Following up on my post from last week, Mitali has graciously allowed us to share her blog post about the event here:

A thousand thanks to Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Ma and to my publisher Charlesbridge for hosting my Bamboo People book launch party. I always get nervous, so I greatly appreciated everybody who came and sent notes of encouragement from near and far. I’ve posted a few videos below, and here are some recaps from others who attended:
Charlesbridge, Walk the Ridgepole, Not Just For Kids, Britt Leigh’s Brain on Books, and The Papa Post

Arrived to find this gorgeous bamboo plant sent from Portland, Maine by Curious City’s Kirsten Cappy, Jamie Hogan (who illustrated my book Rickshaw Girl), Annie Sibley O’ Brien (After Gandhi), and King middle school librarian Kelley McDaniel. Thank you so much, ladies, for your love and support!

I loved watching people mingle and meet.

My buddy Deb Sloan is one of the best book cheerleaders on the planet.

Authors who write for adults don’t get love like this.

Porter Square bookseller Nathan exuded hospitality. Thank you! I’m holding the bamboo bookmark giveaways I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar.

Introducing the book

Reading an excerpt of BAMBOO PEOPLE

We are looking forward to the release of From North to South / Del Norte al Sur, by René Colate Laínez, due out in September by Children’s Book Press. René has written many children’s books about the immigrant experience, such as I am René and René Has Two Last Names, always drawing on his experience of coming to the United States, as an adolescent, from civil war–ravaged El Salvador (he arrived as an undocumented immigrant and is now a US citizen). From North to South deals with the issue of family separation, due to a parent’s precarious immigration status, from the perspective of child who, as is the case in these situations, has no say in it. With the immigration debate in the US being as heated as it is now, this is an important and very timely release.

Spanish speakers can see a video of René talking about the book here. I’ll be adding a link to our review of the book as soon as it’s live.

Our current Book of the Month is Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees by Deborah Ellis, which profiles the stories of 24 young Iraqi refugees, aged 8-19, told in their own words.

Two years ago, Save the Children Sweden and Inma Group South Lebanon worked with Iraqi refugee children in Lebanon to create short animated films. Read more about the project here and watch this video, which I found praticularly thought-provoking. The detailing is superb too – note the unhappy expression on the sun on the cover image…

It is a real privilege to welcome photographer and journalist Caroline Irby to the PaperTigers Blog to share some of the photographs from her recently published book A Child from Everywhere (Black Dog Publishing (UK), in association with Oxfam, 2010), in which she has brought together children from 185 countries now living in the UK. In itself it is quite an achievement, but what makes this project so very special is how Caroline has captured the children in her beautiful photographs, and how they then speak to us in their own words.

You can read an interview with Caroline in our current issue of PaperTigers, in which she talks about the project. Here, she gives us an idea of how widely she had to throw her net to track down children from so many countries. Enjoy these stunning photographs – and we’ll be bringing you more in a second post next month.

I called the Andorran Embassy in London and the Ambassador’s wife agreed to help… Andorra is a tiny country with few nationals living in the UK; it took a few months to find an Andorran child here.

An organisation called Education Leeds gave me the details of a few schools in multicultural areas. One of these yielded Akeilah.

I wanted to reflect the extent of the diaspora of the recent wave of immigration; I’d also never been to the Orkneys and was curious to see so I contacted the Orkney Isles Education Authority and they found me Juan.

The Dominica Embassy in London helped me to track down Alissa.

University postgraduate departments are home to many foreign students; Cardiff University put me in touch with this family from Egypt.

I got talking to someone at a Christmas party about this project; her daughter was at school with Elsabet…

The British army recruits soldiers from Fiji, amongst other countries. I knew of an army barrack in Tidworth village, Hampshire, and contacted the local school, who let me interview a couple of children.

A friend of mine living in Oxford has a daughter who goes to school with Aura…

I noticed a sign reading, ‘Ivoirien Computing and Community Centre’ outside a portacabin on an estate near my home. The man working at reception connected me with Inza’s family.

