There Will Be Books

My name is Karyn Huenemann, and until recently I was an instructor in the English Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia; I am still on their books as the project manager for the Canada’s Early Women Writers database but (as Kipling would say) “that is another story.” Children’s Literature and Early Canadian Literature are my specialties, but I also taught literature of the South Asian Diaspora, Post-Human and Post-Apocalyptic Literature, Literature of the Fin-de-Siècle, and good old Introduction to Fiction. I was also a reviewer for Resource Links Magazine (which reviews new Canadian children’s literature, primarily for teachers and librarians) and sometimes for Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. I am currently working as a freelance editor and formatter, and have edited a couple of works of children’s fiction (although generally, and sadly, working in the sciences pays better).

Years ago, I created a 100-page Word file with titles and reviews of many of the children’s and YA works that I have read. The list actually contained all the texts I remember reading (barring most picture books), but not all of them were annotated. It occurred to me in this day and age of digital sharing, that a blog would be a better vehicle for presenting my opinion and experiences than a simple link to the html version of my file, or customized lists for anyone who asks, which became time-consuming. So here it is. I will slowly post all of the reviews I have written, as well as adding new titles as I finish them. I’m also working (albeit slowly) on a website and database of Canadian children’s literature to 2000. I hope to be as close to comprehensive as possible, which is a monumental task to take on in my spare time, so at present it is regrettably sparse.

All work on this blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).