Language Books
The Canadian Language Museum has a small library of books related to our exhibits.
Featured Book
Our first fiction book addition to the library, Ella Minnow Pea (2001), plays with language in surprising ways. Set in a fictional isolated community off the east coast of the continental US, Mark Dunn’s progressively lipogrammatic novel (letters being removed as the narrative unfolds) imagines a society devoted to a pangram (a phrase using all 26 letters of the alphabet) created by its founder. As the letters of the pangram begin falling off a statue commemorating the founder, the island government forbids use of those letters in spoken or written form. In this epistolary fiction (written in letters), the reader gets to experience the loss of letters as the islanders do.
Featured Book for Children
The CLM has several children’s books, which provide an introduction for language beginners young and old.
Gina Valle’s project collects the winning and finalist submissions from the 2014 Multilingual Kid Lit Award, which is sponsored by the Rainbow Caterpillar bookstore. Supporting UNESCO’s recognition of the importance of a mother language in children’s self-esteem and in the maintenance of culture and language, this book brings together “everyone, grandparents, French immersion students, multilingual parents and children, curious readers big and small.” Founder of Diversity Matters, which provides diversity workshops and training, Valle is committed to a Canada that lives comfortably with many languages and cultures in our everyday life.
A Dictionary of English in Multicultural Toronto
In addition to developing the exhibit, Toronto Voices: Language and Identity at The Spot, under the supervision of the Canadian Language Museum, York students Melissa Douglas and Shiyan Liang created a dictionary of Toronto English with contributions from friends, family, the Glendon Linguistics Club, and the youths at The Spot.
The dictionary offers examples of usage in various parts of popular culture, including QR codes which link to some of the songs and videos. There is a playlist available on YouTube.
Come visit us at the Museum and offer your contribution to our collection of Toronto’s favourite words!
Learn more about Glendon Hall
The CLM is located in the East Wing of historic Glendon Hall.
As part of two capstone courses in Public History at York University, AP/HIST 4840 and GL/HIST 4310, students Amena Mirza, Jan Szulc, and Nera-Lei Vasilko created a brochure on the history of Glendon Hall under the supervision of the Canadian Language Museum.
