Head on over to the PaperTigers website to find out more about talented artist Shirin Adl and to see a selection of her work, including illustrations from our current Book of the Month, Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World.  Shirin grew up in Iran, and now lives in Oxford, UK.  Her work combines exuberance of color and media (find out in our Q&A, for example, how she used cling film to good effect in Let’s Celebrate!), and we will soon be able to enjoy her writing in print also – in the meantime, visit Shirin’s website for a taste of her unique story-telling voice.

My daughter likes perusing books with visual puzzles in them, the kind where you have to find hidden creatures or hidden messages.  She mentioned this to me again the other day which made me remember a book we’d bought in Edinburgh, Scotland a few years ago.  Take a Closer Look: The Big Book of Optical Illusions and Visual Oddities by Keith Kay is a rich compilation of various kinds of optical illusions which you can try and figure out with your child.  For the last week, my daughter and I have been going through a couple of pages every night and have been enjoying ourselves.  Some of the illusions appear on Keith Kay’s website; there are some commonly known ones like the 1915 sketch by W.E. Hill of the old lady/young girl but there were also many I’d never seen before.  At the back of the book, there is also an answer page which is a good thing, because sometimes no matter how hard you look, you sometimes just cannot see the thing supposedly there!  Huh?  I can’t see it Mom, turn to the answer page was an oft repeated refrain.  There’s also a page on shadow puppetry that you can try with your hands on a wall at night  — a good bedtime activity if you have a good lamp on your night stand.   As much as I love reading aloud to my daughter, I do also appreciate these books where you interact with your child in a different way than just reading.  Do you know of any good optical illusion books you’ve shared with your child?  Let me know and I can seek them out for my daughter to enjoy!

My husband was in Wales recently for a conference and heard Welsh poet Gillian Clarke read there.  I knew I’d heard of Clarke; in fact, I found her on The Childrens Poetry Archive website where you can hear her read the poem Legend.  I was therefore happy to find at my local library a book of poems edited by Clarke that is very appropriate for Halloween. The Whispering Room Haunted Poems (illustrated by Justin Todd, Kingfisher, 1996) is a collection of poetry chosen by Clarke on the theme of  ‘haunting.’   As Clarke says in the preface, “Haunting is all about imagination, and the best imaginers are poets and children.”

My daughter and I committed ourselves to reading a poem or two each night out of this anthology (while finishing off The Ogre of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson!) leading up to Halloween.  I find reading poetry with her helpful in teaching her about poetic language and concepts such as rhyme.   I let her pick out the poems she would like to try and then we have a go at them.  Flipping through the book together, I was quite struck by Justin Todd’s arresting illustrations, some of which drew me to certain poems.

What books are you reading to your child for Halloween?  Any good poetry titles?  Do share and spread the word!  Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Diane Mayr at Random Noodling.

Since we are just around the corner from Halloween on the calendar, I’ve chosen a monster-related title from Eva Ibbotson for my Books at Bedtime post this week.  My daughter and I have been reading the Ogre of Oglefort by the late Eva Ibbotson (MacMillan, 2010.)  Perennial fans of Ibbotson, we were quite happy to have stumbled on this book in Japan at a bookstore in Osaka when we were there this spring.  And only now have we been working our way through this funny and rather unpredictable book.  The joy of reading Ibbotson is in how she turns all your stereotypical expectations of ogres and princesses on their ear similar to how the Shrek series of movies has parodied the fairytale.

In The Ogre of Oglefort, a motley crew of supernatural creatures – a hag whose familiar has refused her, a troll who works as a hospital porter, and a Mama’s boy wizard along with a young human boy, Ivo  – set out on a task appointed to them by the Norns.  The Norns are three wizened old women that are like the Fates who reside in a gigantic bed from which they issue the yearly task to the annual Summer Meeting of Unusual Creatures.  This year’s task is to slay the terrible Ogre of Oglefort and free the imprisoned princess.  Can this unseemly and bumbling crew manage?  Will they succeed?  But on the other hand, what does it matter?  Is the Ogre really that bad?  And what if the princess doesn’t really need rescuing so much as an understanding ear as to why she’d rather live with an Ogre than her parents?  Ibbotson comes up with some rather surprising turns in this story that will keep you reading (as well as having a good laugh now and then!)   The cover of my copy of The Ogre of Oglefort notes that the book was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Roald Dahl Funny prize; such shortlisting is well warranted.  Although my daughter claims Ibbotson’s earlier title Which Witch as her favorite, I do think this title is just as witty and charming (in the antithetical sense) as her earlier comic novels for children – all very good reading, whether for Halloween or any time.

