Concerned about the violence in many parts of the world, Lise Lunge Larsen recently blogged about children’s books with tales about peace, compassion, and creative problem-solving. Click here to read her article on the Children’s Literature Network blog.

In Part 1 of her Guest Post for our current theme of Children and their Grandparents, author Swapna Dutta described the importance to Bengali children of the tales collected by Dakshinaranjan Mitra-Mazumdar. Here in Part 2, Swapna retells one of those stories for us. It comes from perhaps the most famous of Mitra-Mazumdar’s books, Thakurmar Jhuli (Paternal Grandma’s Bag of Stories):

Saat Bhai Champa / Seven Champak Brothers

LONG, long ago there lived a king who had seven queens but no children. So he was delighted when he came to know that the seventh queen was going to have a baby.

The queen had octuplets: seven little boys and a little girl. But the other six queens were terribly jealous. They stole the babies while the seventh queen was still unconscious and buried them in the ash-heap. Then they told her that she had given birth to crabs and showed her some. The queen was too heartbroken to protest and thought that someone had cursed her with such a terrible fate. The news reached the king. “The seventh queen must be a witch.” He said, “Throw her out of the kingdom!”

Something strange happened soon after. The birds stopped singing. The flowers stopped blooming. And what was worst, there were no flowers to worship the deity in the royal temple. Everyone scoured the kingdom for flowers. Finally someone discovered seven champaks and a camellia blooming on the ash-heap. “Get them!” said the king, “And I’ll reward you.”

But it proved to be an impossible task. As soon as anyone tried to pick them they shot up higher, out of reach, and sang in a sweet chorus:

“You can’t touch us –
Oh no, oh no!
Let the first queen come.
To her, we’ll go!”

The king sent for the first queen. She turned pale and remembered what she had done at the ash-heap. The flowers shot up higher and asked for the second queen. The second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth queens all came and went. None of them could touch the flowers. The flowers now asked for the king. But he could not get them either. The flowers shot up even higher and sang,

“You can’t touch us–
Oh no, oh no!
Let the seventh queen come.
And to HER, we’ll go!”

“Find the seventh queen!” ordered the king. “Find her at any cost!”

The king’s men scattered far and wide, searching for the queen and found her in the forest, lonely and miserable. They took her back to the palace and to the ash-heap. As soon as the flowers saw her, the seven champaks and the camellia tumbled down from the tree top, crying, “Mother! Mother!” as they fell into her arms.

But they were flowers no longer. The seven champaks had turned into seven handsome princes and the camellia into a beautiful princess. The king soon heard the story and punished the six guilty queens by banishing them from the kingdom. Suddenly the entire garden was full of flowers again. And the birds started singing. And every one lived happily ever after.

Retold by Swapna Dutta

You will also find a longer retelling of Seven Champaks to read/listen to in Begali with an English translation alongside, at Galpo Boli Shono, a fun website for children to immerse themselves in Bengali stories, puzzles and songs. We’re grateful to Galpo Boli Shono for their permission to reproduce some of their gorgeous illustrations by Tarit Bhattacharjee here, to accompany Swapna’s retelling of the story.

For our current focus on children and their grandparents, we have invited authors and illustrators who have written children’s books that center on that special relationship to share with us some of their own personal memories of their grandparents. Over the next few weeks we will be posting these pieces here on the blog – and I can promise you, we’re all in for a real treat.

Our first piece comes from author Andrea Cheng, who says, “Many of my books have to do with the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren (Grandfather Counts, Goldfish and Chrysanthemums, Shanghai Messenger, Only One Year, The Key Collection). Most of these stories in some way reflect the relationship I had with my grandparents, particularly with my paternal grandmother.”

One of my favorites of Andrea’s books is Where the Steps Were, her novel in verse about a class of inner-city 3rd graders, which also references grandparents. Do watch Andrea’s short but inspiring video documentary, which shares what “a group of 3rd graders can do with just one book.” Andrea’s latest book is the newly released Where Do You Stay? (Boyd’s Mill Press). Read our 2008 interview with Andrea here, and visit her website here.

Memories of My Grandparents

My family immigrated to the US from Hungary in installments. My immediate family came first, and then my grandparents, and later my aunt, uncle, and cousin. When I was very small, we all lived together. Later my grandparents got their own apartment just behind our house. I loved going to visit them and was allowed to walk there by myself. Grandma spoiled me with my favorite palacsintas (walnut and sugar filled crepes) She let me eat them before dinner and never seemed worried that I would spoil my appetite.

