There are abundant British and American guides to children’s books, but it’s extremely rare to find Canadian titles in their pages. If for no other reason than national pride, we needed McClelland & Stewart’s A Guide to Canadian Children’s Books, the first guide exclusively devoted to Canadian kids’ lit. Deirdre Baker, an academic and children’s book reviewer for the Toronto Star, has teamed up with librarian Ken Setterington, renowned advocate of Canadian children’s literature, to assemble a list of 500 notable titles, from board books through to young adult novels and non-fiction. Picture books get the most space, followed by novels for seven- to 12-year-olds. Each entry runs about 300 words, divided equally between plot synopsis and critical evaluation.

In their pithy introduction, Baker and Setterington explain that the books were selected for high literary quality, and break this down into four criteria: style, character, plot, and setting. In choosing picture books, they have tried to find illustrations that “don’t just support the text, [but] extend it, deepening and expanding the meaning of the words on the page, pointing out some of the language’s many-layered qualities.”

Because they have limited their guide to books in print, their selections are mostly books published in the last 10 to 15 years. Notable exceptions are L.M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily books, and John Clark’s excellent 1977 novel, The Hand of Robin Squires, which was one of the first Canadian books I read and loved as a child. (Sadly, Myra Paperny’s wonderful The Wooden People does not get a mention, maybe because it’s out of print.)

Having read only a fraction of the many books in the guide, it’s impossible to make any sweepingly definitive pronouncement on the wisdom of the selections. Judging from the titles I have read, the choices seem completely sound. Naturally there are the occasional selections I didn’t agree with, but I’m far too tactful and discreet to bring them up in these pages (I’ll do it later privately with my writer friends). I was, however, surprised that Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang didn’t even merit an entry, for it’s an excellent book, though the sequels are decidedly lacklustre.

So who gets included? All the usual suspects. By and large these books have already been anointed by various award juries: we have the winners of the Governor General’s awards, the Christie, the Ruth Schwartz, and Canadian Library Association Book of the Year awards. Most of my personal favourites win glowing entries: Brian Doyle’s Angel Square, Tim Wynne-Jones’s The Maestro, Kit Pearson’s The Sky is Falling, Teddy Jam’s Night Cars, Barbara Reid’s The Party.

It’s a testament to their genuine excellence that these titles, and others, seem to be everyone’s favourites. But it’s also perhaps a humbling reminder that Canada still hasn’t had time to produce a really enormous body of children’s literature – certainly not like our older British and American cousins. Maybe in another 10 years, we’ll start seeing “best of” lists with somewhat more variety, and a few more surprises. Having said that, I was heartened to see – amidst Lunn and Little, Johnston and Brooks – the inclusion of more recent players like Arthur Slade, Polly Horvath, and Beth Goobie.

The Guide has plenty of appendixes, including a three-page list of Highly Recommended Books for every category. There is also a title index, an author/illustrator index, and a subject index that loosely organizes the titles by subject and genre. The headings range from the hugely broad (Sex, Mystery, Nature) to the startlingly specific: Taliban, Icelandic Canadians. As a reading guide, this index is of questionable usefulness, since many of the categories mix books that are incredibly disparate. In Fantasy, for instance, we have Boy Soup (a humorous rhyming picture book), Dust (a dark YA fantasy novel), and A Nose from Jupiter (a middle reader that’s a comic romp). Rounding off the end matter is a list of books arranged by their settings within Canada and finally (and somewhat curiously) a list of where all the authors and illustrators actually live across Canada, just in case you want to track them down and stalk them (or more likely, get them to read at your bookstore or library).

A guide of a very different kind, Louise Margaret Granahan’s Children’s Books that Nurture the Spirit sets out to “introduce people to quality children’s literature for faith development.” Granahan’s guide is meant mainly as a resource to support Christian education programs, though a small section is devoted to titles that deal with other faiths.

Granahan has a PhD in multicultural children’s literature from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto and has been an elementary teacher for over 13 years. Her introduction is forthright and honest. She admits her biases up front: “I generally dislike oil paintings in children’s books because of their heavy feel. I love anything glittery, especially the gold decorations such as those found in Brian Wildsmith’s paintings…. I dislike triumphalist statements about God or about the necessity for certain beliefs to the exclusion of others.”

The guide is divided into two main sections: Picture Books & Videos is by far the largest and seems to comprise mainly retellings of Bible stories for a picture book audience; Novels and Books itemizes titles for juveniles and young adults and by comparison with the first section is rather scant, a mere 12 pages. This section also includes an entire chapter on C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, focusing on the Christian subtext, as well as a chapter on literature about the Holocaust.

Canadian children’s writers, one might deduce, are a relatively godless bunch, judging by the slim proportion of Canadian titles that appear in Granahan’s index. Barabara Reid’s visually arresting retelling of the Ark story, Two by Two, is one of the 16 listed Noah titles for young readers. Linda Granfield’s Amazing Grace: The Story of the Song gets a nod, as does Jean Little’s His Banner Over Me, about the child of missionary parents.

Given our country’s multicultural nature, it’s not surprising that most of the Canadians listed in the book are writing about faiths other than Christianity. Sky Sisters, by Jan Bourdeau Waboose and illustrator Brian Deines, is included in the native spirituality section; Rachna Gilmore’s Lights for Gita in the Hinduism section; Rukhsana Khan’s Muslim Child in the section on Islam. There is also an interview with Carol Matas in which she discusses writing about the Holocaust for children. Though this guide’s mandate is obviously very specific, it is nonetheless useful for parents and teachers looking for books that illustrate or elucidate certain religious traditions and beliefs.