AUTHOR EVENT | There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the kids waiting to see Canadian authors Jean Little and Sarah Ellis at the Children’s Festival Monday.

Aside from the expected field-trip-induced excitement, the group I stood with was obviously apathetic about seeing two women speak on their contributions to the Dear Canada series – a collection of historical fiction for girls.

Dear Canada #1: Orphan at My Door, Little

Dear Canada #2: A Prairie as Wide as the Sea, Ellis

And perhaps rightly so. It doesn’t sound too interesting, does it?

This was no Harry Potter book signing.

I wondered how two unassuming women would fare against these kids, half of them boys, and more than half of whom had never read a book in the Dear Canada series. How would they stand up to the impossible standards of the J. K. Rowling age?

Very well, as it turns out.

Introducing themselves as “friends who like to talk about books,” the authors chose to stage their lecture as an informal chat with each other, rather than spouting pre-written spiel.

They reminisced about their initial resistance to the Dear Canada series. They’d thought that Canadian history would be boring. Suddenly the audience was paying attention.

Breaking their work down into kid-friendly bites, Little and Ellis explained the difficulties associated with the details of historical fiction. What sorts of things would the characters have kept in their pockets? If they’d have to go to the bathroom, would they have had toilets? Outhouses? Neither? Bathroom jokes are always juvenile crowd pleasers.

Both authors made their work on the Dear Canada series sound like a homework assignment.

And they even admitted to the tricks and shortcuts they used to make their writing easier. Near the end of the lecture, when asked about their favourite books as children, Little explained that she liked Mary from The Secret Garden because she was “horrid – she reminded me of myself.”

Imperfect and charming, Little and Ellis won the attention of their crowd by doing the same for us.

Books in the Dear Canada Series are available from Scholastic Canada.  –Jennifer Selk / Special to the Vancouver Sun

A version of this piece about the Dear Canada book series and Jean Little and Sarah Ellis at the Vancouver Children’s Festival piece was originally published in the Vancouver Sun, in May 2004. See below.

Published May, 2004 in The Vancouver Sun.