The National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY) presented the first ever National Children’s Book Awards last July 24 at the Mandarin Oriental in Makati City, Philippines.

Of the 131 children’s books nominated, the board of judges chose 6 books as this year’s winners. Of these 6 books, 3 were published by Adarna House. The 1st National Children’s Book Awards are special for many reasons including, as Adarna House states on their blog,:

We are so happy with the NCBA, which gives the awards on an even playing field — without ranking and categories — along with written citations that highlight each book’s strength and charm.

To learn more about the 1st National Children’s Book Awards and the 27th National Children’s Book Day celebrations check out Zarah Gagatiga’s blog School Librarian in Action as well as Tarie Sabido’s blog Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind. Tarie was one of the judges for the awards and if you click here she shares the judges’ comments on the 6 winning books.

Marjorie and I at PaperTigers write the Books at Bedtime posts and these posts usually are about books appropriate for reading to children at bed time.  However, I’m facing a bit of a dilemma having a 13 year old son and a 9 year old daughter.  I no longer read to my son at bed time; he reads for himself and lately, his focus has been on comics and graphic novels.  As a result, I’ve been getting hooked on graphic novels myself (although admittedly the fascination for this genre started for me when I was a teen and had access to Japanese manga even though I couldn’t always read them very well) so I have decided to start reviewing graphic novels in future posts while still also doing the occasional Books at Bedtime post to cover those titles I read with my daughter.

However, as with many things in life, there are cross-overs and overlaps.  While perusing the graphic novel shelf at the library, my daughter found one for herself and brought it over to me.  The Boy, the Bear, The Baron, the Bard by Australian Gregory Rogers (Roaring Book Press, 2004) is a story set in Elizabethan England told entirely in images drawn by Rogers.   You would think a book like this wouldn’t be appropriate for bedtime reading, but quite the contrary!  My daughter, having perused the book, brought it to bed with her and asked if we could narrate the story together, playing the different parts of the characters depicted (which include, needless to say, the title characters including Bard Shakespeare.)  This was a totally appropriate way to read this book, considering that it featured the famous playwright himself and the world of theatre.  And we had fun, moreover, doing it!

Do you ever read graphic novels to your children at bedtime?  Tell me if you do; I’d love to hear of your experiences.  As children become more increasingly focused on the visual medium through the use of computers (we’re fast approaching the age of reading off our Kindles and Ipads to our children at night), reading graphic novels to our kids may well be the middle road of compromise!

Several weeks ago I posted about The Singapore Book Club’s July event: In Conversation with Adeline Foo, Lim Fong Wei and Sangeetha Madhavan. Panelist Adeline Foo recently emailed me and told me that Myra Garces-Bacsal’s attended the event and blogged about it at Gathering Books. Read Myra’s review (which includes pics and video!) and not only will you feel like you attended the event  but you will really get to know best-selling children’s author Adeline Foo as she talks about her work ethic, where her ideas come from and what lessons budding authors must know.

Myra sums up the evening by saying:

Generally, I thought it was a good evening. It was a long travel from my home  but it was well worth the trip. One possible add-in perhaps that may be considered if there is going to be another “book club” is that an actual specific “book” would be discussed by the attendees in greater detail…Strictly speaking, it was more a panel discussion with book authors than an actual “book club” where you discuss specific targeted books and argue about the characters’ motivations, affect, and personalities in the “club.” Considering though that it was the first children’s book club ever organized, I thought it was a success. Kudos to Adeline, Sangeetha and Fong Wei and the National Book Development Council for organizing the evening. I am avidly looking forward to more evenings filled with discussion about children’s books and themes with aspiring writers, book authors, illustrators, and lovers of children’s literature.

One thing that clearly shone through from last night’s book club, and my earlier coffee and conversation with David Seow, another prolific children’s book author in Singapore – is how tenacious and passionate these writers are despite the seemingly-insurmountable odds stacked against them, being situated in a comparatively small country in Asia. Cheers indeed to the fantasy, magic, and enchantment of children’s books. Keep the faith, everyone.

Photographer Caroline Irby spent one year tracking down a child born in every country in the world  that now resides in the United Kingdom.  She found children from 185 of the world’s 192 nations, photographed and interviewed each one of them. Her  resulting photographic book, A Child from Everywhere, features the children sharing their thoughts on  leaving their countries of origin, their hopes for their new lives in the UK and their observations of cultural differences.

A selection of Irby’s photographs along with a series of short films that she made of her interviews with the children is on exhibit until August 30th at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London, UK. Entry to the museum and exhibit is free.

Stay tuned to PaperTigers as we will have an interview with Caroline in our  upcoming August/September issue and she will also be guest blogging here on our blog!

Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids edited by Jen Hamilton, illustrated by Merrill Fearon (Subway Books, 2005) is exactly what the title says it is — twenty five poems by Canadian poets for kids about life in Canada.  With a foreword by the late and well known Canadian poet, P.K. Page in which Page states of the importance of poetry for the development of childrens’ minds, the book launches into its poems with aplomb beginning with Irene Watts‘ “Stories.”  “Everything/ has a story,” Watts asserts, and “a world full of stories” is what we need “to grow.”

