadian books, I have categorized four of those as realistic. There is not one of the fifteen French-Canadian books that falls under this category. Right away, we can see this presents a great difference between the two cultures. The English-Canadian "realistic in style" picture books are as follows: Song Within My Heart, illustrated by Allen Sapp; The Rooster's Gift, by Eric Beddows; Josepha: A Prairie Boy's Story, illustrated by Kimber Murray; Waiting for the Whales, illustrated by Ron Lightburn; and finally, Orphan Boy illustrated by Paul Morin. Within this group, there are many variants. Yet all share a common style -- the characters and settings are representations of people, places and objects as they appear in everyday life. It is important to note, that although many assume that the real-life counterparts of these representations could be easily recognized, this is not the case, since all representations are culturally dependent.

In Waiting for the Whales, Lightburn actually uses the traditional method of drawing from photographs. In Sapp's Song Within My Heart, black and white photographs of a Saskatchewan reserve are included alongside some of his paintings, which themselves are reminiscent of the United States artist, Andrew Wyeth's realistic painted prairie landscapes. Neither the photographs nor the realistic style paintings are "truthful" representations. As Susan Sontag's book, On Photography, argues, and as Canadian photographer Jeff Wall illustrates, photographs are constructed visual images, just like paintings, and are also culturally dependent for interpretation. However, including or evoking documentary-style photographs gives the book a scientific, even serious, objectivity (Nodelman 226). Also, realistic art often favors commonplace subjects over lofty, theatrical or fantastical subjects. Both Waiting for the Whales and Song Within My Heart story concern commonplace subjects. Song Within My Heart is about Sapp as a First Nation youth on a reserve in Saskatchewan. Waiting for the Whales is about the cycles of both human and animal life and the relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter.
Realistic art does not always favor realistic stories. Another serious, realistically styled picture book is Morin's The Orphan Boy, avant-garde in its use of materials. Included in Morin's paintings are raw materials, like bits of sand, pebbles and wood, all collected while he stayed with the Maasai people and conducted research for this fantastical, traditional Maasai tale about the origins of the morning and evening star. The raw materials not only imbue the visuals with an aura of authenticity (as constructed as that "authenticity" may be), they also give texture to the painted landscape.

According to Egoff and Saltman's categories Morin's work would be stylist since its dominate drawing force is its unusual media. However, at the same time it can be classified as realistic since figures and scenes do tend towards the representational rather than the abstract. As Morin himself says, "I like to think of my work as impressionistic realism. On first glance, especially when it's scaled down to book-size, you'll see that I paint very loose. People have commented that one of the things they like about my work is that not everything is rendered, sometimes it is just suggested, and their mind, as they look at the painting, is doing the work to fill in the space." (http://www.paulmorinstudios.com). This quote shows the mutability of categorization of art styles, and Morin's use of raw materials shows how realistic illustrations can be just as cutting edge as "avant-garde" abstract illustration, even though realism as an art form preceded so called "avant-garde" art beginning with fauvism and impressionism in the early 1900s.

Moving from realism, but not into deep abstraction, there is a middle ground, which I call cartooning. Cartooning, which makes up much of children's book art, lies within the field of abstraction, since cartoon images are images altered to present an oversimplified representation of reality. That said, styles of cartooning seem to vary also, from quite realistic to more abstract. As Nodelman notes, all picture book art is to some degree a form of cartooning (Words about Pictures 100). However, he also explains that some illustrations are literally cartoons [like Jean de Brunhoff's picture of Babar and drawings by Dr. Seuss, William Steig and Peter Spier (99)]. It is that kind of illustration that I shall classify as cartoon in style.

Many English-Canadian and French-Canadian books fall under the cartooning category. The English-Canadian books include Sleep Tight Mrs. Ming and An Island in the Soup, both written and illustrated by Mireille Levert; Yuck, a Love Story, illustrated by Marie Louise Gay; The Great Poochini, by Gary Clement; A Child's Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Kady MacDonald Denton and The Party, by Barbara Reid.

Clement's artwork, for example, is of a more realistic cartooning style. Although his main character Signor Poochini, is by day a pet and by night a famous canine opera star, which is comical and impossible in the real world, his caricature style, which mirrors the fact that the character himself is a caricature of a human (the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini), is not overly simplified or exaggerated. Proportions, like the dogs in proportion to their human owners, are relatively accurate and the setting is full of realistic, albeit comical, details including paintings, flowers and ashtrays. Denton's pen and watercolor illustrations for A Child's Treasury of Nursery Rhymes, on the other hand, are much more simplified representations. Pigs dance on pinpoint hoofs and backgrounds consist of washes of pastel color.

