I’ve spent most of my years in Canada living in the prairie provinces of Alberta and Manitoba.  So I was quite delighted to hear about a poetry book for children about the prairies called From the Top of a Grain Elevator by poet Barbara Nickel (illus. by Kathy Thiessen.)  Nickel takes the reader through four seasons of prairie living in poems written in various forms such as the tanka and the sonnet.  Quintessential prairie experiences such as picking saskatoon berries, going to the lake, harvesting grain and skating on sloughs make up this delightful collection.

Nickel grew up in the small Saskatchewan town of Rosthern.  From the Top of a Grain Elevator records her memories of those growing up years where the “seasons cycled around like the ferris wheel.”  The title of the book stems from Nickel’s perception that the tallest thing in the prairie landscape — the once ubiquitous grain elevator — was witness to the seasonal scenes and events she writes about.  The title in part also pays homage to this fading architectural legacy.  So many grain elevators have been torn down this last decade as the poem “Up with the Grain” records:

Today I watched them knock
our town’s grain elevator down.

Clouds of dust, pile of rubble
where it once stood
like a white, wooden soldier
beside the railroad tracks,
Melthern in black across its middle.

How did the seasons pass in your childhood landscape?  And how do they pass for your children now?  Are there poems that you know about that celebrate these memories?  From the Top of a Grain Elevator is a wonderful poetic treat for anyone who grew up in the Canadian prairie like I did.  I’m glad I heard about this book!

Today’s Poetry Friday host is Tabatha A. Yeats.

Yesterday was the official launch of Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. If you missed the virtual party, don’t worry - you can still join in the fun. Grace is offering a prize of $25 worth of merchandise from her new on-line store to three lucky people who send in a photo of themselves reading the book - draws will take place at the end of July, August and September (…and while you’ve got the camera out, send us a photo of your kids’ bookshelf too!).

Grace’s wonderful Blog Tour, which we really enjoyed being a part of, draws to an end tomorrow - you can see the full schedule on Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup here - and you just have to head over there and look at the amazing dishes she has concocted to join in Grace’s celebrations - carp-shaped dumplings and exquisite “Where the Mountain meets the Moon” cup-cakes!

(Click on event name for more information)

Exhibition of Prize-Winning Works of 16th Noma Concours (2008) “Palette of Dream Colours IV”~ ongoing until Jul 5, Tokyo, Japan

The Nye Memorial Children’s Literature Tour of the Ukraine~ ongoing until Jul 10, Ukraine

READ!Singapore 2009 - Dreaming A Good Read~ ongoing until Aug 31, Singapore

Enchanted Worlds - Art of Fairy Stories & Mermaid Tales exhibition~ ongoing until Sep 5, Lancashire, United Kingdom

Picture Perfect: Art from Caldecott Award Books, 2006-2009~ ongoing until Nov 8, 2010, Chicago, IL, USA

Exhibition - Drawings from the Heart: Tomie de Paola Turns 75 ~ Jul 3 - Nov 1, Amherst, MA, USA

Kids and Young Adult Literature Festival~ Jul 4 - 5, Rozelle, Australia

West Cork Literary Festival~ Jul 5 - 11, Bantry, Ireland

NAIDOC Week~ Jul 5 - 12, Australia

Asterisks and Obelisks: Classical Receptions in Children’s Literature~ Jul 6 - 10, Lampeter, United Kingdom

Worlds in Dialogue Conference~ Jul 8 - 11, Potchefstroom, South Africa

Storytellers of Canada Annual Conference~ Jul 8 - 12, Victoria, BC, Canada

SCBWI British Isles Hosts an Evening with Tamarind Books Founder Verna Wilkins~ Jul 9, London, United Kingdom

Tokyo International Book Fair~ Jul 9 - 12, Tokyo, Japan

American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference~ Jul 9 - 15, Chicago, IL, USA

Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Program and Meeting Schedule at the ALA Annual Conference~ Jul 9 - 15, Chicago, IL, USA

Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Program and Meeting Schedule at the ALA Annual Conference~ July 9 - 15, Chicago, IL, USA

National Conference for Teachers of English and Literacy~ Jul 9 - 12, Hobart, Australia

SHCY Biennial Conference: Children and Youth at Risk and Taking Risks: Historical Inquiries in International Perspective~ Jul 10-12, Berkeley, CA, USA

The 45th UKLA International Conference Making Connections: Building Literate Communities in and Beyond Classrooms~ Jul 10 - 12, London, United Kingdom

USBBY/YALSA Present Mixing it Up: The Process of Bringing International Children’s Books to the US~ Jul 11, Chicago, IL, USA

Creative Exchange: The Bologna Experience with Ayano Imai, Kiyo Tanaka and Shimako Okamura~ Jul 11, Tokyo, Japan

