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By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 11/19/2008
John Ibbitson’s The Landing, a coming-of-age story that takes place in Canada’s Muskoka region in the 1930s, is this year’s winner of the Governor General’s Literacy Awards for children’s literature in English, which honors the finest in Canadian literature.
The award for best children’s illustration in an English-language book went to Stéphane Jorisch for his playful, imaginative, and bizarre illustrations in The Owl and the Pussycat.
Ibbitson, a Washington correspondent for Canada’s Globe and Mail, set his novel in his childhood hometown of Gravenhurst, Ontario. His previous young adult novel, Jeremy’s War 1812 (Kids Can, 2000), was shortlisted for the award.
Jorisch drew inspiration from the Fellini films, Miro’s art, and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine to create whimsical yet powerful images to accompany Edward Lear’s nonsense poem. Jorisch, now a four-time Governor General’s Literary Award winner, previously won for Jabberwocky (Kids Can) in 2004.
Ibbitson and Jorisch will receive their awards from Governor General Michaëlle Jean on December 10, 2008 at the presentation ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
Kids Can Press illustrator Isabelle Arsenault, a previous Governor General’s French-language winner, was also nominated in the children’s illustration category for My Letter to the World and Other Poems.
Both Arsenault and Jorisch’s books are part of Kids Can Press’s "Visions in Poetry" series, a collection of books that reinterpret classic poems through the eyes of contemporary illustrators. Five of the seven books in the series have been nominated for Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Kids Can Press is the largest Canadian-owned children’s publisher, with an award-winning list of more than 500 picture books, nonfiction, and fiction titles for toddlers to young adults.