Founded in 1978 by Sebastian Walker, Walker Books is Britain’s leading independent publisher of high quality books for children of all ages. From a modest start, with just 18 titles in 1980, the company now produces over 300 paperback and hardback titles a year, more than any other children’s book publisher in the UK. A sister company, Candlewick Press, was set up in the US in 1992, and Walker Australia was launched a year later. Publishing purely for children for over a quarter of a century, Walker Books offers a diverse range of books, including picture books, board and novelty books, anthologies, fiction and non-fiction.

Denise Johnstone-Burt, Publisher and Associate Director at Walker and one of Britain’s leading children’s book editors, kindly answered our questions about the company, the children’s publishing industry in the UK, and Michael Foreman’s A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope, one of the books selected for inclusion in the 2011 Spirit of PaperTigers project.

Interview by Aline Pereira, former Managing Editor of PaperTigers and currently an independent writer, editor and editorial consultant specializing in multicultural children’s books.

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Please tell us about your path to becoming a publisher and Associate Director at Walker Books.

I joined Walker Books as a publisher and Associate Director twelve years ago from Andersen Press where I was Editorial Director, and where I had been working for ten years.

You run a varied and successful list of authors and illustrators, which includes former Children’s Laureates Michael Morpurgo and Anthony Browne, and Kate Greenaway winner Michael Foreman. When it comes to children’s books, where is your passion? What kinds of stories do you mostly enjoy publishing/reading?

I couldn’t pick one type of book over another – it wouldn’t be fair. I love them all!

The most important thing for me in regards to authors is good quality writing. It doesn’t matter if it is a picture book text, a piece of factual non-fiction or a novel – the quality needs to be there. I also look for emotion and humour.

As far as illustrators are concerned, I look for an artist who understands about telling story through pictures. It is extremely difficult to do, as you know, but when it works (for example with Michael Foreman’s work) the story speaks to the reader, whatever their age.

What attracted you most to Michael Foreman’s A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope, when you first read it?

I loved the way A Child’s Garden was about such a sensitive and important idea seen through a child’s eyes. It felt as though it represented a bit of Michael’s thoughts, a special bit that you could partake in by reading the story. A Child’s Garden is spreading the idea that everyone can do something even in the most dire situation.

Can you tell us a little bit about what working with Michael is like, and about the process of bringing A Child’s Garden to life?

I have worked with Michael for more than twenty years, and it has always been wonderful. We always discuss the story, the shape of it, what it’s about and the approach he wants to take. In the case of A Child’s Garden, Michael came in with the story and read it to me and Ben Norland, Walker Books’ Art Director. We knew instantly that this was a story we had to publish – its message was so important. We discussed how the colour in the book should reflect the growing hope expressed by the text, and Michael took the idea and ran with it.

Wherever Michael goes he sketches and records the small moments that he sees around him. Mia’s Story was inspired by the children he encountered during his travels in South America. He brought in his sketchbooks and we developed the book together. We looked at the pictures, again with Ben Norland, and discussed how we could recreate the feeling that we saw in the sketchbook. The resulting book feels like a cross between a sketchbook and picture book, and has an autobiographical feel to it.

Since its publication in the UK and the US, in 2009, A Child’s Garden has garnered many accolades. Where else has the book been published, or have rights been sold to?

The book has indeed been very successful in the UK and the US, and has also been published all over the world. Foreign language editions have appeared in South America, Japan, China, Denmark, Brazil and Spain.

Do you have a favorite among Michael’s books?

