The 2010 Guest of Honor at the Illustrators Exhibition will be Slovakia, presenting a selected exhibition of it’s best illustrators. A cultural programme featuring Slovakia will be taking place at various locations throughout Bologna during the fair.

Bologna Children’s Book Fair – SM Foundation International Award for Illustration. This winner of this  new award, reserved to young illustrators (under 35) selected for the 2010 Illustrators Exhibition,  will be announced on March 25.

Illustrators Exhibition. Once again, a wealth of works by illustrators (well-known professionals and emerging talents) will  be on display. The 2010 international jury has selected 87 artists for the 2010 Exhibition from 2,456 candidates (from 58 countries).

BolognaRagazzi Awards 2010. Check out Marj’s recent post on these awards.

Authors Cafe. A new feature for 2010, the Authors Cafe is the place to be to meet authors and talk books. Discussions will include: prospects for the literary scene, reading experiences in troubled areas, and debuting authors in Bologna.  To meet illustrators and get involved in their discussions, head on over to the Illustrators Cafe.

The Astrid Lindgren Award announcement will be broadcast live to Bologna from Sweden on March 24th. This is especially exciting for us as  PaperTigers was invited to submit nominations for the award!

Also exciting for us is that  3 members from our team will be in attendance at this year’s fair: Aline, Marj and myself.  If you are going to be there too let us know as we would love to meet up with you. If you can’t be there, keep an eye here on our PaperTigers’ blog as we will be posting regularly to share some of our highlights with you! We’ll also be uploading  our photos to this Flikr account.

I think everyone on the panel agreed that it would have been great to be able to choose 25 or more books for the first Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set, but our resources are not infinite, so each book we chose would have to have to go a long way toward expressing the true “Spirit of PaperTigers.” To me, and to others on the panel too, Planting the Trees of Kenya was an ideal book for the set, because it expresses so many important ideas and values while also being enjoyable to read and beautiful to look at.

As the subtitle says, this book is based on the inspiring story of one Kenyan woman, Wangari Maathai. As explained in the book’s afterward, Maathai was the first woman from Africa to be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. She founded Kenya’s “Green Belt Movement” in the 1970s, which — in her own words — was “not simply about planting trees. It was about inspiring people to take charge of their environment, the system that governed them, their lives and their future.”

In a deceptively simple way, this book and its truly lovely illustrations show how Maathai learned to appreciate nature as a child and later grew up to be a powerful force in the renewal of her country’s environment and the well-being of its people. Maathai’s true story will encourage young readers:

to care about the environment and see the connection between the health of the natural world and people’s health

to take personal responsibility for caring for the Earth

to do the right thing even when it is difficult or takes a long time

to see that the poor, children, girls, and women — not only powerful men or governments — can have a strong influence on their society

to value education. Maathai’s education empowered her to take action.

I want to emphasize that the true story of Wangari Maathai makes a powerful statement on its own, but it is the way that Claire Nivola tells and illustrates Maathai’s story that makes it accessible and meaningful for young readers. Here is an example of her evocative writing:

“In the stream near her homestead where she went to collect water for her mother, she played with glistening frogs’ eggs, trying to gather them like beads into necklaces, though they slipped through her fingers back into the clear water.”

Nivola’s illustrations are as detailed as photographs. I can almost imagine her spending hours and hours painting every leaf on a tree, every blade of grass on a meadow, the intricate patterns on the African women’s skirts and headscarves. Groups of people fill many scenes so that the overall impression is “a group planting trees,” or “a group listening to Maathai speak,” but notice the individuals in the crowds. A girl peers shyly around her mother; an older girl helps her little brother to climb high enough to pick fruit from a tree; an excited dog peers eagerly into a big hole dug for a well; a baby reaches out to touch her sister’s face.

If you are paying attention, you will see more charming details every time you read this book with a child. And then may you be inspired to go outside and plant a tree with her!!

Thank you for sharing this with us, Jeannine!

School Library Journal’s Battle of the (Kids’) Books

Yesterday, in round one, match one, Jim Murphy chose Deborah Heiligman’s Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith over Phillip Hoose’s award-winning Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Today’s battle, judged by Nancy Farmer, pits Fire (Kristin Cashore) against Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Jacqueline Kerry). Click here to see the schedule. Spread the word and get involved in the event: you could win a 2010 Battle of the Kids’ Books t-shirt!

Sheila Barry, Kids Can Press’ editor-in-chief, answered our questions about One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, one of the seven books selected for inclusion in our Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set Donation Project, and about other topics related to the company and to multicultural children’s literature.

Q&A

PT: One Hen by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes is one of the most talked about books of the last few years (and arguably the one most used in classrooms across the United States and Canada). How did this project come about for Kids Can Press?

SB: Katie wrote a picture book for Kids Can some years ago, so we were the first people she approached when she decided she wanted to write an informational picture book that would allow her to share her knowledge of development issues in Africa, where she once worked in a village very like the one in the book. Since we had already published other informational picture books on global subjects, we were excited to work with Katie on developing her concept—and obviously we’ve been thrilled with the end result.

PT: Did Kids Can expect the book to do as well as it did, or have some of the ripple effects of its publication come as a surprise?

SB: We hope all our books will do well, but sometimes it does seem that a book comes into the world at exactly the right time to take off. With One Hen, we knew we had done something pretty original in making the subject of microloans both accessible and inspiring for children. We hoped buyers would appreciate our accomplishment, and we’ve been gratified to see that our title clearly struck a chord for many, many readers.

PT: What about the choice of Eugenie Fernandes to illustrate One Hen? How did CBP go about finding the best match for the story?

SB: Eugenie Fernandes is very well-known in Canada as both a writer and an illustrator of picture books for very young children. But in addition to her classic picture books (her new book Kitten’s Spring just came out), she has also illustrated an older book for us called Earth Magic, a collection of poems by Dionne Brand, a Trinidadian-Canadian writer. This book marked a real departure for Eugenie, and it also showed us that she would be perfect for One Hen. Eugenie’s mixed-media artwork creates the effect almost of magic realism, a hybrid style that is perfect for this book, since it is at once a picture book and a work of non-fiction.

PT: For those readers who may not be familiar with Kids Can Press, how would you describe your catalog? What are some of your bestselling books/or genres?

SB: Kids Can Press is a Canadian publisher dedicated to children’s books. We publish for children from birth to age 16, and we publish in all genres—picture books, non-fiction, fiction, graphic novels, craft and activity books, and so on. Our list is diverse, but we keep children at the centre. We hope that every book we produce will both entertain and enlighten, and we believe that you don’t have to sacrifice one aspect in order to achieve the other.

PT: Can you please tell us a little bit about the CitizenKid Series and how it fits in with Kids Can’s overarching goals?

SB: CitizenKid has been percolating for nearly 10 years now, ever since we published If the World Were a Village. That book touched people around the world, and we realized that there was a real appetite for books that introduced children to a global perspective on important issues. We started working hard at making sure we had a book a year that brought this global perspective to our publishing programme. When we realized in the spring of 2009 that we had a substantial collection of books on a breadth of topics, we decided it was time to brand them officially.

PT: How does Kids Can reconcile taking risks with making projects work from a financial perspective?

SB: In a perfect world, all our projects would be both innovative and financially successful. Unfortunately, I don’t know that there’s formula that anyone can use to reconcile risks versus financials. We make decisions one project at a time, by gathering people from editorial, design, sales and marketing into a room, where we debate (and sometimes argue) until we reach a decision that everyone is happy with. It’s not a very scientific method, but it does let us feel confident that whichever way we go, all viewpoints have been heard and acknowledged. And I think the result is a list that has a good balance between books with greater commercial appeal (and perhaps greater financial viability) and books that are more unusual (and perhaps appeal to a smaller market).

PT: What are some of the biggest challenges Kids Can faces as a children’s book publisher in Canada? What main changes in the industry have you noticed, since 1973, in regards to the publishing of multicultural books?

SB: Canada is a small market, and it can be difficult to generate sufficient revenue from Canadian sales alone. We are therefore eager to sell our books both in the US and into other international markets. The biggest problem we face is that we are a relatively small publisher. Our promotional budgets are correspondingly small, and sometimes it can be hard to get noticed in a world that is full of really wonderful books. We rely a great deal of on word of mouth, especially from librarians and teachers. It has been clear to us for over a decade that educators are increasingly eager to give the children in their care information about the whole world, in all its diversity, and so we have tried hard to produce books that will fill that need. I think we have been successful with One Hen and the other books in the CitizenKid collection.

PT: What are your hopes for the future of Kids Can?

SB: We hope we will continue to produce innovative and original books for children of all ages for many years to come.

…

Thank you, Sheila, for taking the time to answer our questions. We are very grateful to Kids Can Press for donating copies of One Hen in support of the Spirit of PaperTigers project. We wish you and the company continued success!

To find out more about Kids Can Press and for a list of their authors and illustrators, visit their website.

I read the book at one sitting – it’s a fast-paced and compulsive read. Of course, Finn’s decision to transition does not just impact on him. One of the strong-points of the novel is how Finn tells his family and friends (in particular his fellow members of a feminist punk band) of his decision, and how they then react. We get a fair inkling of the medical process, including counselling and psychological assessment, though Finn’s main source of information comes from internet forums and websites. I came away with a strong feeling of inevitability – as though deep down everyone around Finn knew, like he did, that this was the real person now showing on the outside – so that opposition and prejudice fall away.

This is a novel with a happy ending and very little fall-out – Finn emerges with his relationships intact and indeed, many of them stronger than before. Real life is probably a bit messier; however, f2m: The Boy Within will be a boon to any teenager with feelings of gender anguish and will help to promote tolerance of, and indeed empathy with, those who feel trapped in a body of the wrong gender.

You can read my 2007 interview with Hazel here. She was awarded the prestigious ASA (Australian Society of Authors) medal last year but this, her latest book shows that she is not resting on her laurels! This photo of Hazel and Ryan was taken at the launch of f2m: The Boy Within in Melbourne, Australia on February 14th. We couldn’t be there but we are happy to welcome Hazel and Ryan to the PaperTigers Blog to tell us a bit about the background to writing the novel. With Hazel in Melbourne and Ryan in New Zealand, this was definitely a project that exploited modern means of communication!

So over to Hazel Edwards:

Co-writing the first YA novel with an ftm (female to male) trans author on the controversial subject of transitioning gender has been a significant and satisfying collaboration. Hence “f2m” in the title, meaning the two of us, as well as ftm in texting format. Neither of us could have written this book without the other.

I’ve known Ryan, since he was presenting as an 11-year-old girl. He’s now a man of 33. We decided to co-write YA fiction, based on the sequence of medical and psychological ftm facts. Transitioning from female to male is more unusual than the reverse. Only one YA novel, Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (Simon & Schuster, 2007), existed on this ftm transgender topic in 2008 when we started writing, but ours is the first by a trans co-writer. Another excellent YA novel, Luna by Julie Ann Peters (Little, Brown & Co, 2006) is about transitioning from male to female (mtf) – not the same, but more common.

Our novel with the working title of f2m (female to male) was intended to be more than sexual anatomy. Our aim was to show the universal theme of ‘coping successfully with being different’, via a ‘coming of age’ story, but with humour and compassion plus punk music. Our character Skye who transitions to Finn is 18; a legally significant age for driver’s licence and hassles about ID etc.

How Autobiographical is f2m: The Boy Within?

f2m: The Boy Within is fiction. At our Melbourne meeting mid 2008, we decided to collaborate on a novel, which would NOT be autobiographical. We explored novelisation via email & webcam, and used Skype keyboarding to record our novel problem-solving. Simultaneously, we also recorded our typed correspondence on Skype as a legitimate part of our collaborative plotting.

