Pistes d'exploration

Browse the book, noting the features and organization. Locate the settings of each story on a map of Canada.

Choose an aspect of life that is featured in the stories such as food, shelter or education. Compare it across several of the stories using a graphic organizer.

Work with a partner and choose one of the stories to focus on. Compare and contrast the protagonist’s life with yours. Discuss the era you would prefer to live in.

Write a similar story set in the current year. Imagine it is being read by an audience 100 years in the future. Integrate facts about modern life with either a personal or a fictional narrative.

Based on the cover, make predictions about the content. Explore the structures and features of the book. How is it organized?

Identify the main characters and settings of the nine stories. Indicate the settings on a map, using sticky notes with the characters’ names. Add cards with the characters and settings to the classroom timeline.

Participate in the modelling of a mind map for the first story. In small teams, create a mind map for one of the other texts. Compare with your own life. Share your understanding of the story with the other teams.

Browse through the book, noting the features and organization. Label the settings on a map of Canada, adding the date of each story.

Create a storyboard for one of the stories and illustrate its important moments.

Since 1979, many people have left their home countries for Canada. Research other immigrants and create a scrapbook page with a map, facts and photos, using the book as your model. Assemble these pages into a class book.

Pushes & Pulls: Why Do People Migrate?, The Kids Book of Canadian History, The Kids Book of Canadian Immigration

Mots-clés

Non-fiction , Canadian history , children , immigration , multiple stories , narrative non-fiction

Commentaire descriptif

These stories, told from the point of view of nine fictional 12-year-olds, introduce readers to pivotal periods in Canadian history between 1620 and 1979. Together, they produce a rich and unparalleled portrait of Canada, filled with the details of children’s everyday lives. Gracing its pages are stories of Aboriginals, Habitants, pioneers, the Underground Railway, a Vietnamese refugee, the Dust Bowl and Japanese internment camps. A two-page photo essay follows each story, peppered with archival images for additional insight into the period. Each seven-page account seamlessly weaves the details of daily life—food, clothing, home, transportation—into a narrative that showcases the concerns and experiences of a child living in that time. The stories are divided into three chapters: morning, afternoon, evening. Each story begins with a full-colour portrait of the protagonist. Title, subtitle and quotations are colour-matched to the borders of the story. As a read-aloud, these engaging stories offer children a window on another place and time, and illustrate that although the characters’ lives are different, the feelings and emotions they experience are not so different from their own.