A classic book for young readers by one of Canada's best-loved authors, now back in print.

A teaching aid and companion guide to some of the best Canadian stories for young readers. This guidebook is intended for use with the ten titles in Lorimer's Kids of Canada series: Mike and the Bike, Six Darn Cows, Anna's Pet, Afraid of the Dark, The Pillow, Hockey Showdown, Who's a Soccer Player? , The Hungry Time, Kids in the Kitchen, We Make Canada Shine. Kids of Canada Teacher's Guidebook has been designed primarily for use in Guided Reading lessons with small groups of students.

Making choices is one of the more pervasive acts of life. Almost every action we take demands that choices be made. Knowing how to choose wisely, to choose after reflection, to be aware of what motivates that choice, to see the consequences of that choice on others enables us to live healthier, more productive and more responsible lives. We now live in a world in which our traditional moral exemplars have been less than honorable in their public behavior. With fewer “heroes” and flawed role models, how are children to come to an understanding of what’s right, what’s good, decent and socially responsible? “Do as I say, not as I do” is hardly a viable tenet to guide children’s choices. This book offers important tools for carrying out effective strategies that build caring environments in the classroom and home; for teaching children to weigh decisions in the face of potential consequences, examine rationales for their choices, and study the effects of their choices on others, i.e., to think more carefully about ethical problems, in the presence of the moral freedom to determine for themselves what it means to lead a good and virtuous life.

Today, almost two decades after her death, Margaret Laurence remains one of Canada's best-known and most beloved writers. Twice winner of the Governor General's Award for fiction, she was, as the late William French wrote, "more profoundly admired than any other Canadian novelist of her generation." Lyall Powers is both a respected scholar of literature and a lifelong friend of Laurence's, having met her when they were students together at Winnipeg's United College in the 1940s. Alien Heart is the first full-length biography of Margaret that combines personal knowledge and insights about Laurence with a study of her work, which often paralleled the events and concerns in her own life. Drawing on letters, personal correspondence, journals, and interviews, Lyall Powers discusses the struggles and triumphs Laurence experienced in her efforts to understand herself in the roles of writer, wife, mother, and public figure. He portrays a deeply compassionate and courageous woman, who yet felt troubled by conflicting demands. While Laurence's work is not directly autobiographical, Powers illustrates how her writing expressed many of the same dilemmas, and how the resolution her characters achieved in the novels and stories had an impact on Laurence's own life. Powers provides an in-depth analysis of all Laurence's work, including the early African essays, fiction, and translations, and her books for children, as well as the beloved Manawaka fiction. The study clearly shows the progression and expression of Laurence as a writer of great humanity and conscience.

In a postmodern and postcolonial age, how do we approach the writing of Margaret Laurence? Challenging Territory demands of the reader a re-evaluation of the basic assumptions that underlie their understanding of Laurence's life and writing by addressing the full range of her writing. Laurence is presented as Canadian, colonial and postcolonial subject; as feminist, humanist and political active individual; and as essayist, translator, journalist, memoir writer and fiction writer. The essays stake out a critical territory as well as offer a challenge to territory previously mapped by the criticism - in addition to charting critical space never before traced.

Although at times painfully insecure about her creative ability and achievement, Margaret Laurence nevertheless remained fiercely loyal to her artistic vision, an archetypal vision of loss, exile and redemption that sought comprehensive expression in the epic mode that shapes the Bible, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, and ultimately the Manawaka world of Hagar Shipley, Rachel Cameron, Stacey MacAindra, and Morag Gunn. Paul Comeau traces the development of Margaret Laurence's epic voice from its tentative beginnings in her African fiction to its culmination in the epic Manawaka Cycle, a Dantesque journey through an infernal state of self-destructive pride, out of a purgatorial paralysis of self-doubt, and on to a kind of paradisal fulfillment in self-knowledge. Laurence discovered in epic a fitting mode at once to requite her debt to the ancestors and to break free of their influence to portray the world through the sight of her own eyes. In so doing, she became the enduring epic voice of a country and a generation.

This valuable resource features the colourful biographies of 72 illustrators and artists whose works are considered among the best in the world. Told in the artists' own words, these biographies offer fascinating insights into their lives, and feature a sample illustration from one of their favourite books. Discover how these fantastic artists work, what their favourite books are, who influenced them, and how they came to illustrate children's books.