It would be wrong to pick out one since Michael has created so many incredible books, but I loved working on A Child’s Garden with him, as it was, and is, such an important book. We also had great fun working on Say Hello (with Jack Foreman) and Mia’s Story.

Has the role of editors changed much since you first started in this industry?

The role of the editor has changed since I first started in publishing although there are things that are reassuringly still the same. For example, the thrill of receiving a story or discussing an idea with an author or illustrator is as exciting as it ever was, and the process of developing the idea and thinking about how to present it to the reader is still an enormously stimulating, exciting and creative process. It is a great privilege to be able to work creatively with authors from the very early stages of a book’s conception.

I always sit down with an author or illustrator when they have a new idea for a picture book, for example, and he or she will talk me through the new idea. Then we discuss what the story is about, what the emotional heart of the story is and whether the shape of the story is right.  We also talk more practically about whether it is the right length, whether there are parts which don’t quite work, and whether we can make them work, and so on. This conversation can continue over many meetings.

Things have changed, though, so it is much more difficult these days to attract attention to a new author or illustrator and to get them established than it was when I first started working as an editor. There are fewer outlets for books, which means we have to be very clear in our minds where a book might be sold and how visible it will be. This involves much more detailed conversation with sales and marketing, at all stages in the process of making the book, than before. There is only a limited amount of money to spend on marketing individual authors and titles, so I often have to discuss with authors what they can do themselves to help promote their work.

What’s a typical day like for you (if such a thing exists)?

I work partly from home and the rest of the time in the office.  For those days when I am in the office, I find that I spend most of my time either meeting with authors and illustrators and discussing their new or ongoing ideas, or working through projects with my fellow colleagues in design and editorial. I spend most of these days in conversation about books. We also have regular meetings with sales, marketing and production where we discuss the programme and the costings of different projects, as well as development meetings where we float new ideas. There is no such thing as a typical day at Walker Books.

What was your favorite book growing up?

I loved so many…The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner, The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson…

Can you give us a snapshot of the children’s publishing industry in the UK these days and how digital publishing is affecting things?

Wonderful books are published in the UK for children, but sadly there are fewer and fewer outlets where they are sold, and not many places where children can browse and choose books to buy. That’s why projects such as PaperTigers are so vital for helping keep children’s books visible.

Regarding the movement toward e-books, many children growing up today have never known a world without electronic methods of delivering information, so as a publisher, it is exciting to me to think about new story platforms. The methods of delivery may be changing, but good stories will always endure. We no longer sit round the campfire but children continue to read and listen to stories, albeit in new ways.

What is Walker’s digital publishing strategy, and how does it fit in with the company’s long-term goals?

After signing up for the iBookstore and with many other visible market places opening up for four-colour content, Walker is assessing suitability from both front- and backlist illustrated titles. We aim to support both fixed format ePub and ePub 3 along with other relevant formats in due course. [ePub is the abbreviation for electronic publication, a widely adopted digital file format.]

Walker has a long history of supporting children’s charities. Please tell us about some of the charity-related initiatives the company has developed or been involved with.

Last year we worked with the UK Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne and created a book in aid of Rainbow Trust (who work with families of children with life-threatening illnesses) which promoted visual literacy. In 2010 we celebrated our 30^th anniversary with a fundraising spectacular, which raised over £30,000 for the National Literacy Trust. We also have a volunteer reading scheme at our local primary school, which pairs Walker Books staff with children needing reading help.

Would you give us a taste of your Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 catalog?

We have some wonderful books coming up, including: The Pied Piper retold by Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark; Pop-up London by Jennie Maizels; Aladdin (a magical three-dimensional carousel edition) by Niroot Puttapipat; How Do You Feel? by Anthony Browne, and George Flies South by Simon James.

I am also very excited about the release of the paperback version of Patrick Ness’s new novel, A Monster Calls, inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd [read Denise and Patrick’s joint interview to Publishers Weekly, about working together on this unusual project, here].

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Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Denise. PaperTigers is very grateful to Candlewick Press, the US Sister Company of Walker Books, for its generous discount for A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope in support of the Spirit of PaperTigers project. Congratulations on your great work, and we wish you continued success!

