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A Tribute to Sheila Egoff
Pioneer Canadian Children's Literature Critic and Professor of Children's Literature
Sheila Agnes Egoff, Officer of the Order of Canada, died on May 22, 2005 in her 88ch year at Vancouver B.C. Her multiple careers as children's librarian, professor of children's literature, and critic and advocate of children's literature had a profound impact on the development of academic teaching and criticism of children's literature, on the growth of Canadian publishing for children, and on Canadian public library service to children. Born in 1918 in Auburn, Maine, she grew up in Gait (now Cambridge) Ontario. Sheila's childhood in rural Ontario was marked by avid public library use and exposure to the children's books of the early years of the twentieth century.
Her lifelong career as a scholar and critic of children's literature, and preeminent promoter of Canadian children's literature in particular, began at the Gait Public Library. After graduating from the University of Toronto and qualifying as a librarian at the University of London (England), she worked at the Children's Room of the Toronto Public Library. As a children's librarian in the internationally renowned children's library service of the Toronto Public Library, Sheila Egoff was a disciple of Lillian Smith, a towering figure in early children's librarianship and a pioneer critic of children's literature. Sheila learned her philosophies of quality library service and stringent evaluation of children's literature under Smith.
Sheila was instrumental in bringing the famed British Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books to the Toronto Public Library and was that collection's first curator. Her experience in serving the reading needs of contemporary children was balanced with learning about four centuries of writing, publishing, and illustrating books for children.
After a short period on the staff of the Canadian Library Association, Sheila was recruited to join the faculty of the School of Librarianship at the University of British Columbia soon after its establishment in 1961. She was the first full-time tenured professor of children's literature at a Canadian university. Her impassioned and scholarly teaching of children's literature and children's library services formed and influenced a generation of children's librarians. On her retirement as Professor Emerita in 1983,...