Inductee Profile
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At a glance
Born: June 11, 1945Where: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Big Break:
In 1975, Rober Munsch moved to Canada to work at the preschool at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. He also taught in the Department of Family Studies at the University of Guelph as a lecturer and as an assistant professor. As a preschool teacher, Munsch was encouraged to publish the many stories he made up for the children he worked with.
Interesting Note:Munsch is known for his manic storytelling methods, with exaggerated expressions and acted voices. He makes up his stories in front of audiences and refines them through repeated tellings. He has said "It takes 200 tellings for a story to get good."
Notable Achievements:
In 1999 Munsch was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
Munsch has written over 40 books, and has written several unpublished stories.
He is a bestselling author in both the United States and Canada, and has sold over 30 million books, more than any other Canadian author.
ROBERT MUNSCH
2009 INDUCTEE
View all inductees from 2009 »There isn’t a baby shower in the western hemisphere that hasn’t seen all the ladies inevitably tear up as they flip through the pages of Robert Munsch’s classic book, Love You Forever. As iconic a newborn gift as a silver spoon, the heartwarming story follows a baby, his mother and their favourite bedtime song — “Love You Forever” — through a lifetime: from the baby’s first days to the mother’s last.
And there isn’t a feminist mom alive who hasn’t given her daughter a copy of the Paper Bag Princess. Th e famous tale involves Princess Elizabeth, who is was planning on marrying Prince Ronald until a dragon destroys her kingdom, kidnaps Ronald, and burns all her clothes so that she has to wear a paper bag. She tracks down and outwits the dragon, and saves Ronald — only to have him tell her to come back when she’s dressed more princessy. Guess who gets dumped because he’s a shallow jerk? Bye bye, Prince Ronald. And generations of six-year-old girls lived happily ever after.
But Munsch — the man who has been called “Canada’s King of Kidlit” — was never content to sit on his laurels, even if said laurels include a runaway bestseller. From the first time he stood in front of a group of nursery school children as a student teacher in 1972, his animated presentation has grabbed hold of the imaginations of his pint-sized listeners. He’s been telling stories ever since.
Munsch describes his stories as “middle of the road taboo. When I use words like pee and underwear, the kids go absolutely bananas!” As for the parents, “Eighty percent think it’s really neat; the other twenty percent ask, ‘How could you?’”
Munsch has published more than fifty books, which are sold around the world in twenty different languages — including French and several different First Nations languages. His first efforts, Mud Puddle and The Dark, were published in 1979. Love You Forever was first published in 1986 and he has been putting out two books a year with Scholastic Canada since 1997. His most recent book, Down the Drain! was published last spring. But before
he puts a story to paper, he can spend years telling, revising and fine-tuning the tale in front of his rapt underage audiences.
“I figured out once that the stories the kids kept requesting came to two percent of my total output,” he says. Which stories eventually get turned into books? The kids decide!
He lives in Guelph, Ontario, and one of the things that makes his stories memorable — besides characters who are stubborn yet endearing children, and story lines that tend to challenge conventions — is the fact that Canadian locations and children serve as his muses. Munsch likes to use kids he meets on his storytelling adventures in his books. Ribbon Rescue was inspired by Jillian, a Mohawk girl from the Kahnawake reserve outside of Montreal, who went to hear a Munsch storytelling wearing a traditional ribbon dress. Lighthouse was inspired by a picture given to him by a little girl in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Just One Goal! came to him when he was staying with a hockey-loving girl and her family in the Northwest Territories. His three children have also appeared in various stories.
One never knows where inspiration will strike him next, but you can be sure he’ll be ready when it does. Munsch likes to devote his spare time to making school visits and telling stories — often without advance notice — at day care centres, schools and libraries. In 1999, Munsch was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
RELATED NEWS
Last August, Robert Munsch arrived at a Hamilton elementary school in a floppy white sun hat and sunglasses, which made him look like a cross between a nine-year-old camper and Hunter S. Thompson. He wore a blue cowboy shirt and white jeans with felt pen stains on them, and his 65-year-old face was boyish and unlined. In the gymnasium, beneath the posters promoting honesty and respect, a hundred-odd children sat expectantly on the variegated linoleum. Children are unforgiving audiences. After reading many books by Robert Munsch, Mrs. Bissell's third-graders decided they wanted to write to the author with compliments and questions. Last week, they received a package from him that included a personalized letter, a poster of himself and an unpublished story that he wrote that included every student in the class.