Levert's and Gay's English-Canadian books consist of even more exaggerated cartooning styles that fringe on the surreal abstract. In Yuck, a Love Story, a watercolor painting illustrates the moon as captured by a string and attached to a tree. And in Levert's An Island in the Soup, again done in watercolors, hilarious scenarios are depicted, such as the main character dodging carrots and peas, which fall from the sky. Interestingly, these two illustrators, although here illustrating English picture books, are French-Canadian, born and bred in Montreal, and work a great deal illustrating French-Canadian picture books, too. Of the fifteen French Canadian award-winning books, none of the illustrators live outside French-Canada. The fact that four (including the 2004 winner, Stephane Jorisch) of the fifteen English Canadian books illustrators are French Canadian makes me wonder if a more European style, a more abstracted style, is linked more with our conceptions of "fine art". Potentially books in such a style are more likely to win artist awards such as the Governor General's awards. This deduction is only a posed question, and not a concrete conclusion by any means. The French-Canadian picture books in the cartoon style include seven of the fifteen winners. These include L'echarpe rouge, by Anne Villeneuve; Charlotte et l'ile du destin and La monde selon Jean de ... illustrated by Stephane Jorisch; Monsieur Iletaitunefois and Mon chien est un elephant, both illustrated by Pierre Pratt; Simon et la ville de Carton, by Gilles Tibo and Un champion, illustrated by Sheldon Cohen.

Anne Villeneuve's L'echarpe rouge, a wordless picture book concerning a taxi-driving mouse who lands himself in the midst of a circus searching for the owner of a red scarf, is done with pen and watercolor and, similar to Kady MacDonald Denton's work with its thick ink lines, presents simplified, exaggerated animal characters and sparse backgrounds. As well, the art is full of exaggerated, fantastical situations, like that of Denton and Marie Louise Gay. For example, the mouse and scarf are nearly eaten by a lion whose eyes take up a third or more of his face.

This thick-lined cartooning style, with exaggerated character features, as well as dramatic situations, is also found in Pierre Pratt's two books. In Mon chien est un elephant, for example, a pet elephant is disguised as a butterfly. Simon et la ville de Carton 's illustrations, by Gilles Tibo, are done in an airbrush style with the same use of theatrical imagination. It is a story of a little boy in the countryside making anything and everything--a horse, a train, and even a robot--out of his cardboard boxes. What all the above books share in common, it seems, beyond the cartoon style, is light subject matter. L'echarpe rouge concerns the comical trip of a lost scarf; in Pratt's Mon chien est un elephant, a young boy tries to disguise his pet elephant (some of these illustrations verging on the surreal abstract). Simon et la ville Carton, as mentioned, is the story of an imaginative boy and his use of cardboard boxes and Un champion, written by award-winning author Roch Carrier, and illustrated by Sheldon Cohen, concerns a hockey-playing boy who decides to become a boxing champion. [As a side note, in Un champion even the end pages allude to the comic style illustrations, consisting of make-believe newspaper ads that include their own "band dessinees". Gary Clement's The Great Poochini has very similar end-papers; interesting since they are both cartoon style books.] Although the last two (Tibo and Cohen's illustrations) are not necessarily laugh-out-loud humorous, they still visually tell light tales. The comic style indeed seems conducive to light humorous stories, drawing from its history as comic strip (Nodelman, Pleasures of Children's Literature, 226).

Kept apart from these and yet still cartoon in style are the two books by Stephane Jorisch. One illustrates a set of fables, the other a picture book fairy tale. In Le Monde Selon Jean de, the illustrations of Jean de la Fontaine's animal fables create political commentary on the fables by depicting the animals as caricaturized humans, perhaps drawing on the history of political cartooning. Jorisch's other book, Charlotte et l'ile du Destin, done in watercolors as well, is closer to animation, where the cartoon characters, decked in pink and red polka dot clothes, and the fantasy setting, with giant lily pads and strawberries, look shiny and round and good to eat.

Stephane Jorisch also won the 2004 Governor General's English-language Illustration Award. But in that winning book, his style is widely different than his previous books, and much darker. It is, in my mind, one of few English-language Governor General Award winners of the past fifteen years that would be considered abstract. (Others will be mentioned shortly.) The tale Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll, is presented like Dada war art, with men with missing limbs, and a stark industrial setting much like the works of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.

