Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the iSchool at UBC. In their recent history of Canadian children’s illustrated books, Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman observe that “the children’s literature of a nation is a microcosm of that country’s literary and sociocultural values, beliefs, themes, and images, including those of geography, history, and identity.” This lecture explores the importance of regional Atlantic Canadian children’s literature and the development of Sea Stacks, an authoritative web-based resource featuring information on and about Atlantic Canadian books, authors and illustrators for children and youth. Sea Stacks includes comprehensive annotated bibliographies of primary texts, author and illustrator profiles, videotaped interviews, analysis, and criticism. This presentation illustrates the use of Sea Stacks for research and concludes with a discussion of the relevance of Ian McKay’s provocative 1994 text The Quest for the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia to an analysis of contemporary Nova Scotian picture books. This talk is hosted by the iSchool at the University of British Columbia.
Biography
Vivian Howard is associate professor in the School of Information Management and Associate Dean Academic of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. Her research interests include barriers and motivators for pleasure reading, particularly for young readers; social reading initiatives; and Atlantic Canadian literature for children and teens. She is the editor of the YA Hotline newsletter and is the principal investigator of a research team developing the Sea Stacks website.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Howard, V. (2013). Picturing difference: Three recent picture books portray the black Nova Scotian community. Bookbird, 51(4), 11. [Link]
Howard, V. (2011). What do young teens think about the public library? 1. The Library Quarterly, 81(3), 321-344. doi:10.1086/660134. [Link]
Howard, V. (2002). Hot, hotter, hottest: The best of the YA hotline. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Howard, V. (2012). From Boardbook to Facebook: Children’s services in an interactive age (review). Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 36(3), R4-R5. doi:10.1353/ils.2012.0011. [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides