CanCon Picture Books (by Julie Booker)

The delightful collection of children's poetry as you remember it, by the author of Alligator Pie, and illustrated by Juan Wijngaard.
Originally published in 1983, Jelly Belly tickles readers--children and grown-ups alike--with a whimsical and modern mix of humour and traditional Mother Goose charm. Almost 20 years later, Jelly Belly continues t …

The marriage of words and image is a trend in contemporary art: visual artists are painting words, phrases, and sentences onto their canvases. Taking this trend and applying it to a children's book, Charles Pachter, one of Canada's pre-eminent visual artists, has reviewed forty years of work and matched a blend of familiar and new images with words …

By daylight, the Drumheller dinosaurs rest their ancient bones. But when the moon rises, so do these slumbering skeletons -- ready to tango, fandango, shimmy and shake! This exuberant read-aloud imagines what the dinosaur skeletons of world-famous Drumheller, Alberta, get up to when everyone's asleep. Kids will want to thumpity-thump along with the …

In the days of Roch’s childhood, winters in the village of Ste. Justine were long. Life centered around school, church, and the hockey rink, and every boy’s hero was Montreal Canadiens hockey legend Maurice Richard. Everyone wore Richard’s number 9. They laced their skates like Richard. They even wore their hair like Richard. When Roch outgro …

The urban landscape is alive with words. You only have to look to find them — bold, brassy and obvious, or hidden, secret and mysterious. It's this intriguing aspect of the city that Matt Beam has captured in his photographs — words spray-painted on walls, etched in concrete, carved into wood, stuck onto glass. He and Joanne Schwartz have colla …

Original, funny and distinctly Canadian, Eenie Meenie Manitoba is a playful collection of 37 rhymes, chants and poems. From lobsters and maple syrup to skating on the Rideau Canal and grinding prairie wheat, images of Canada fill every page. Plus, many of the poems are accompanied by sidebars suggesting actions -- such as clapping, skipping and bal …

In 1986 Kids Can Press published an edition of Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" illustrated by painter Ted Harrison, who used his signature broad brushstrokes and unconventional choice of color to bring this gritty narrative poem to life. Evoking both the spare beauty and the mournful solitude of the Yukon landscape, Harrison's paintin …