It’s impossible not to have a soft spot for children’s books, even if you’re not a kid or a parent.
We look back on the ones from our childhood fondly. We mentally save the names of those we’ll read to our own kids one day. And occasionally we just like flipping through them at the store.
So, the opportunity to explore the materials and process of bringing a book to life through documents from the books’ creators is extra special. That’s why Deirdre Baker started her new first-year English seminar on the Groundwood Archive at the Toronto Public Library’s Osborne Collection.
The seminar is part of the Faculty of Arts & Science offerings in the category of “Creative and Cultural Representations” which offer first-year students small group learning opportunities that encourage critical thinking, writing skills, oral presentation and research methods.
Baker is well immersed in the world of Canadian kid’s literature, whether it’s by teaching it, writing about it in her column at the Toronto Star, or writing her own. Full disclosure: she has middle grade novels published by Groundwood, but that doesn’t affect the course content. In fact, when the call for new courses came, Baker already knew what she wanted to do.
I was really interested in the idea of getting first year-students to do real research.
“I was really interested in the idea of getting first year-students to do real research,” she says. “I thought it would be the perfect opportunity, because it would be a small group, and there are many different ways to approach the material.”
The Groundwood Archive is part of the Osborne Collection, housed at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library beside the U of T campus at 239 College Street. Osborne donated his personal collection of some 2,000 rare and notable children’s books to the library in 1949, as a research collection in historical children’s literature. It includes boxes of manuscripts, edited drafts, letters between editors and authors, fan letters, emails, contracts and more from many of their writers, including Brian Doyle and Sarah Ellis, who donated their own archives as well. Groundwood Books is part of House of Anansi Press, an independent children’s publisher.
One of the things that students are really seeing is the relationship between editor and publisher.
“You get a glimpse of so many different aspects of the publishing process,” says Baker. “All of the decisions, the author’s process, original art. And I think one of the things that students are really seeing is the relationship between editor and publisher.”
The class is composed of mainly of life sciences students, who don’t get as many experiences with small, discussion-based classes, and challenges them to use their analytic skills in different ways. For Kyla Trkulja, it’s been a refreshing change from her science- and math-based classes.
It has allowed everyone a chance to engage in conversation and participation — it’s been very fun and interactive.
“The class has been a quaint setting, which has allowed me to get to know my professor and peers personally,” she says. “It has allowed everyone a chance to engage in conversation and participation — it’s been very fun and interactive.”
The class’ final project is to choose some documents from the collection and analyze them in a research essay. Trkulja chose the letters between author Shirley Sterling, editor Shelley Tanaka, and Groundwood’s founder Patsy Aldana as they corresponded about the drafts of My Name is Seepeetza, a book Sterling wrote based on her childhood in residential schools.
“I am looking at the letters, the suggestions made to Shirley, Shirley’s responses, as well as the conversations between Shelley and Patsy,” she says. “My main goal is to discuss how these suggestions shaped the final text and to look at ways in which Shirley’s experience in the school may have influenced the suggestions she received.”
Though the semester is almost over, prospective students, take note: Baker will be teaching it again next fall.
“It’s been really fun so far,” she says. “It’s been one of those classes in which you never know what’s going to happen, what the students are going to find.”