Children’s Literature In Canada: A Trip to a Land Where People Put Gravy on Fries

A good smattering of theater is definitely what the doctor ordered when we hit the bleary days of July.  Yet it seems that the only way this particular New York native is able to see the stuff is to hop in a rented car and drive to Canada for the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival once a year.  Sure, I could probably go to a theater here in town but it’s more fun to a place where the word "sorry" rhymes with "lorry".

This year my husband and I figured out that with the rise in gas prices you can pretty much get rush tickets for any show you’d like to see in Stratford on the cheap.  So it was that we saw All’s Well That Ends Well, the actor Simon Callow performing the sonnets in a new order, The Music Man, and Cabaret.  I can’t recommend this experience enough.  It’s just the most relaxing thing.  You eat good food, see cool shows, and avoid getting bitten by enormous swans and one new white goose.

Actual cool food eaten while there:

Nope.  I wasn’t the one who stuck the chicken bones in.  That was done entirely by the fancy restaurant we went to.  They were also very fond of shapes.

It isn’t often that you can say your dessert is swearing at you like it’s in a cartoon.  This was one of those rare times.

Of course, half my brain is always thinking about children’s literature and what better place to find it than in the many bookstores of the town?  I was amused by this sign, posted strategically at one of the shops we entered while there:

Here are some shots from the official Festival Theater’s gift shop.  It’s ironic that Roger Sutton would have been speaking about The Umbrella Queen on the very day I was at the store, since here it is on display.

Now as you can see they’ve managed to display some lovely Phaidon titles of the reprinted old Bob Gill titles A Balloon for a Blunderbuss and What Colour is Your World?.  There were also lots of Kenneth Oppel titles and quite a bit of Jacob Two-Two as well.  This was because Mr. Oppel and Jacob’s Mordecai Richler were both slated to speak in town (not when I would be around, consarn it). 

Now my friend Dan thinks that Jacob Two-Two is a well-known book series for kids.  I know of it, but didn’t read them as a kid.  What say you, oh reading public?  Is Jacob Two-Two known to you in any way?

Now here’s a bit of investigative reporting my husband and I performed in terms of Shakespearean graphic novels.  Matt, the resident husband, is to comics what I am to children’s literature.  We complement one another well, and he called me over to take a gander at the graphic novel section seen here.  We decided to set about figuring out which ones were the best.  It’s not enough to just draw some quick pictures and throw Shakespeare’s words into speech balloons.  If you want to include Shakespearean graphic novels in your library or bookstore, the sheer plethora of them out there means that you can pick and choose the best.

Other graphic novels there included the Picture This Shakespeare series by Barron’s (meh), the Graphic Shakespeare Library by Black Dog and Levanthal Publishers (meh), and the cheap and rather horrid Manga Shakespeare produced by Amulet (bleh).  That Manga Shakespeare was the cheapest of the lot.  Americanized manga thrown together with a bit of fancy words on the side.  Oog.  The Merchant of Venice graphic novel that came out this year from Candlewick was also included in this display, but the book confused me.  That title attempts to tell the story straight without any reinterpretation.  This is fine for a textbook, but considering how problematic that particular problem play is, I’m not sure if a rote retelling is the best for the graphic novel format.  Just saying.  All in all, we still haven’t see a truly great combination of Shakespeare and visual elements.  Anyone wishing to dip a toe in the public domain will have very little competition in this area.

People who wish to infuse their children with a little "culture" were able to do so with ease.  Here are the Greek myth books:

One thing that shocked me a little bit about Stratford was the complete and utter absence of Good Masters, Sweet Ladies on the shelves.  Everywhere we went there would be big children’s sections on plays, Shakespeare, theater, and monologues.  They even had that new book Acting Out: Six One-Act Plays everywhere you went but our newest Newbery winner?  Actual honest-to-goodness monologues for kids?  Nowhere to be seen.

How has THAT little detail never made it into the news?