As an author, Suzanne Martel has broken down barriers and entered genres untread by her fellows. "The first, and for a considerable time the only, Canadian science fiction for children was by the French-Canadian writer Suzanne Martel, Surréal 3000, translated into English as The City Underground (1964)." (Egoff 1990, 275) She also sets her stories in familiar locations in Quebec, including cities like Montreal and Quebec City. Unfortunately, only a small portion of her work has been translated into English including her four best known works for children and young adults: Surréal 3000, Nos amis robots, Jeanne, fille du Roi, and Pi-Oui. Other major works include the Menfou Carcajou series, in which Jeanne makes minor appearances, and the Montcorbier series. She has also won many awards for her work.
"Although Martel's stories encompass a variety of genres -- science fiction, the historical novel, and the sports story -- they reveal common themes and patterns. In each of them, there are a number of parallel characters and situations." (Stott 1988, 123)
Humour is evident throughout all of the books, in wordplay, puns and jokes amongst the characters themselves. "Suzanne Martel, [author of] Quatre Montréalais en l'an 3000 (1963) -- reprinted under the title Surréal 3000 (1980) and translated as The city underground (1982) -- shows her lively ability to introduce humour even in her inventive science-fiction novels, of which Nos amis robots (1981) is the most recent." (Toye 1983, 125)
In Quatre Montréalais en l'an 3000, the characters are drawn to help others through their friendships and their sense of duty to their city. Eric must rescue his brother, who was working to save the city. His love for his brother allows him to forget his fears. Luc's friendship with Agatha of Laurania causes him to break his city's highest law to save her people from disease and his older brother follows to rescue him when he is injured outside the underground city. Nos amis robots features a French boy and an English girl who learn that they share common problems. With their astronaut uncle and father, respectively, under suspicion of treason it is up to the two children and their alien robots to save the Earth from destruction. It is their friendship with these robots and each other, which allows them to keep going through the ordeal. Pi-Oui is the story of a young boy who dreams of someday being a hockey star though he has not yet even made his PeeWee hockey league. He learns the value of teamwork, sportsmanship and kindness. Teamwork takes his team to the championship; kindness brings happiness to the life of the grumpy old janitor at the arena. Jeanne, fille du Roi is the story of a King's Daughter, an orphan sent to New France to marry one of the settlers. With courage, energy and intelligence, Jeanne learns to make a difference in her new world as a mother, a wife and a healer.
"In order to reach fulfillment, the central characters must cross frontiers and enter strange and wonderful new worlds." (Stott 1988, 123) In Quatre Montréalais, the characters enter the narrow tunnels of the Primary Motor or the supposedly poisonous reaches of the world above ground. Each boy realises that his society must grow and learn from others in order to survive. In Nos amis robots, both children must be willing to accept that their toy robots are not just toys but powerful receivers that will be used to protect the Earth and it will fall to them to do an adult's job. In Jeanne, fille du Roi, Jeanne must leave behind Old France and her romantic dreams of a white knight for the realities of New France and her silent widower husband and his two young children. In Pi-Oui, the young hockey player learns that with hard work, he can achieve his goal of playing PeeWee hockey, and that his team's hard work will take them to the championship. "During their adventures, Martel's heroes discover not only their inner strengths but also the value of friendship and love. Working together and learning to accept outsiders -- people of different backgrounds and cultures -- they are able to grow as individuals." (Stott 1988, 123)
Born October 8th, 1924 in Quebec City, Quebec, Suzanne was the eldest of two children. Her sister, the late Monique Corriveau (née Chouinard), was also a well known children's writer. By the time they were 7 and 4, she and her sister had created an entire fictional world of characters to play with which they named the family in the wall (because they would bang on the wall to 'extract' the characters for a story). They spent so much time writing their mother forbade them from writing more than 8 hours a day. These stories later formed the basis for the Montcorbier series.
Suzanne attended school at the Ursuline Convent school in Quebec city, then spent a year at the University of Toronto to practice her English. She worked for the Quebec Soleil as a journalist after leaving university in 1943, but found herself out of a job at the end of the war. She married and found herself diverted from writing while she raised six sons. She began writing again when the oldest was twelve, inspired by a contest. Her family is very supportive of her writing career and serve as her first readers and editors.
She is a dedicated writer, writing up to 15 hours a day and gains inspiration from travelling all over the world, especially driving across parts of Canada, the US and Mexico. She thinks the most important thing for a writer to have is "interest and a curiosity about people and things: machines, motivation, conversations." (Noyes 1994, 217) Despite her lack of knowledge of Peewee hockey, she wrote a hockey book. According to her, "[T]hat book shows that with research you can write about things that you don't know anything about." (Jenkinson 1985, 50)
During an interview, she described herself as a survivor. In her own words, "If the electricity fails and there's three feet of water in the basement, I'm in my element." (Canadian Children's Book Centre 1989)
A number of biographical sources were available, but only "Writing stories, making pictures" was specifically designed for children. The other sources would be accessible to young adults reading her young adult books, though language issues would need to be taken into account as many of my biographical sources were in English.
The majority of the reviews of Suzanne Martel's work focused on one work, although a few provided very brief reviews of multiple works.