Sometimes I was allowed to spend the night with my grandparents. My grandmother fixed me a special bed on the floor that I called a nest, and we played there for at least an hour before bed. She sang me Hungarian nursery rhymes, which I still know, and let me play with her plastic pop together beads. She taught me to sew clothes for my dolls. My grandfather told me stories until finally I fell asleep.

When I was about eight, my grandparents moved from Cincinnati to Chicago to join my aunt. I was heartbroken. The feelings described in The Key Collection come from this early separation.

My husband’s parents immigrated to the US from China in 1949. Unfortunately he was never able to meet any of his grandparents. Luckily my grandmother, who lived until age 95, very happily took on the role of being my husband’s adopted grandmother. Grandma knew very little about her ancestry, but she looked Asian (perhaps Mongolian since the Mongols came through Hungary centuries ago) so many people assumed she was my husband’s grandmother, not mine!

Andrea Cheng

Thank you, Andrea.

I am including this post in this week’s Poetry Friday, which is hosted by Reading Tub’s Family bookshelf – I’ll add the link later as I’m having some difficulties conecting right now…

We are delighted to welcome writer Swapna Dutta back to PaperTigers with this article about the stories collected by Dakshinaranjan Mitra-Mazumdar (1877-1957) and thanks to him, still known and loved by Bengali children today. I personally have to thank Swapna for introducing me to the work of Sukumar Ray, and I think I’ll now be seeking out some of Mitra-Mazumdar’s tales. Swapna is also a regular contributor to BoliKids .

When I was a child the concept of stories and story-telling was inseparable from my two grandmothers; and it was so for most children of my generation. Those were the days of joint families where the mothers were always busy with household chores or outside work and fathers, too busy in their own world. But Grandma/grandpa/grandparents always had time for us. They were the ones to pet and pamper; listen to our troubles; provide us with pickles and sweets; and most important of all, tell us stories. Our grandparents had a formidable stock of tales that included folktales and fairy tales; stories from mythology and epics; and stories that formed part of common rituals – an integral part of our life. Children who lived in metro cities had access to the radio. But for the rest of us, hearing stories from grandparents was our chief source of entertainment when it was too dark to play outside; during the long rainy afternoons and the shivery winter evenings.

Most of those stories had come down through generations as part of oral tradition. As a result, there were several variations of the same stories. Not that it hampered our pleasure in any way! It was fun to come across two different endings or have the prince/princess face different situations, adventures and dilemmas. One of the pioneers to note down these tales and bring out a printed collection was Dakshinaranjan Mitra-Mazumdar. He patiently collected stories from village women, travelling from village to village as he did so, his main aim (more…)

Last year we spoke to Katie Smith Milway about her first solo children’s book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, selected for the Spirit of PaperTigers 2010 Book Set; it’s great to welcome her back now to talk about her latest book The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough, which promises to be equally life-changing and life-affirming as One Hen. The Good Garden is illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault and, like One Hen, is published by Kids Can Press as part of their superb CitizenKid series.

Katie is a partner at the Bridgespan Group, an advisory to nonprofits and philanthropy. She has written many books and articles on sustainable development and has coordinated community development programs in Africa and Latin America for Food for the Hungry International. She is also the co-author with her mother Mary Ann Smith of Cappuccina Goes to Town (Kids Can Press, 2002), as well as the non-fiction book The Human Farm: A Tale of Changing Lives & Changing Lands (Kumarian Press/Stylus Publishing,1994).

Katie lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA.

In your interview with PaperTigers last year, while touching upon the then forthcoming The Good Garden, you said, “In an era of food crisis, any child can play their part in their home or school garden, or in supporting poor farmers through acts of giving.” How have you aimed at getting that message across in the book?