Family history mystery is a sub-theme. I constructed a fake family tree for Finn’s past, to include the fictional intersex ancestor who would have been infertile, and plotted the recessive gene which may have been carried into our character’s generation. Thus, beloved Great Uncle Al, who was also Alberta, was created to parallel the younger siblings. This accurately portrays tendencies for intersex to run recessively in families, despite no direct line via children. However, creating a fake- history to fit with the narrative of war dates and medals was a challenge.

A curious ‘naming’ coincidence occurred. I realised how many minor characters we hadn’t named and that it was important to get the consistency of surnames and birth dates right, to demonstrate inheritance and genetic possibilities. If there was to be an earlier ancestor who was intersex (and infertile/unable to have biological children, it would need to be medically accurate. At that point, I suddenly realised we hadn’t given the Gran character a named husband or a surname. Randomly, I’d chosen SMITH as the family name, since it was generic and historically there had been various kinds of smith crafts. The great grandfather’s name was William Smith and so her maiden name would be Smith. We’d called her Bev, because initially I’d called the three siblings A, B and C (and the nephews D and E).

Then it hit me.! My co-writer Ryan’s real grandmother’s surname had been Schmidt. And all through the book, we’d been stressing that it is NOT autobiographical. Had the ex-German Schmidt family chosen a generic English approximation of their name as did many migrants? I’d have to check with Ryan as his grandmother passed away some years ago… And so we changed the fictional surname to May.

Which Pronoun?

Working together, the pronouns were the first challenge for me. It’s so hard to start saying ‘he’ and ‘his’ when you are used to saying ‘she’ or ‘her’. My compromise was to use Ryan’s name more, rather than the pronoun. Now, I have no problem with ‘he’ and ‘his’ and I think of my co-writer as a thoughtful male with keen observation skills from ‘reading’ others in gender roles.

Early on, Ryan corrected my use of pronouns with the fictional female character Skye who changes to Finn: Feb 9th email – “Skye is a ‘he’! Even in early transition. Ryan.”

How Many Drafts?

During eighteen months of concentrated work there were possibly 40 drafts. By tracking only on the constantly updated master, then Skyping the manuscript for the co-writer to add, we didn’t have so many versions that updated work was lost.

A co-author in another time zone means you are fresh at different times but we worked well together. Between us, in earlier drafts, we picked up on some anomalies. We realised that the birthday cake would be stale before Dad’s 50th party, since extra chapters had intervened since the cooking! Finn suffered fatigue from injections not yet given and we had to monitor who acknowledged Finn’s male name. Getting the medical details and terminology right also required lots of checking.

And now?

We have aimed to humanise gender transitioning rather than sensationalise a taboo subject. And hope the book will move into new electronic formats easily accessible to thoughtful YA readers.

And now, we welcome Ryan Kennedy:

Being my first novel, there was a lot to learn.

Collaborating online was nothing new for me – I regularly work with people I never meet in person, but never on creative projects. It’s amazing how much can be conveyed through a few short words in a chat window. There are bonuses too: no travel time; picking up a conversation that the other person left off hours ago as if they had just spoken the words; phone with video that costs only as much as an internet connection.

Being the transgender half of the writing team, it was up to me to bring my trans perspective to the project and make the transition story real. It would take years of research for a non-transgender person to write this kind of story while accurately reflecting what we feel and experience during transition. At the same time, I didn’t want to ‘represent’ all trans people by presenting only one way to transition. This is just one possible way to transition – there’s no one correct way. It’s a fictional character’s experience based loosely on my own.

I was just as committed to presenting an accurate version of the punk scene as I was a transgender character. It’s a culture that’s often misrepresented. On the musical side there’s everything from pure noise bands to skilful musicians, and everything from those who’ve had many music lessons to self-taught artists. The fans are diverse and welcome diversity, and there’s a culture of questioning and equality. I found it a great setting to explore my identity and I am dismayed when punk is portrayed as being wild for the sake of wild. Its rebellion is usually focused towards social change. Some rebellion is healthy. Transgender people are gender rebels.