Cambridge Racial Equality and Diversity Service introduced me to a few recently-arrived children who they give English language support to. Moeko was one of them.

I contacted the Pacific Islands Society and they invited me to a party for Pacific Islanders in London. I met Isabella’s family there.

I’ve taken photographs for the NGO WaterAid a few times in Africa, and their head of photography in London offered to help with this project, knowing that some of their UK-based employees are from overseas. Alexander’s father, Anthony, came forward.

The Community of Malian Refugees introduced me to Oumou’s family, now living in London.

As Corinne wrote a couple of weeks ago, there is an exhibition of A Child from Everywhere now on in London – or do get hold of the book for yourself: not only for the actual photographs, but also to read the insightful, thought-provoking and sometimes funny observations the children make about their new and old homes. I can’t recommend it highly enough! Thank you, Caroline.

Today is Aug. 6, the anniversary date of the bombing of Hiroshima.  Shortly afterwards Japan surrendered.  In the wake of such catastrophic defeat, thousands of children were orphaned.  Kenji and the Cricket by Adele Wiseman, illustrated by Shizuye Takashima (Porcupine’s Quill, 1988)  is the story of such a war orphan.  Kenji is from Tokyo.  With no parents or place to live, he wanders the city alone, scrounging for food from fish markets and restaurants.  One summer evening, he discovers a cricket in the bushes in the park.  The soothing music of the insect comforts Kenji and he adopts him as a pet.  But where and how will he keep such a precious but fragile creature?  Kenji sets out with the cricket stuffed in his shirt, determined to find it a home.

Kenji and the Cricket is a little known classic of  Canadian children’s literature.  Written by the late Adele Wiseman in 1988, and illustrated by late Japanese Canadian artist, Shizuye Takashima (author of A Child in Prison Camp), the work is a collaboration by two well known Canadian women artists.   I don’t think I’d ever read anything about Japanese war orphans in English for children until I read this book.  Up until then my only knowledge of the plight of such children was through John Dower’s Pulitzer Prize winning historical analysis of Japan in the immediate post-war period Embracing Defeat published in 1999.  And also, there was a film by well known Japanese filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki called Grave of the Fireflies, which was also released in Japan in 1988 alongside his children’s blockbuster, My Neighbor Totoro.

If you’re looking for a book that describes the plight of war orphans, you might just look up Kenji and the Cricket.  Do you know of any good books that cover this topic for children?  Do recommend them to me and others by leaving a comment!

Our new issue of PaperTigers is now live. For the next two months our focus will be Refugee Children:

It is a horrifying, almost ungraspable fact that there are around 17 million children in the world today who are refugees. Perhaps, for many of us the only way to get our heads around these huge numbers, and to sense the real significance of those millions, is to allow individual stories to speak to our minds and hearts. In this issue we bring together authors and illustrators who are increasingly focusing on refugees in their work.

These are harrowing stories that will make readers weep – but they are also about children and for children, and sometimes by children: and so hope is also never far away. Sometimes, it is no more than a flicker but it is always there, a beacon for the future, seeking out a path to safety and a new life, away from fear, disaster and conflict…

We will also be highlighting books for young people about refugees here on our blog, and we do hope you will join in with our discussions of what can be overwhelming enough for adults and so difficult to explain to children.

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!

Founded in 2005, the Come Out and Play Festival is an annual festival of street games that happens in different neighborhoods of New York City. The goal of the event is to provide a forum for people to come together and play both traditional and new types of public games. For the past five years it has gone beyond classic street games like stick ball or kick the can to include games that use public space as gamespace and alter players’ perception of their environment. The 2010 installment of the festival happened from Jun 2-4 in Brooklyn, New York. I wish I had known about it in time to help spread the word, but… there’s always next year!

Among the variety of games they think up and bring to life every year are “pervasive games” that take gaming away from the computer screen and back to the three-dimensional world; urban games such as Parkour (see Sally’s recent post about it); GPS-enabled hide & seek, and much more.