The Good Garden is based on true people and events, and portrays the life of a campesino family in Honduras. They, like so many small farmers around the world eke out barely enough to live on – in a good year – and are highly vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition, when weather or insects create havoc. This family’s life is transformed, however, when a new teacher, Don Pedro, comes to the village school and gets the family’s daughter, María Luz Duarte, to help him plant a school garden – which he not only uses to teach students their basic subjects, but moreover to teach simple, sustainable agriculture methods that they can apply using their innate human resources: their heads, hands and heart. Through the caring labor of composting, terracing the hillside, planting beans among corn to keep soil nutrients in balance, and even dotting the terraces with flowers that smell bad to bugs, students see their school garden thrive on land that they all thought was too poor to keep them going. María Luz and others bring the learning home to their farms, improve their crops and grow in confidence about taking their own produce to market as opposed to selling to unfair middlemen – called “coyotes” in Honduras – who scoop profits. The knowledge they glean in the marketplace triggers another cycle of learning and innovation. Most importantly, the way the family shares what they have learned – passes it forward – ultimately transforms village after village.

So on one hand, kids see many acts of giving within the story – from teacher to student, from student to family and from family to family. At the back of the book, however, we offer practical ways that kids can help local food banks and community gardens, or give to international organizations like World Vision or Heifer International that provide seeds, tools and farm animals to families that need them. On our website www.thegoodgarden.org, kids can learn more and join a national food drive.

What else do you hope children will find inspirational in the book, which is based on the true story of Honduran teacher Don Elías, who had a profound affect not only on his pupils, but also on the whole community, through spreading his practical knowledge of what was needed to create sustainable farmland?

I hope kids will feel empowered to apply their heads, hands and hearts to any problem to help themselves and others. And I especially hope The Good Garden interests them in combating world hunger – ideas for action are listed at the back of the book. I also hope we see even more school, community and family gardens sprouting up – so kids can identify, if only in a small way, with the billions of poor in our world who live off the land, and so they can experience the satisfaction and nutrition of self-grown produce.

As I was completing The Good Garden manuscript in spring 2009, two of my kids got interested in planting a vegetable garden, and so we’ve had a miniature farming experience ourselves. The kids worked their tails off planting, watering and weeding. They harvested corn, Brussels sprouts and cucumbers, but bugs and shade killed most of the peppers and tomatoes. This summer, Brendan (15) and Mary Kate (12) expanded the garden for maximum sunlight and planted marigolds to repel the bugs. We’ve had great peppers, tomatoes and eggplants, but a varmint got through the fencing and decimated the corn patch. All to say, we have learned how good home-grown food can be, but also the tenuousness of growing it. We would starve without groceries!

The Good Garden has only been out for a few months but have you already heard about schools using it as a springboard for their own projects?

Absolutely. Here are a few anecdotes: (more…)

Award winning Australian children’s author Chris Cheng is a passionate literacy advocate and besides writing full-time and being Co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI Australia/New Zealand, he has an extensive schedule of  speaking engagements at schools and literacy festivals. Chris recently returned from the Philippines and shares with us his experiences at the First Manila International Literary Festival:

Last month the National Book Development Board of the Philippines held the First Manila International Literary Festival and I was thrilled to be the only Australian (and one of five international speakers, including Vikas Swarup author of the book Q&A on which the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based) at the festival. The three day festival was titled LOL, Lit Out Loud. There were also many Filipino speakers that included some wonderful poets, columnists and authors.

The Filipinos have a glorious love of poetry and throughout the festival there were breakout panels expressing and discussing the love of poetry – there were also wonderful recitations of poetry on the opening day (many in the Filipino language so even though I couldn’t understand what was being said listing to the sounds being spoken for me was a joy) which begs me to request that we should have more opportunities at festivals and events and in our daily lives for ‘hearing’ poetry being recited.

I was engaged to speak on children’s literature in Australia and abroad, to talk about the changing children’s market and also to talk about my own writing experience and the writing of identity. As I have written a number of very popular children’s titles on the Chinese diaspora; New Gold Mountain, the Melting Pot, and Seams of Gold,  this was right up my alley. Talking about identity was extremely powerful for in the Philippines many of the available titles are imported. A very, very small publishing industry exists – they are establishing an identity but it is small.

There were session on graphic novels, travel writing, experimental literature, story telling workshops, gender writing – even a cooking demonstration with book launch – and the food by Mita Kapur (the books is the F Word – we discussed that title and how it would work in Australia!!!)

I was also thrilled to be able to send a short time on Saturday morning talking to the staff at the all girls school – the Immaculate Conception Academy at Greenhills in Manila. My one hour talk on writing and teaching became a two hour talk when they asked for demonstration of how teachers can use everyday objects all around them to be the stimulus for writing! We ‘wrote’ (talked actually) great stories on wall fans and baby elephants!