In Profiles, Lemieux reviews Quatre Montréalais en l'an 3000. "Style alert, personnages bien campés et sympathiques, humour et fantaisie, tout dans ce roman contribue à maintenir l'intérèt des lecteurs. La présence de valeurs telles que justice, paix, solidarité, donne à ce livre, de couleur locale par sa situation géographique, une dimension internationale indubitable." (Lemieux 1975, 120) [A crisp style, well defined and sympathetic characters, humour and fantasy all combine to create a novel which is sure to hold the reader's attention. Values such as justice, peace, and solidarity give this novel, despite its local flavour, an international dimension. - Translator Margaret Kipp.]
In other words, the story, while set under a mountain in Canada, has themes that speak to all children. Ferns provides a short review of the English translation: The City Underground. Of the novel, he says "Her heroes are clean-limbed young boys who work, exercise, and engage in adventures that never go too far beyond the bounds of duty laid down by the adult hierarchy." (Ferns 1984, 84) I find this to be an exaggeration since three of the boys break the fundamental law of Surréal 3000 by visiting the surface, which is considered uninhabitable. Breaking the law can mean exile to a surface, that is considered poisonous, destroyed in the Great Destruction. Ferns also notes that the book has an "unfashionable predilection for technology over nature" and yet at the end of the book Paul and the leader of the tribe living closet to Mont Royal agree that they both have things to learn from each other.
Lemieux also provides a short review of Jeanne, fille du Roi. "Cet ouvrage fascine le lecteur grâce à la vivacité de Jeanne Chatel et aux nombreuses péripéties qui surviennent dans la vie de l'héroïne." (Lemieux 1975, 121) [Jeanne Chatel's vivacity and the numerous peripeteia she encounters are sure to fascinate the reader. Translator Margaret Kipp] This is in direct contrast to the review Conventions and Distortions in Historical Fiction, a review of the English translation: The King's Daughter. Gann praises Suzanne Martel for attempting to write an entertaining historical fiction novel of a French orphan, Jeanne Chatel, sent to New France to marry one of the single habitants and help populate New France. She praises Martel's ability to make the setting feel real but suggests that the novel does not reach its full potential. She criticises what she sees as an attempt to "apply a feminist veneer to the past" (Gann 1983, 81) which she considers dishonest. I don't entirely agree with her assumption that this is typically 1970s feminist jargon. I don't believe that the pioneer women who settled in Canada were in any way dependent and weak. They would not have survived months of separation in the winter while their husbands trapped fur if they had been. Gann also considers Jeanne to be too good to be true. "In no time flat, she becomes a peripatetic apothecary who can act as a midwife, set fractured bones, perform operations and sew up wounds." (Gann 1983, 81) No time flat actually covers a period of at least a year, and we know that Jeanne learned a great deal from Sister Bourgeoys and has taken pains to collect information from anyone who deals in the healing arts.
One interesting item to note about this book is that it was pulled off the shelves of the Regina Saskatchewan Public School libraries "because [it] describes a scared young immigrant's first (negative) reactions to meeting native people." (CBC4Kids Book Lists 2001)
In an article on sexism in Quebec children's literature Louthood and Gélinas suggest that a historical novel, such as Jeanne, fille du Roi, cannot avoid being somewhat sexist, in direct opposition to Gann's complaints about excessive feminism in the novel. I think this review is more accurate as the novel is hardly a feminist manifesto, it simply features a strong heroine who, like many pioneer women, had to do more than sweep the house and cook dinner. Later in the article, Louthood cites Nos amis robots as an example of a novel which gives "une distribution plus nuancée des qualités dites féminines ou masculines entre les différentes personnages." (Louthood 1983, 7) [a more balanced distribution of the so-called feminine and masculine traits between the different characters. Translator Margaret Kipp] This is quite true as Eve is permitted to be brave and steadfast, while still being afraid, and Adam is allowed to feel fear himself.
Overall, I found the majority of the reviewers tried to balance criticism and praise objectively, although I did not agree with some of their findings.
In addition to her work as an author, Suzanne Martel has been very active in the domain of children's literature publishing in Canada, and especially in Quebec. She was a speaker at the First Pacific Rim Conference on Children's Literature, University of British Columbia, 1976, speaking on the subject of French-Canadian Children's Literature publishing in Canada. She presented a speech entitled "Ring-Around-A-Roses of French-Canadian Book Marketing" which included a retelling of a puppet show she and her sister had presented at an earlier conference. The puppet show is an entertaining and humourous, though somewhat black, account of why Canadian books, especially French-Canadian ones, were not selling well in stores; based on their own experiences. As described in her speech, the number of published books by French-Canadian authors written for children had dropped from twenty-one in 1961 to two in 1970. (Martel 1976, 208) Martel and a colleague helped found Communication-Jeunesse, a group of authors, publishers, librarians and educators dedicated to promoting French-Canadian literature for children because they "wanted [their] children to have this essential element of culture: books in which they could find themselves in familiar surroundings, written by authors especially for them." (Martel 1976, 208) Fourty French-Canadian books were published in 1974 and no doubt the numbers have grown since then.
The speech emphasised her ability to entertain as well as her sense of humour. The fact that she was one of the instigators of Communication-Jeunesse highlights the fact that she has never been one to sit around waiting for things to fix themselves, an attitude which is common to her heros and heroines.
Suzanne Martel suggests that, "whenever [authors] need a morale booster we go to the library. Where else will we find our books lovingly read, and repaired, and upholstered--no that is not the word, rebound. Anyway they have been read and commented upon, and the librarians know us. We are persons, and we have done something, and we go out of there feeling, "I can do it, it is worth it."" (Martel 1976, 210)