To find our more about Walker Books, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

The Globe Theatre in London will host the Muslim Book Awards presentation on 22nd November. The following books have been shortlisted in the Published Children’s Book category:

The Friendship Matchmaker by Randa Abdel-Fattah (Omnibus Books, Scholastic)
Far From Home by Na’ima B Robert (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, Janetta Otter-Barry Books)
Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan (Groundwood)
A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master (Bloomsbury)
Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera (Puffin)

I would say the judges are going to have their work cut out… The great thing about these awards is that they also welcome submissions from unpublished writers, including children’s stories: you can see the shortlist for that and all the other categories here. Also, running tandem to these Awards, are the Young Muslim Writers Awards, which are announced in June each year – go here for this year’s event.

Rukhsana Khan is going to be coming over to the UK from Canada for the Announcement and she would love to visit a school at the same time. Rukhsana’s school visits range from presentations around her award-winning picture books for primary-aged children to “serious issues like teen suicide, loss and abandonment and child refugees. But even my more serious presentations are laced with humour and are age appropriate.” Her visit will also coincide with the UK’s National Anti-Bullying Week, another subject Rukhsana has touched on in her YA novel Dahling, If You Luv Me, Would You Please, Please Smile, and discussed in a Guest Post here at PaperTigers. You can find full details, including how to contact Rukhsana to invite her to your school, on her website.

Abigail Sawyer regularly reviews books for us here at PaperTigers, and she’s also, in her own words, “a lifelong library lover and an advocate for access to books for all”, so who better to write an article for us about “unconventional libraries” and the children’s books they have inspired. Abigail lives in San Francisco, California, USA, where her two children attend a language-immersion elementary school and are becoming bilingual in English and Mandarin: an experience that has informed her work on the blog for the film Speaking in Tongues. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I have.

On Traveling Libraries and Heroic ‘Book People’: Inspiring children’s books about getting books to people in remote places and difficult circumstances

My sons and I paid our first-ever visit to a bookmobile over the summer.  For us it was a novelty.  We have shelves of books at home and live just 3 blocks from our local branch library, but the brightly colored bus had pulled up right near the playground we were visiting in another San Francisco neighborhood (whose branch library was under renovation), and it was simply too irresistible.  Inside, this library on wheels was cozy, comfortable, and loaded with more books than I would have thought possible.  I urged my boys to practice restraint and choose only one book each rather than compete to reach the limit of how many books one can take out of the San Francisco Public Library system (the answer is 50; we’ve done it at least once).

The bookmobiles provide a great service even in our densely populated city where branch libraries abound.  There are other mobile libraries, however, that take books to children who may live miles from even the nearest modern road; to children who live on remote islands, in the sparsely populated and frigid north, in temporary settlements in vast deserts, and in refugee camps.  The heroic individuals who manage these libraries on boats, burros, vans, and camels provide children and the others they serve with a window on the world and a path into their own imaginations that would otherwise be impossible.

Shortly after my own bookmobile experience, Jeanette Winter‘s Biblioburro (Beach Lane Books, 2010), a tribute to Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano, who delivers books to remote hillside villages across rural Colombia, arrived in my mailbox to be reviewed for Paper Tigers.  I loved this book, as I do most of Winter’s work, for its bright pictures and simple, straightforward storytelling. Another picture book, Waiting for the Bibiloburro by Monica Brown (Tricycle Press, 2011), tells the story of Soriano’s famous project from the perspective of one of the children it serves, whose life expands beyond farm chores and housework thanks to Soriano and his burros.

I was moved, of course, by Soriano’s story, which got me thinking about another favorite picture book my children found at our branch library a few years ago: That Book Woman by Heather Henson (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008) is a fictionalized account of one family’s experience with the Pack Horse Library Project, a little-known United States Works Progress Administration program that ran from 1935-1943.  The Pack Horse librarians delivered books regularly to families living deep in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains.  In this inspiring story (more…)

I’ve written a few posts about Shakespeare for PaperTigers and have been much enlightened on how the Bard’s work can be transmitted to children.  I was therefore quite happy to be presented with a copy of Shakespeare’s Storybook: Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard by Patrick Ryan and James Mayhew (Barefoot Books, 2001) by my local university’s (University of Manitoba) Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.  Patrick Ryan, co-author of this book, is this year’s Storyteller-in-Residence at the Centre.