It was just a delight to the first Australian to speak this festival. As a well-established Australian children’s author I feel it is vital for the established nations with a rich literary heritage to support developing nations who desire one. In Australia we love reading our stories – stories that cast a light on life in the bush, in the suburbs and in the city; stories that feature our native wildlife and our own human characters with their particular follies and foibles; that describe our bushfires or floods, or simply our way of life. Readers in other national also deserve to be able to read their stories as well.

More information about the festival can be found here on my blog.

Australian author Susanne Gervay (visit her website and blog) has had a very busy year this year and social justice has been high on her agenda. She is one of the contributors to Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, an anthology of short stories featuring ten Australian and ten Indian writers, edited by Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle (Macmillan Australia/ Picador India, 2010). She has been writing about her travels to India and Kiribati, a “Pacific atoll nation drowning under climate change”. She has just launched Always Jack, the third book about Jack, following on from her wonderful I Am Jack and Super Jack. Most recently, Susanne was in South Korea for the Nambook-010 Fesival, the 5th Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival. She was there because she was taking part in Peace Story, a very special project. We are very grateful to Susanne for telling us all about it here. For those of us who couldn’t be there in person, Susanne’s description and photographs are definitely the next best thing!

In these troubled times with North Korea’s military attack on South Korea, the international publication of Peace Story is poignant and important. Twenty-two children’s authors and twenty-two illustrators from twenty-two countries engaged in an international cooperative to create a unique anthology, Peace Story, for young people. Respected academic author on Irish children’s literature Valerie Coghlan and Irish Laureate for children’s literature Siobhán Parkinson were the co-editors of Peace Story.

‘Peace Story’ was part of the Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival, South Korea which was first held in 2005 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. It is a six-week bi-annual festival of children’s books, the environment and peace, featuring outstanding exhibitions of children’s books and illustrations from all over the world. Much loved Korean illustrator Kang Woo-hyon, President of the Nambook-010 International Committee headed the ‘Peace Story’ project with the support of the Nami Island Minn family who published and translated some of the stories, and hosted the authors and illustrators on Nami Island. It was supported by National YMCA Korea, UNICEF and UNESCO Korea, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, and Nami Island the official sponsor of the IBBY Hans Christian Anderson Awards.

My Australian story ‘To East Timor with Love Australia’, illustrated by the award-winning Frané Lessac, opens the anthology Peace Story. Frané Lessac’s vibrant colours of bright pink bougainvillea and yellow-centred frangipanis create a visual representation of loss of homeland through war, but also hope for the future. (more…)

If you have already read today’s earlier post, received our latest newsletter or taken a look at the latest issue on the PaperTigers website, you will know that there are exciting developments in the offing for PaperTigers, especially as regards our Outreach Programe - developments which will affect both the PaperTigers website and the blog; and you will have realised that for all of us who are involved in PaperTigers, there is also a thread of sadness running through the anticipation of what is to come, for we will very sadly be losing Aline Pereira as a member of our team. Here on the blog, we will certainly be celebrating all that Aline has achieved, before her departure for pastures new in February; in the meantime, here is her final editorial taken from the main PaperTigers website, in which she talks about “Changes Afoot in 2011″:

Who says a Tiger can’t change (or at least rearrange) its stripes?

Led by the desire to expand its outreach program and faced with financial constraints, PaperTigers is in the process of doing just that: reconfiguring its stripes. Some difficult decisions were made that will affect the way things work in the new year.

First, the not so good news…

Come February, sadly, I will be leaving PaperTigers. As a result of the economy downturn that is affecting so many in the United States and of a decision to redirect part of PaperTigers’ funds to the development of an additional outreach reality (as explained below), my Managing Editor role will cease to exist. Marjorie Coughlan, who has been PaperTigers Associate Editor on a part-time basis since 2005, and my partner in crime and good friend, will become PaperTigers only editor.

Since this is my last editorial, I’d like to take this opportunity to say goodbye and to express my gratitude to all the readers, friends, colleagues and contributors for their support, friendship, work and always helpful feedback these past six years. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to have worked/crossed paths with each one of you. Please stay in touch.