Thank you very much, Hazel and Ryan!

Watch this trailer off2m: The Boy Within and read more about it on Hazel’s and Ryan’s websites…

First Come the Zebra has been selected for the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set. Click here to read Aline’s post exploring the particular reasons why it was selected, here to read Aline’s interview with Lynne, and here to see images from the book.

Lucia Gonzalez, author of The Storyteller’s Candle (Children’s Book Press, 2008):

I would like The Storyteller’s Candle to travel to Puerto Rico, to be in classrooms, libraries, and homes from the smallest town to the capital city San Juan. I want children in the island to know and be proud of the work of Pura Belpré, and to re-encounter the stories that belong to them.

and Lulu Delacre, the book’s illustrator:

I would like to send The Storyteller’s Candle to Tibetan schools for monks and nuns in Ladakh, India. Their lovely children have no libraries, and live off the generosity of others. They are taught English and the lesson that Pura Belpré imparts at the end of the book might be one they truly connect to.

Katie Smith Milway, author of One Hen (Kids Can Press, 2008):

If I could send One Hen anywhere in the world right now, it would be to Haiti, in Creole, to inspire children there to play an entrepreneurial role in rebuilding their nation. Happily, a Haitian Creole edition of the book is due out in 2010 through publisher EducaVision.

and Eugenie Fernandes, the book’s illustrator:

One Hen is already at the White House, so… after that I would like to send it… everywhere!, because it’s a book that connects us all.

Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, authors of Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing (Barefoot Books, 2008):

Little Leap Forward is about the lives of children who are growing up in a very poor, overcrowded society, in which food is rationed and there are no toys (beyond what they can make themselves) – a closed society in which freedom, knowledge and creativity are suppressed, and the people they love are about to be taken away from them. It is also a story about the irrepressible power of friendship, love and the imagination, even in the face of hardship and revolution.

So if we could send the book to children in areas of need in the world, it would be to any country where people are not free to express themselves, where families are divided, and children suffer from hunger, fear and poverty. In some small way, we would love to give those children the feeling that they are not just tiny grasses blowing helplessly in the wind (there is an old Chinese saying about this), but that they can find strength through nature and friendship, and hope for a better future by making the most simple gestures of freedom and compassion, whether it is releasing a caged bird (as Little Leap Forward does), finding music in everyday sounds, taking care of a friend, or flying a homemade kite in the wind.

and Helen Cann, the book’s illustrator:

I’d like Little Leap Forward to go anywhere where lives are repressed and people are told what to think and do. Little Leap Forward is about the triumph of hope, love and imagination over oppression.

Once again, those interviewed have provided us with plenty of food for thought – and perhaps you have very particular ideas about where you’d send special books like those that make up the Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set? Do let us know…

When my daughter and I read this book together, we got a good sense of the passage of time.   And of course, one year in the life of an infant is quite amazing!  The world of their consciousness  — from being held and suckled, to their first independent movements, to their growing perception of the world outside of themselves — is all contained in this wonderful book.  By the time one year passes, little Jilu is old enough to truly enjoy the season — summer — he was born in, outside of the ger.

Baasansuren’s illustrations are lovely and rich.  My Little Round House is a picture book of the first order and this is one of the reasons why it was selected for the Spirit of PaperTigers project.   Do read the PaperTigers interview with Baasansuren.   And of course, do seek out the book itself either at your local library or bookstore!

Congratulations, Lee & Low, on this new development! We look forward to enjoying the books and helping spread the word on them!

Today’s Literacy Blog Tour host is Terry Doherty @ Scrub-a-Dub-Tub. For a complete list of hosts and topics, see here. And check these for a taste of some of PaperTigers’ posts on literacy:

Thoughts on Literacy: Going Where the Children Are
Books at Bedtime: Win-Win!
Our Literacy Future