Shakespeare’s Storybook tells the tales that were likely the precursors to the stories of his plays.  As is commonly known, Shakespeare did not ‘invent’ the stories of his plays — they often came from various sources which Shakespeare then ‘played’ with in order to create his own version of the story suitable for the stage.

I launched into a reading of Shakespeare’s Storybook as soon as I got it, and played the CD of the first story “The Devil’s Bet”  to my daughter.  She was immediately hooked.  And why shouldn’t she be?  The first story — the precursor to The Taming of the Shrew — was about a nasty girl named Nora who through an encounter with a gentle but spirited husband and through her own wits, manages to reform herself and rid her household of the Nicky Nicky Nye, a pestilent water devil.   Although my daughter condemned Nora’s nastiness, she did perceive rather sagely that the husband, Jamie, was effectively ‘training’ Nora to be a better woman.  Nothing like a wayward character to get a child interested in a story, that’s for sure!

Equally compelling were some of the other stories like “Ashboy” (Hamlet) and “The Hill of Roses” (Romeo and Juliet.)   My daughter, whose first Shakespeare play was Twelfth Night, was a little disappointed that the story behind that play wasn’t in the book, but she did enjoy the others.  We had an entertaining few bedtime nights of listening to the CDs and going through the book together.  If you enjoy Shakespeare, I’d certainly recommend this book  as an engaging introduction to the master playwright’s work.

Carol Ann Duffy was named poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009.  She was the 20th such laureate in the UK, but the first woman to have assumed the post.  I was quite delighted to find that Duffy has written a few children’s books, one of which I discovered in my library — Underwater Farmyard (illustrated by Joel Stewart, Macmillan, 2002).   Underwater Farmyard takes the classical farmyard setting with all the animals, and places it in the ocean. “Under the blue-green fields of the Deep/Bleat the bubbly baas of webbed-feet sheep” it begins and page after page, in lovely lilting rhyme with beautiful illustrations,  farmyard animals and sea creatures commingle in their aqueous environment.  I particularly liked all of Duffy’s references to the ocean — the Deep, the Brine, the Drink, etc.  The end of the book, meant to be read at bedtime, has all the creatures going to sleep.

This is a good book to read aloud to, or with, your child, just so you can enjoy the play with the language which is what poetry, especially childrens’ poetry, is all about.   This book whet my appetite for more Duffy, so I went up to the adult non-fiction section of the library and took out some of her poetry collections.  Fine stuff, indeed.

Poetry Friday’s host this week is Amy at The Poem Farm.  On another completely unrelated note, I do invite any of  you who are interested in reading spiritual poetry to  check out my new book of poems, Alert to Glory, launched this week in Winnipeg.  You can order copies through my publisher, Turnstone Press.

It’s back to school time and with all its attendant busyness, our family is considering (perhaps rather foolishly!) of getting a dog.   So lately, we have been researching dogs by consulting various books, looking at websites and generally asking our friends and neighbors for their advice.  One delightful book I discovered in my perusal at the library for dog books was James Herriot’s Favourite Dog Stories, illustrated by Lesley Holmes (McClelland and Stewart , 1995)  In this book, British veterinarian James Herriot regales the reader with stories of dogs he has treated in his countryside practice in Yorkshire.  There’s the story of Tricki Woo, the spoiled Pekingese  who lives with his rather ostentatious owner, Mrs. Pumphrey, or the moving story of Herman, the daschund who suffers from paralysis in his hindquarters owned by a disabled former miner and his wife, and Jake, the greyhound, the beloved companion of itinerant laborer, Roddy.   My daughter listens to these stories with a keen ear in the midst of her bed, covered in stuffed dogs (soon to be replaced by a real one, she readily hopes!)  I’m not sure how our search will go but reading Herriot’s warm stories has certainly  helped increase the anticipation and excitement for this future — gulp! — addition to our household.