Arlene Perly Rae

Compiled by Arlene Perly Rae (wife of our former Premier, and a children's book columnist in a local paper for years), this was published in 1997. Everybody's Favourites is a treasure trove of memories of famous Canadians and the books they remember best from childhood. If I have counted correctly, there are 165 contributors to this book. Rae has organized each section by topic (loosely): Early Memories, Adventure Stories, Classic Books, Nature (sub-divided into Animals, and Science and Natural World), Poetry, Popular Reading (sub-divided into Series Books, and Humour, Comics & Light Reading), Emily of New Moon, Transition to Adult Literature, Words into Action, and finally, An Abundance of Books. She begins each section with some comments and even memories of her own.

Because it's been 20 years since this book first came out, I recognize that several of the contributors have since passed away. Still, it's quite fun to see how many Canadians, from so many fields and backgrounds, jumped at the opportunity to share their memories of what books first reached out and grabbed their imaginations, and how some of them were inspired to a career path because of those books! Some surprises in here! Some of the contributors include Timothy Findley, Robert Bateman, Roberta Bondar, Ralph Klein, Mordecai Richler, Fred Penner, Buffy Saint Marie, Knowlton Nash, Liona Boyd, June Callwood, Dennis Lee, Pamela Wallin, Alice Munro, Adrienne Clarkson, Brian Mulroney, Peter Gzowski,, Tomson Highway, Stuart McLean, Jane Urquhart, Terry Mosher (aka Aislin), even (horrors!) Don Cherry. I could go on but won't. There were quite a few whose names are not familiar to me but to have so many from such various backgrounds and across the entire country, was very cool.

I had to chuckle at times, because, for example, there was no Google at the time of publication. No Harry Potter (when she was discussing the *quality* of some old fashioned series books), no mention of audiobooks, and just some of the things we take for granted today, made me realize that a mere 20 years ago can sound so ancient!

It was a fun read… (plus d'informations)