Many of the dada artists were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical of humanity. They became attracted to a view of the world in which nothing was worthwhile, a nihilistic view. Even art was "dead". They created art in which chance and randomness formed the basis of creation. With the order of the world destroyed by war, Dada was a way to express confusion and frustration. The basis of Dada is nonsense and so is the "Jabberwocky" rhyme; so Jorisch's Dada-like illustrations complement the rhyme, while at the same time adding social context.

Whereas only three English-Canadian picture books clearly fall in this category of abstraction, obviously referencing a particular fine art movement, one by, not coincidentally, a French-Canadian illustrator, the others by English-Canadians, many of the French-Canadian award winners fall under this abstract category. All the rest of the fifteen winners in fact, save two (totaling six books, as there was no book awarded to the French-Canadian category in 1996) are comparable to the European-based art movements, including cubism, surrealism, and expressionism.

These two are Poil du serpent, dent d'araignee by Stephane Poulin and Gravel sho et les dragons d'eau, by Annouchka Galouchko. These illustrative styles fall outside my spectrum of classifications. Poulin's paintings create a dark fairy-tale effect and Galouchko's works remind one of a mystical Japanese painting-brush style. The other six however, do fall within clear abstract art categories. It must be mentioned once again that these clear abstract art "categories" are really not so clear after all, rather debatable constructs, as all categories are.

To begin, the cubist style is present in Virginie Egger's Recette d'elephant a la sauce vieux pneu and Les fantaisies de l'oncle Henri, illustrated by Pierre Pratt. The latter is wildly abstract, with cubist body proportions and surrealist in its plot (chickens jump from the uncle's shirt disrupting a meal). In particular one of Pratt's illustrations, in which the chickens are making a mess of the table, knocking over tea-cups and sugar cubes, is especially cubist. Staring in the early 1900s, cubist painters, including Picasso, rejected the ideas of realism, that art should try to copy nature, and rejected the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling and foreshortening. Instead they reduced and fractured objects (like tea-cups, tables, sugar cubes and musical instruments all objects also fractured by Pratt) into geometric forms, and figures and objects were dissected into a multitude of small facets and then reassembled.

Egger's illustrations are certainly drawing on the notion of cubism as fragmentation to enhance Recette d'elephant a la sauce vieux pneu's story about a recipe to make an elephant from an assembly of various objects. Her illustrations, done in collage style (collage being important to cubists) include faces that are off balance and mouths on the side of cheeks (similar to Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon). Pierre Pratt's Les fantaisies de l'oncle Henri shares this disjointed representation of characters' bodies (the uncle's arm on the front page, for example, juts foreword as if not attached to his body). Pratt's thick lines also remind one of wood-block paintings, or African art, which was an inspiration for Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Other French-Canadian books, like Isabelle Arsenault's Le Coeur de Monsieur Gauguin, and Luc Melanson's Le grand voyage de Monsieur, are distinctly surrealist in their visuals. Also, the English-Canadian books, Imagine a Day, illustrated by Rob Gonsalves, and Alphabeasts, by Wallace Edwards, are painted in a surrealist style. Out of my survey, these are the only English-Canadian picture books illustrated by English-Canadians that I would consider fully abstract in style (but still highly realistic in their representations of figures). Wallace Edwards' animals are realistically depicted. However, they are surrealistic illustrations because the characters are depicted in scenarios only possible in one's wildest imagination (such as an alligator lounging in a red chair or a spider tipping over a tea-cup). Surrealism is known for this juxtaposition of realism and fantasy.

Often connected to Freudian thinking, surrealism portrays mainly dream-like images. The imagery in Luc Melanson's Le grand voyage de Monsieur, for example, with the main character carrying a chair on his back across the country, even riding on the top of the train with the chair, are reminiscent of Rene Magritte's dream-like works, such as Son of Man. Another dream-like illustration is found within Arsenault's Le Coeur de Monsieur Gauguin, illustrating a man, presumably Gauguin, floating by a balloon, except this balloon resembles a physical heart. This use of internal body parts externalized is reminiscent of Frida Kahlo's work. Although she did not define herself as surrealist, Kahlo was not only working during the heyday of the surrealists; her works share much in common with them.

Another famous female surrealist painter, Remedios Varo, who painted many pieces in which reflections in mirrors came alive, is a clear influence for Gonsalves' Imagine a Day. In this book, paintings include images of children climbing a tree's reflection in a lake in order to get to the bank where the "real" tree grows. In all these books impossible situations become strangely possible. The same can be said for surrealist art.