2009 Bologna Illustrators Exhibition of Children’s Books~ Jul 11 - Aug 16, Tokyo, Japan

Children’s Books Ireland Wild About Books Day~ Jul 12, Dublin, Ireland

10th Annual Pacific Northwest Children’s Book Conference~ Jul 13 - 17, Portland, OR, USA

20th Annual Children’s Book Fair~ Jul 13 - Aug 1, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Voices on the Coast, A Youth Literature Festival~ Jul 14 - 18, Sunshine Coast, Australia

2nd National Conference on Children’s Literature~ Jul 16 - 17, Diliman, Philippines

Harlem Book Fair~ Jul 17 - 19, Harlem, NY, USA

18th Storytelling Festival at the Edge~ Jul 17 - 19, Stokes Barn, United Kingdom

16th European Conference on Reading and 1st Ibero-American Forum on Literacies: Discovering Worlds of Literacy~ Jul 19 - 22, Braga, Portugal

Racial Harmony Day~ Jul 21, Singapore

20th Annual Hong Kong Book Fair~ Jul 22 - 28, Hong Kong

Lima International Book Fair~ Jul 23 - Aug 5, Lima, Peru

Montana Poetry Day~ Jul 24, New Zealand

Their Magical Years: a National Workshop on Early Childhood Learning and Development~ Jul 27 - 31, New Delhi, India

Latin American Regional Conference/Congreso Latinoamericano~ Jul 30 - Aug 1, Lima, Peru

Last night we all jumped in the car after school and raced to Leeds to go and watch the beautifully crafted staging of Little Leap Forward. Adapted from the book, by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann and published by Barefoot Books, it tells the story of events from Yue’s own childhood set against Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.

A powerful combination of masked actors, puppets and shadow-box/animation, not to mention an atmospheric score and cleverly versatile set, the story is told “only” through mime. We followed Little Leap Forward’s dawning awareness of the importance of freedom, both through the political events unfolding around him and through his love for a songbird captured for him by his best friend. No matter how much Little Leap Forward coaxes and bribes with seeds, the bird cannot sing from within the confines of a cage. A “scary” dream sequence that had Little Brother on the edge of his seat alerts Little Leap Forward to what he has to do and he sets the bird free.

I have to say that this particular performance will be looked back on by us - and probably by the cast - with very mixed feelings. There was a group of children in the audience from a local School for the Deaf, who were entranced - picking up enough of the vibrations of the music to get a feel for it, and able to particpate fully in the action on stage. Wonderful. However, the first three rows were taken up by a youth-group outing and it very soon became evident that the children did not know how to behave in a public, live performance. All the more credit to the production, then, that in the scene when Red Guards arrest Little Leap Forward’s mother (an event related in Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s book for adults, Music, Food and Love), there was not a sound from the auditorium.

Afterwards, the four actors/puppeteers gave Read the rest of this entry »

The 2009 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal Winners have been announced! Two years after her untimely death from breast cancer at the age of 47, Siobhan Dowd’s fourth and final novel, Bog Child, has been awarded the UK’s premier accolade for children’s writing: the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Edinburgh-based illustrator Catherine Rayner has won the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK’s most prestigious award for children’s book illustration, for her book Harris Finds His Feet. Click here to see photos from the award ceremony. Also, be sure to check out the latest issue of PaperTigers which focuses on Children’s Book Awards.

I’m a big fan of Allen Say so I was happy to see him featured recently in our Illustrators’ Gallery. I’ve read a number of his books but one I enjoyed recently was Music for Alice.  Alice is a Japanese American woman who loves to dance, but circumstances in her life prevent her from enjoying this dream to the full.  Born in California, Alice grows up, goes to college and marries a man named Mark who “wasn’t much of a dancer” and moves to Seattle, Washington.  Not long afterwards, the war comes, and Alice and Mark are sent to Portland, Oregon and are then removed inland to work farm fields on the eastern edge of the state.  Such hardship was difficult and as Alice puts it “Even the thought of dancing didn’t cheer me very much.”  The couple survive, however, and go on to buy a farm of their own on which they grow various crops until they hit upon the idea of growing flowers — gladioli — to be specific, and become the largest gladiola bulb growers in the U.S.

All throughout the book as Alice recounts her life, she reflects occasionally on her love of dancing.  Only at the end of the book and the end of her life, does she suddenly come to an epiphany.  Looking on the ruins of her old farm house, she is overcome by a “wonderful feeling” that makes her suddenly exclaim, “Now I can dance!”  And as the book concludes, “And dance I do — all that I can.”

Music for Alice is an old woman’s meditation on the past.  Old age is its own frontier, and there are still things to learn and discover there.  Allen Say’s superb, nuanced illustrations evoke Alice’s life with clarity and depth.  I highly recommend his picture books which make wonderful reading for children and adults.