I liked the poems that best celebrate creativity and imagination.  The late Marianne Bluger’s “I Chased a Butterfly” encapsulates the childhood desire of wanting to catch that flitting beauty that is the butterfly, but the poem ends with the plain but rather profoundly stated:

I chased that butterfly
one whole day
but it’s all right with me
that she got away.

Ken Ward’s “I Want to be A Painter” is about the envy two creative artists — one a baker, the other a painter — have for one another’s work.  And Page’s poems “Cloud Watching” is about the imaginative exercise of seeing shapes in the clouds.

I think I would have liked this collection more if there were a diversity of poets represented here that spoke to the  multicultural aspects of Canadian identity.  Certainly there are many fine Canadian poets out there that have done just that and could have been included in this anthology.   I was sorry that the editors couldn’t have tracked some down.  However, that aside, Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids introduces some fine poetry by Canadian poets for children.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Breanne at Language, Literacy, Love.

My hometown of Winnipeg is in the throes of its annual Fringe Theatre Festival which has a great component called Kids Fringe.  Today I was lucky enough to get tickets for a great show called Four Wishes by Gunstwork Puppet Mask Theatre.  Four Wishes tells the story of four men of the Wabanaki Nations and the four wishes they are granted by Gluskabe, their protector.  Puppeteer Joseph Bruhac performed this story with his hand-made puppets in a charming and engaging fashion that completely captivated my daughter and I.  Bruhac hails from Colorado and tours his shows to schools and festivals, so if you ever get a chance to see this performance, I highly recommend it!

David Elzey posted the following to The Excelsior Files in 2007, as part of a five-part series about Summer Reading. I thought it would be good to quote it here, since the Required Reading vs No Required Reading debate is a never-ending one:

“…the summer reading of my youth, always self-directed and rarely encouraged by my mother, has been replaced with a formalized list of titles handed out at the end of the school year for elementary school kids to stress over as they tussle with parents over having their ‘fun’ summer taken away from them.”

Monica Edinger, from Educating Alice, has recently pointed readers to a parody she wrote on the topic a few years ago. To Require or Not to Require: That’s the Question is sure to make you laugh, as well as think about the issue.

This is not a debate about whether children should read during the Summer or not, but whether their reading should be chosen for them and required. What do you think?

Wowio is giving away the e-book version of Daniel A. Rabuzzi’s recent YA novel The Choir Boats, a fantasy that starts out in London in 1812 and the world of Yount in the Year of the Owl. Published by ChiZine, “an independent publisher of weird, surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction”, it certainly sounds an exciting read. Daniel writes:

The Choir Boats was selected by January Magazine as a Top Ten YA Novel for 2009. Reviewers describe it as “Gulliver’s Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice,” and “a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy that, like Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, will appeal to both adult and young adult readers.”

This special edition of the novel includes bonus illustrations by Deborah A. Mills. It’s also DRM-free, so it can be read on any device compatible with PDFs, and shared with friends just like a regular book.

The free download is only available for the month of July so if you’re interested, you’ll need to hurry…

The International Youth Library, located in Munich, Germany, is the largest library for international children’s and youth literature in the world. Opened in 1949, it has been continuously expanded and is now recognized internationally as a centre for children’s and youth literature from all over the world. Drawing upon its unique collection, the International Youth Library mounts a variety of exhibitions on a wide range of themes every year, in the halls of Blutenburg Castle, including original works by illustrators, representative surveys of the children’s literature from different countries or cultures, and current or historical aspects of children’s literature.

While attending the 2010 Bologna Children’s Book Fair in March, we visited the International Youth Library’s (IYL) booth and perused the books in the newly announced 2010 White Ravens catalogue: books that deserve worldwide attention because of their universal themes and/or their exceptional and often innovative artistic and literary style and design. We  also learned of the IYL’s  plans for the 1st White Ravens Festival to be held in the summer of 2010.  Although the festival seemed far away at the time, it is now set to begin – how time flies!

From July 20th to 25th, 13 authors and illustrators from Bavaria and abroad will read from their books, conduct workshops and creative writing classes, and talk about themselves and their work in podium discussions.  The festival will provide space both for renowned, award-winning authors and illustrators and for new literary discoveries, and will focus on the encounters between these authors and illustrators and their audiences. Readings in English, French, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish will turn the festival into a truly international experience and the festival’s Bavarian and international contributions will serve as a bridge between different cultures.

The main festival venue will be the International Youth Library. However, the invited authors and illustrators will also be available for performances and workshops in youth and cultural centres, schools, and libraries around Bavaria during this time. Apart from open events in the afternoon and on the weekend, there will also be a special program for schools.

This is sure to be a special event and we look forward to reading more about it from those lucky enough to be there…

The  Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were established in 2008 to celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The awards, held annually, recognise literature’s importance to Australia’s national identity, community and economy. This year two new categories, with prize amounts of $100,000 each, have been added: Young Adult Fiction and Children’s Fiction.  The shortlists have just been announced and include nine children’s fiction and seven young adult fiction titles.