From surrealism we move to abstract expressionism, art in which the artist expresses himself purely through the use of form and color and is non-representational, or non-objective, art, in which no actual objects are represented. This movement can describe the final two books discussed in this paper: Janice Nadeau's Nul Poisson ou aller and Bruce Robert's Fideles elephants, written by Yukio Tsucgiya.

Originally published in Japanese in 1951, Yukio Tsucigiya's Fideles elephants has been translated and illustrated by different Canadian artists. An English version (Faithful Elephants) has been illustrated by American children's book artist, Ted Lewin, and is remarkably realistic in style. Fideles elephants, illustrated by Bruce Roberts, on the other hand, is very abstract. Ink and paints are splashed across the pages, barely outlining the figures including the elephants. Images like one elephant lying dead is almost an indistinct matrix of lines. The story concerns the history of the Second World War, in which animals in a Japanese zoo were condemned to death.

This very sad tale that illustrates the cruelty of war disproves an earlier question I had, especially when seeing so many historical English-Canadian picture books being illustrated in realistic styles: do serious historical stories, and/or politically weighty topics require more realistic styles of illustration? Fideles elephants proves that realistic style illustrations connoting the seriousness of documentary photographs are not necessary when discussing difficult issues. Janice Nadeau's Nul Poisson ou aller is also a story about war and full of highly abstract illustrations. Its main characters are portrayed as shadowy, bird-like, washed-out figures, with no recognizable faces.

Abstract expressionism excels at conveying historically traumatic times and themes since it is an art movement primarily concerned with the expression of emotion. The movement's name comes from its combination of the German expressionists' emotional intensity and self-expression with the European abstract schools' anti-figurative aesthetic.
All in all, this comparison shows that there is a true difference between artwork found in English-Canadian picture books as compared to that found in French-Canadian picture books. These results lay bare the fact that our two distinct cultural backgrounds overlap, both producing many cartoon-style picture books, yet at the same time producing distinct picture books reflecting different styles. Indeed, more English-Canadian picture books are realistic in style, whereas more French-Canadian picture books are abstract.

In Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books, Perry Nodelman proposes that artists choose their illustration style for purely narrative reasons, "using a repertoire of preexisting styles to convey information about the stories they illustrate" (81). This survey justifies that claim. The Dada art style of Jorisch's Jabberwocky, the cartoon style of Clement's The Great Poochini, the abstract expressionistic style of Robert's Fideles Elephants all suggest that artists indeed look to art history to find styles to best convey the stories. However, this survey also suggests that artists are influenced by the art styles of their cultural heritage. French-Canadian picture books, for example, draw on European, especially French art traditions more than the English-Canadian books, suggesting that French-Canadian authors are either writing stories that are more conducive to being illustrated in such styles and/or more aware of such art styles.
However, this study is very far from being complete. The analysis that I have conducted confirms that a comparison of French and English-Canadian children's picture books requires a more comprehensive analysis of both text and illustrations. Although powerful contrasts and cultural differences were found in this analysis, I am sure if more books and the full texts were analyzed, and more in-depth analyses were done, even more similarities and differences between the two cultures would be revealed, including deciphering just how big a role personal cultural heritage plays in an artist's choice of art style. Also, it is necessary to analyze books by artists outside of a "winners" circle as well as ascertain whether certain styles are more commonly chosen for awards and if so, why. Whether realistic or abstract, however, all the illustrations studied here are beautiful and intelligent art works, deserving of their awards and of the same esteem our society grants fine artwork.

Works Cited

Arsenault, Isabelle. Le Coeur de monsieur Gauguin. Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2005.

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Bouchard, David. The Song Within My Heart. Ill. by Allen Sapp. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2002.

Canada Council of the Arts. "Winners of the Governor General's Literary Awards". Accessed Dec 5, 2005. <http://www.canadacouncil.ca/>

Carrier, Roch. Un champion. Ill. Sheldon Cohen. Montreal: Tundra, 1991.

Carroll, Lewis. Jabberwocky. Ill by Stephane Jorisch. Toronto: KCP, 2004.

Clement, Gary. The Great Poochini. Toronto: Groundwood, 1999.

Conrad, Pam. The Rooster's Gift. Ill by Eric Beddows. No city of publication: Laura Geringer, 1996.