PaperTigers is delighted to be hosting author and illustrator Grace Lin on Day 2 of her Blog Tour to introduce her latest book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which, as Aline pointed out last week, has already received its first award! We’ll be publishing a full review in our next issue of PaperTigers… in the meantime, Grace has kindly answered some questions and shared some pictures with us.

Welcome, Grace: thank you for joining us!

In an article you once wrote called “Why Couldn’t Snow White be Chinese?”, you talk about an experience you had as a child when your school put on a production of The Wizard of Oz and you were told by a friend you couldn’t be chosen to play Dorothy because “Dorothy’s not Chinese”. How would you relate that experience to your writing of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which has been described as being written in “the Wizard of Oz tradition”?

Wow, that is a very astute observation of my work. While I did not write Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as an attempt to create an Asian Dorothy, it is probably one of the reasons why I felt so strongly that the main character needed to be a girl and why this book is an Asian-inspired fantasy (a story influenced by my Asian-American values rather than an attempt at a traditional Chinese tale).

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is very, very loosely based on the Chinese folktale “Olive Lake,” Aside from adding many layers and changing plot points, I also changed the main character from an adult male to the girl, Minli. In some ways it may have been easier to leave the character male; I would not have had to worry about how I bent /ignored some Chinese customs that inhibit women — like the fact that there is no foot binding, for example. But I very much wanted the main character to be a girl, a strong and brave and clever girl who (now that you mention it) was someone I would’ve wanted to pretend that I was as I child.

You have referred to your illustrating of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as being “like the classic books of yore” - do you think illustrated books for independant readers are starting to be published a bit more nowadays and how important do you think they are? Read the rest of this entry »

Lee & Low Books, an independent children’s book publisher focused on diversity, will be taking part in the upcoming American Library Association Annual Conference, July 9 - 15 in Chicago, IL. Attendees are invited to Lee & Low’s Booth 2260 for book signings by authors Christine Taylor-Butler, Lulu Delacre, W. Nikola-Lisa, Janet Halfmann, Eloise Greenfield, R. Gregory Christie, and Shadra Strickland. Lee & Low will also be giving away bookmarks, posters, and more! See the complete signing schedule here.

Five year-old Shashank, the winner of our first “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” book draw, received his books! The following is a note from his father:

The books have arrived, and they are so wonderful! Thank you! I have already read them several times to Shashank. His favorite one is ‘Homes,’ and the page he likes the most is the one where crying clouds make rain! Take a look at all the new books on our bookshelf!

Thanks for the feedback and photos, Prashanth! It’s great to see Shashank smiling, with his new favorite book in hand!

Readers, take note: on Jul 15th we will draw a new winner, so keep sending us photos of your children’s bookshelves. They could be the next to win a set of age-appropriate multicultural books!

Here is a list of the books we sent to Shashank:

Homes, by Yang-Huan, illustrated by Hsiao-yen Huang

Speak Chinese, Fang Fang! written and illustrated by Sally Rippin

No English by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Amy Huntington

Colors, Colores! by Jorge Luján

Loongie, The Greedy Crocodile by Lucy and Kiefer Dann, illustrated by Bronwyn Houston

School librarian, teacher and incoming PBBY chairman Zarah Gagatiga has passed along the following information on two exciting events taking place in July in the Philippines:

The 2nd National Conference on Children’s Literature - July 16 & 17

The Pilandokan (National Research Society for Children’s Literature) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts will be sponsoring the Second National Conference on Children’s Literature with the theme “Panitikang Pambata sa Edukasyon” (Children’s Literature in Education) on July 16-17 at the University of the Philippines - Diliman.

This national conference will feature paper presentations and workshops by scholars, creative writers, artists, and children’s right advocates. Topics include the Filipino concept of child and childhood; the state of children’s literature in the Philippines; book piracy; literacy programs for urban poor children and the deaf; and the formation of Filipino childhood identity. The Keynote Speaker will be the Pilandokan Founding President Dr. Rosario Torres-Yu.

For further information, please contact Dr. Eugene Y. Evasco and/or Prof. Will P. Ortiz (pagongatmatsing (at) yahoo(dot)com).

26th National Children’s Book Day - 3rd week of July

For the first time ever, the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY) will hold the celebration of NCBD (National Children’s Book Day) outside Manila in Marikina City. This year’s themes focus on leadership and readership with the slogan Readers Make Good Leaders!

The whole month of July promises to be a fun-filled month of reading, writing and interactive activities for children and literacy advocates. The Salanga and Alcala Prizes will be awarded during the opening ceremonies on July 21, 2009 at the Marikina Convention Center.

You can read about the preparations in Zarah’s post here and I’ll post more information on the Children’s Book Day festivities in the coming weeks.