Christie Harris

Christie Harris
Christie Lucy Harris, (November 21, 1907 – January 5, 2002) was a Canadian children's writer. She is best known for her portrayal of Haida First Nations culture in the 1966 novel Raven's Cry.
Biography
Harris was born in Newark, New Jersey, November 21, 1907, and moved to British Columbia, Canada, with her family as a child.
She was led to investigate Northwest Coast cultures after moving to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in 1958 and writing a series of CBC dramas on First Nations topics. She received a Canada Council grant to work with the Haida artist Bill Reid in researching the life and context of the great Haida carver Charles Edenshaw. In this she worked closely with Wilson Duff and, in Masset, B.C., with Edenshaw's daughter Florence Davidson.
Her 1975 book Sky Man on the Totem Pole? applies the "ancient astronaut" theories of Erich von Däniken to Northwest Coast oral histories.
In 1980, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 1973, she was awarded the Vicky Metcalf Award.
Three months after her death, the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize was announced as a new BC Book Prize category.
Harris and illustrator Douglas Tait created at least eight books published from 1972 to 1982. One is The Trouble with Princesses (1980), which "retells stories about Northwest Coast princesses and compares them with similar Old World princesses". For that collaboration she won the annual CCCLP prize for English-language writing (now the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature) and he won the CLA award for children's book illustration, the 1981 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award.
Harris won the annual Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award both in 1967 for The Raven's Cry and in 1977 for Mouse Woman and the Vanished Princesses (another collaboration with Tait).
Works
Cariboo Trail (Longmans, 1957), adventure stories,
Once Upon a Totem (Atheneum Books, 1963), stories, woodcuts by John Frazer Mills,
You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere (1964), illustrated by Moira Johnston
West with the White Chiefs (1965), woodcuts by Walter Ferro – "based on the [1865] journal of Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle",
Raven's Cry (1966), Haida folklore, ill. Bill Reid
Confessions of a Toe-Hanger (1967), ill. Moira Johnston
Forbidden Frontier (1968), novel, ill. E. Carey Kenney
Let X Be Excitement (1969), novel
Figleafing Through History: The Dynamics of Dress (1971), written by Harris and Johnston, ill. Johnston
Secret in the Stlalakum Wild (1972), novel, illustrated by Douglas Tait,
Mule Lib (McClelland & Stewart, 1972), by Tom and Christie Harris, ill. Franklin Arbuckle – "subjects: World War, 1914-1918 — Personal narratives, Canadian",
Once More Upon a Totem (1973), stories, ill. Tait
Sky Man on the Totem Pole? (1975), stories, ill. Tait
Mouse Woman and the Vanished Princesses (1976), stories, ill. Tait
Mouse Woman and the Mischief-makers (1977), stories, ill. Tait
Mystery at the edge of two worlds (1978), novel, ill. Lou Crockett,
Mouse Woman and the Muddle-heads (1979), stories, ill. Tait
The Trouble with Princesses (1980), stories, ill. Tait – "retells stories about Northwest Coast princesses and compares them with similar Old World princesses",
The Trouble with Adventurers (1982), stories, ill. Tait – "Northwest Coast Indian legends and myths about adventurers",
Something Weird Is Going On (Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1994), detective and mystery stories,
References
External links
1907 births
2002 deaths
Canadian children's writers
Members of the Order of Canada
People from Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Place of birth missing
American emigrants to Canada