Demers, Dominique. La Bibliotheque Des Enfants: Des tresors pour les 0 a 9 ans. Boucherville: Amerique Jeunesse, 1999.

Denton, Kady MacDonald. A Child's Treasury of Nursery Rhymes. New York: Kingfisher, 1998.
Edwards, Wallace. Alphabeasts. Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2002.

Egger, Virginie. Recette d'elephant a la sauce vieux pneu. Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2002.

Egoff, Sheila A. Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature. Chicago: American Library Association, 1981.

Egoff, Sheila and Judith Saltman. The New Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children's Literature in English. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Froissart, Benedicte. Les fantaisies de l'oncle Henri. Ill. By Pierre Pratt. Toronto: Annick, 1990.

Gagnon, Andre and Ann Gagnon, Ed. Canadian Books for Young People/Livres canadiens pour la jeunesse. 4th edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

Galouchko, Annouchka. Gravel sho et les dragons d'eau. Toronto: Annick, 1995.

Gertridge, Allison. Meet Canadian Authors & Illustrators. Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2002.

Gillmor, Don. Yuck, a Love Story. Ill by Marie-Louise Gay. Toronto: Stoddart Kids, 2000.

Herbert, Marie Francine. Nul Posson ou'aller. Ill. by Janice Nadeau. Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2003.

Jam, Teddy. Doctor Kiss Says Yes. Ill. by Joanne Fitzgerald. Toronto: Groundwood, 1991.

Jennings, Sharon. Sleep Tight Mrs. Ming. Ill by Mireille Levert. Toronto: Annick, 1993.

Jones E. Raymond & Jon C. Scott. Canadian Children's Books: Critical Guide to Authors and Illustrators. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Lasser, Oliver. Charlotte et L'Ile du Destin. Ill by Stephane Jorisch. Saint-Laurent: Les 400 Coups, 1998.

Levert, Mireille. An Island in the Soup. Toronto, Groundwood, 2001.

Madore, Edith. Les 100 Livres Quebecois Pour La Jeunesse Qu'Il Faut Lire. Montreal: Les Editions Nota bene, 1998.

Marcotte, Danielle. Poil de serpent dent d'araignee. Ill by Stephane Poulin. Saint Laurent: Les 400 Coups, 1996.

McFarlane, Sheryl. Waiting for the Whales. Ill by Ron Lightburn. Victoria: Orca Books, 1991.

McGugan, Jim. Josepha: a prairie boy's story. Ill. by Murray Kimber. Alberta, Red Deer Press, 1994.

Mollel, Tolowa M. The Orphan Boy. Ill by Paul Morin. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.

No author. Treasures: Canadian Children's Book Illustration. Toronto: The Children's Book Centre, 1989.

No author. Canada a Bologne. Montreal: Canada a Bologne Comite organisateur, 1991.

Nodelman, Perry. The Pleasures of Children's Literature. 2nd Edition. New York: Longman Publishers, 1996.

Nodelman, Perry. Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books. Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Paul Morin Studios. "Paul Morin: Impressionistic Realism in Acrylics". Accessed June 20, 2006. <http://www.paulmorinstudios.com/>

Reid, Barbara. The Party. Toronto: North Winds Press, 1997.

Roberts, Bruce. Fideles elephants. Ill. By Yukio Tsuchiya. Saint-Laurent: Les 400 Coups, 2000.

Saltman, Judith. 2002. "Canadian children's illustrated books in English". <http://www.slais.ubc.ca/saltman/ccib/home.html>

Simard, Remy. Mon chien est un elephant. Ill. by Pierre Pratt. Toronto: Annick, 1994.

Simard, Remy. Monsieur Iletaitunefois. Ill by Pierre Pratt. Toronto: Annick, 1998.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 2001.

Thomson, Sarah L. Imagine a Day. Ill. by Rob Gonsalves. Toronto: Atheneum Books, 2005.

Tibo, Gilles. Le Grand Voyage de Monsieur. Ill. by Luc Melanson. Saint-Lambert: Dominique et compagnie, 2001.

Tibo, Gilles. Simon et la ville de carton. Montreal: Tudra, 1992.

Vandal Andre, Ed. Le monde selon Jean de... Ill. by Stephane Jorisch. Montreal: DV, 1993.

Villeneuve, Anne. L'Echarpe Rouge. Saint-Laurent: Les 400 Coups, 1999.

Zenman, Lumila. The Last Quest of Gilgamesh. Montreal: Tundra, 1995.

Kallie George

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"The Art tells the Tale of Two Canadian Cultures "
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