While a good number of these games are for adults only, family-friendly ones abound and are clearly marked in the festival’s program. For instance, last year the game Hidden Parks invited kids to imagine what would happen if a group of property developers wanted to ruin Central Park and they had to save it, which meant the children had to assist the preservation efforts of the Magical Wildlife Protection Agency by trying to prove fairies and dragons live there. Hmm… I think author Tom O’Leary and his daughters would have enjoyed this one…

This year, children’s book author Linda Perkins (in her spare time she is a volunteer tutor at 826NYC) and research scientist Rachel Schutt designed and organized the first Paper Airplane Derby, where contestants of all sizes and ages competed in a level playing field.

Mixing old-fashioned fun with interactive games that connect technology to public spaces, this fun-filled and eye-opening festival shows that the reality of how and where we play and what play means to us is ever-evolving.

I hope all this talk about play is inspiring you and your children to go out and perform some random acts of fun!
http://www.comeoutandplay.org

For a list of books on imagination-powered playtime, you can check this annotated list of my personal favorites, or this one from Common Sense Media.

With this month’s issue of PaperTigers being all about play, I picked up a Canadian poetry book chock full of rhymes one can skip, clap, bounce a ball or do actions to.  The book is called Eenie Meenie Manitoba by Robert Heidbreder, illustrated by Scot Ritchie (Kids Can Press, 1996.)  I’ve featured one of Heidbreder’s other poetry books in a previous post, and was also at the same time, quite happy to discover this book!

Eenie Meenie Manitoba explores Canadian geography in such delightful rhyming poems as “Toronto-to-to,” “Horsing Around BC,” “On the Rideau,” and “Charlottetown Fishmongers.”  In this huge country with such wildly diverse landscapes, climates and cultures, it’s great to find a book that attempts to cover all the ‘bases’ so to speak!  Alongside some poems are directions on how to use the rhymes in play.  For example, to the poem “To Be, or Not To Be,” one can pull petals off of a daisy in the way people used to with the old  ’she loves me, she loves me not’ rhyme.  “Apple Me Dapple Me” is a good poem to bounce a ball to.  And for skipping, there’s “Nova Scotia Lobsters.”  The trick is to memorize the poem so one can use it in play.   Summer is a good time to try out these rhymes and get your kids and yourselves outside with a bit of rope and a ball.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Carol at Carol’s Corner.

In his Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, How Children Play Around the World, author Tom O’Leary describes how he recently learnt some important lessons from his daughters…

Tom is the author of RetroActive: Skip, Hop and You Don’t Stop: Games We Played (BookSurge Publishing, 2009) and also has a great blog – Games We Played – so, I have to say, it was kind of reassuring, as a parent, to read his article – but also inspiring. I really urge you to read it all the way through – it did make me chuckle; and I’m going to quote the inspiring bit here:

The participation in natural, unstructured and creative childhood play teaches our children more than any coach ever could:

In play, children learn how to resolve conflict through compromise
The simplicity of “do-over” as a method of balancing two opposing opinions during play could be a lesson for many corporate and political quarrels.

In play, children learn how to be fair
The process of selecting “It” is based on pure objectivity.

In play, children learn how to be tolerant
They learn that no player is too small, too slow or too awkward to be included in the game.

In play, children learn to adapt
Rules are introduced or adapted as needed to ensure an even playing field, or to increase the challenge for skilled players.

In play, children learn teamwork
Making a human chain in jail to give our remaining teammates a better chance to free us demonstrates our unity.

In play, children learn to trust
There is no greater ally than your playing partner.

In play, children learn to take chances
Is it possible to make it to the other side if I run now?

In play, children learn to laugh and not take themselves too seriously
It’s just a game, after all.

And in the perfect imperfection of unstructured, creative play, children are reminded of the most important thing: that they are children and that play is fun, just like it should be.

How about that as something to print out and stick on the fridge? It is so great to be reminded of this, and particularly timely for me now, as soon my two will be winding down for their school holidays. Here’s hoping it will be one they look back on as an endless summer spent playing out of doors…

Thank you, Tom, for your great Personal View.