Imagine children’s literature without Cinderella, Babar, Pinocchio, or even the tales of the Brothers Grimm. Translations and cross-cultural influences have always been essential to children’s literature. Children need translations today for at least two reasons: so that they don’t miss out on the best of international writing for children, and because an appreciation of linguistic and cultural difference is essential in the modern world.

Difference is apparent both in writing and illustration. Take two Scandinavian giants of children’s literature, for example:  the breathless pace and emotional intensity of Astrid Lindgren’s classics The Brothers Lionheart and Mio My Mio; or Tove Jansson’s combination of existential angst and quirky artwork in the Moomins series. Lindgren is surely the twentieth-century’s greatest author for the younger child; her potent fusion of the imaginative and affective is second to none.  Jansson’s vision of the Moomin world is eccentrically unique. There’s recently published work by both authors.  In Lindgren’s own introduction to her best-known character in Do You Know Pippi Longstocking? (Ragged Bears, 1999, trans. Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard) Ingrid Nyman’s wonderfully ramshackle and detailed pictures of 1947 complement the text. British publisher Sort of Books has recently issued translations of two of Jansson’s early picture books, Moomin, Mymble and Little My (2001) and Who Will Comfort Toffle? (2003, English versions by Sophie Hannah from a literal translation by Silvester Mazzarella), where flowing lines and an expressive use of colour, form and handwritten text create a striking contrast to modern styles.

Other translated classics that are currently in print and well-worth a second look are Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (Penguin, 1956, trans. Eileen Hall) where the psychological insight of the Frankfurt sleepwalking scenes is way ahead of its time; Collodi’s Pinocchio in a wonderful, child-friendly new translation by Emma Rose illustrated by collage artist Sara Fanelli (Walker, 2003); and Erich Kästner’s groundbreaking and still gripping tale of child sleuths in 1920s Berlin, Emil and the Detectives (Red Fox, 1995, trans. Eileen Hall).

In recently translated titles difference takes many forms. Kazumi Yumoto’s Letters from the Living (Floris Books, 2003, trans. Cathy Hirano, reviewed here by Riverbank Review), a wryly introspective tale, draws the reader into a child’s view of the daily life of a Japanese boarding house and its eccentric inhabitants.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from such telling understatement, there are many translated novels which address troubling questions in narratives with a direct and profound impact. Belgian author Anne Provoost’s Falling tells of a young man seduced into political violence by extremist rhetoric and a charismatic young spokesman for racist policies. Provoost achieves a beautifully crafted balance between the persuasive attractions of Belgian nationalism, its historical origins in the Second World War, and the personal fates of protagonists. Another great Belgian talent is Bart Moeyaert, whose Bare Hands (Front Street, 1998, trans. David Colmer) is a spare, elliptical novella with a vividly drawn physical and emotional landscape, expressing the narrator’s resentment at the intrusion of a new man into a fatherless family. Moeyaert’s approach to this subject is far more powerful than cartloads of the more straightforward Social Realist novels that are produced every year.

Translations, too, can tell different sides of the story when it comes to the wars that haunted the world in the last century. Accounts of the fate of Jews during the Third Reich range from the definitive edition of Anne Frank’s Diary to two recent titles: Gudrun Pausewang’s searing account of a Jewish girl’s progress to Auschwitz in The Final Journey (Penguin,1996, trans. Patricia Crampton) and Mirjam Pressler’s Malka (MacMillan, 2003, trans. Brian Murdoch), the story of a Jewish girl’s years in hiding in Easter Europe. Set in the same era, Tatiana Vassilieva’s A Hostage to War: The Diary of Young Russian Girl (Collins, 1999, trans. Anna Trenter) relates the day-to-day experiences of a Russian girl captured by the German army and forced into slave labour. Finally, Els de Groen’s No Roof in Bosnia (Spindlewood, 1997, trans. Patricia Crampton) brings together a group of adolescent refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in the former Yugoslavian battleground of the 1990s.

A marked trend in children’s books from the European continent is the challenge to the intellect, notably in the Norwegian Jostein Gaarder’s introduction to the history of philosophy, Sophie’s World (Phoenix House, 1995, trans. Paulette Møller). German philosopher Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s Where Were You Robert? (Penguin, 2001, trans. Anthea Bell) is a far more satisfying narrative – a time-slip novel that draws readers deeply into the manners, values and intellectual climates of different historical periods across Europe. And, finally, it’s no surprise to find that the majority of recent translations for children are fantasy novels. Cornelia Funke’s Venetian adventure The Thief Lord (The Chicken House, 2002, trans. Oliver Latsch) and the more recently published Inkheart (The Chicken House, 2003, trans. Anthea Bell) could both do with some serious editing, but the conceit in Inkheart of a father who has the gift of reading storybook characters into life is quite magical. And Erik L’Homme succeeds in integrating adventure story and fantasy in the compelling Quadehar the Sorcerer (The Chicken House, 2003, trans. Ros Schwartz).

There’s a long way to go before the level of translated children’s books published in the 1960s and '70s is regained.  We have to persuade publishers to increase the tiny percentage of the children’s book market devoted to translations (currently less than 2% in the UK). The best way to do that is to discover and spread the word about some of the superb writers whose work speaks to the child reader across all linguistic and national boundaries.

posted: August 2004