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Literature is a powerful vehicle for the transmission of national culture and national identity. Although Canadian children's literature has a relatively short history, there is now a wide range of high quality Canadian books, nonfiction and fiction, picture books, and junior novels available for young readers. Canadian literature has, however, often been ignored in elementary school classrooms in favour of better-known American and British books. How important is it for Canadian children to have access to Canadian literature? What commonplaces of our culture and identity are transmitted through Canadian literature? How can Canadian teachers learn more about Canadian literature and how to integrate it into their teaching?
The study reported in this paper was attached to a larger research project that used a web-based survey to explore Alberta elementary teachers' knowledge of Canadian children's literature and its inclusion in their classroom teaching (Carbonaro, Bainbridge & Wolodko, 2002). Most of the 170 teachers responding to the survey knew of very few Canadian books. They gained most of their knowledge of children's books from American sources and from Scholastic Canada catalogues (which do contain some Canadian titles) (Bainbridge, Carbonaro & Wolodko, 2002). The latter finding is not surprising, since Scholastic Publishing is now the largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the world (Hade, 2001).
Between 1999 and 2000, I spent twelve months exploring Canadian children's literature with a group of nine elementary and middle years teachers (one man and eight women, all of European heritage). In our monthly meetings, we shared books, discussed how they could be integrated into elementary teaching and learning, and explored the questions listed above. The nine elementary/middle years teachers all had many years of teaching experience, and the majority of them had taken graduate-level university courses in language arts and children's literature. We all had a special interest in Canadian children's literature, and some members of the group had met through professional organizations such as the Children's Literature Round Table. We decided to participate in an action research group, reading as much Canadian children's literature as we could and deliberately including it in classroom teaching across the curriculum.
Action research has come to be understood as "more than a prescriptive practice where particular ends can be achieved; action research...