On a more positive note, let me be the one to tell you what other changes are afoot for PaperTigers in 2011. I won’t be in the picture after February (except for maybe the occasional article or book review), but the projects I’ve helped grow and, in some cases, establish, will continue to exist–even if in a slightly modified format.

As you know, over the last few years, in addition to offering rich and varied content on the website, we have also been developing our blog and outreach program. In an attempt to present these three realities more clearly, starting in mid-January, those going to papertigers.org will find a new landing page, where they can choose which of the three aspects of PaperTigers they want to read about/explore, i.e. the site, the blog or the outreach program.

On the site itself, topics will no longer be treated through bimonthly issues, as they have been until now. Themes and geographical areas will continue to be covered, but in a more flexible way that is not confined to a bimonthly rhythm. We believe that this will allow the website and blog to be integrated more fully.

We have intensified our outreach program in the course of the last twelve months. Through the Spirit of PaperTigers book donation project we have sent sets of books to schools in many parts of the world. This project will continue to exist, but in a simplified way that takes into account the suggestions made by recipients of the sets in this first experimental year.

Our outreach efforts this year have also made us vividly aware that in parts of the world where clean water and good sanitation are not available, promoting literacy and encouraging children to become “hungry readers” does not get very far. We have therefore undertaken a series of small projects to provide children in areas of need with both books and water. It is PaperTigers’ intention to push forward and further develop these two outreach aspects in the coming year: “water for living and books for reading.”

I think this covers everything about the upcoming changes, so… So long for now, and please remember: PaperTigers is counting on your continued support as it reconfigures its stripes.

May we all learn to embrace change and make the best of it in 2011.

Aline

This month, on the PaperTigers website, we are highlighting a sample of the many and rich features from our previous issues and talking about some changes afoot in 2011.

In her last editorial, Aline Pereira explains what these changes are and how they relate to the fact that, come February, sadly and unfortunately, she will no longer be PaperTigers’ Managing Editor.

Aline’s presence at the helm of PaperTigers over the last six years has been critical; her contribution has been both extensive and immensely valuable for the site and for the blog – and she has also played an important role in helping us move towards a fuller outreach program. To say that she will be missed and that her absence will be a big loss for PaperTigers is an understatement. We are truly grateful to her for all she has done and wish her the very best in her future endeavors.

We hope 2011 will be a year of learning and growth for all of us, and as we prepare to ring in the new year and say farewell to Aline, we offer you these great features from the treasure-trove that is PaperTigers. May they warm your hearts and minds and keep you coming back for more.

In her Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, Uma Krishnaswami ponders some of the questions that have come her way as a writer recently. Make sure you head on over to the main website to read the whole article; in the meantime, here’s the introduction. I found her pondering over the word ‘swale’ particularly fascinating as I live not too far from Swaledale in the UK – and it certainly catches a lot of rain too! – could there be a connection?

Four years ago, an uncle of mine, D.V. Sridharan, started the crazy, impossible, madcap project, of restoring a wasteland in a rural area near the city of Chennai in India, and turning it into a sustainable farm. The reason this has anything to do with my own crazy, impossible, madcap occupation, writing books for children, is that his endeavor too had to do with words.

Words like “swale”: Roll it on your tongue. How round and beautiful it is. How it creates a resonance in the air. Swale. A low tract of land, a swale follows the contour line, and can catch water when it rains. Holding the rush of a monsoon shower, the swale in turn recharges underground water sources so that in the dry season, wells can remain refreshed. Swale. The thing is as magical as its name.

The name of that restoration project is “point Return.” The capitals are intentionally placed, intentionally withheld. The point, Sridharan says, is to return. To come back again and again to the places and the ideas that give us sustenance and hope, that are generative and regenerative in nature, that keep us going, that lead to a larger sense of who “we” are.

Story does this too. Thinking of story as cyclical in nature rather than linear, with a beginning, middle and end, changes everything. It stops me from rushing after answers, grabbing the first one that comes along. It allows me instead to live with questions.

I am happy to say that I have managed to make a career out of living with questions.

As I said, do read the rest of the article, in which Uma talks about her latest picture-book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! (illustrated by her near-namesake, Uma Krishnaswamy, Tulika Books, 2010), which certainly provides scope for lots of questions, and gives a tantalising look ahead at her forthcoming middle-grade novel The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum Books, due out 2011) – and then pay a visit to Uma’s wonderful blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk.