We’re keeping it simple,  as it would be great for libraries and schools, as well as parents, as well as book bloggers and grown-up children’s book afficionados, to take part. The number of books and the flexible time span mean that it could be incorporated into a school reading program or a storytime slot, for example.  The one major addition is to include a work in translation, otherwise it’s running pretty much along the same lines as last year.  Here’s how it works:

1. Read a total of seven books.

2. Choose six books from/about/by or illustrated by someone from different countries anywhere in the world, three of which must be in different continents, and at least one of which must be translated from another language.

3. Choose one book from/about your city/district – as local and as relevant to your geographical setting as you can find.

4. You should choose at least one book of each of the following categories: fiction, poetry and non-fiction.

5. Have the books read aloud to you or read them yourself; share them as part of a book-group or in class. Read them in books, on an e-reader, or listen to audio-books. Combine your choices with other reading challenges.

6. There is no time limit for the reading the World Challenge, apart from completing it by the end of the year.

You can sign up to the Challenge in the Comments to this post. Do come back and tell us what books you’ve read. Writing reviews is not a necessary part of the Challenge, but if you do post any, we love to read them so do leave a link to them too, and I’ll also incorporate them into the updates I write through the year.

If you’re looking for ideas, you’ll find lots in the PaperTigers Reviews and Reading Lists sections, as well as in many of our Personal Views – or do let us know your own suggestions.  Let’s try and generate a list of picture, MG and YA books translated into English too…  And do feel free to pick up our gorgeous button from the sidebar too; or if you’d like me to send you the code, email me, marjorieATpapertigersDOTorg.  Here’s to another year of exciting reading!

So did we complete it – yes, by the skin of our teeth! Older Brother spent a couple of hours on Saturday finishing off Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (The Young Reader’s Edition adapted by Sarah Thomson, Puffin Books, 2009). It was clear that it had a profound effect on him by the way, all the way through reading it, he would tell us about different parts of the book at mealtimes; and he was much struck by the interview with Mortenson’s daughter Amira and her involvement in the project.

The other two books he read to complete the Challenge were Secret Heart by David Almond; and Bird by Zetta Elliott, illustrated by Shadra Strickland (Lee & Low Books, 2008). He was moved by both of them. Secret Heart was ultimately uplifting but Bird made him “really sad”. When I asked what it made him think about drugs, he said, “I don’t know how to explain or describe it, but NO!” A fairly incoherent but nevertheless eloquent response.

Younger Brother combined his local and non-fiction criteria into one book, The Dinosaur Coast by Roger Osborne and Alistair Bowden, and published by the North York Moors National Park Authority (2000). For his poetry book, we have read together Where the Steps Were by Andrea Cheng (Wordsong, 2008). I have blogged about this wonderful book before – suffice to say here that Little Brother was captivated. In general, he is very much drawn to the conciseness of poetry, and he became very caught up in the narrative here – the blend of history, the relevance of that history to the children, and the children’s individual concerns. He managed to keep tabs on each child’s voice much better than I did!

Our last two books for reading all together were Children of the World by Anthony Asael and Stéphanie Rabemiafara (Art in All of Us / Universe Publishing, 2011) and the third of Susanne Gervay’s Jack Books, Always Jack (HarperCollins Australia, 2010).

We have so enjoyed dipping into Children of the World, which was PaperTigers’ Book of the Month in November. We have looked up countries at random, picked countries out of the air, looked through for places we’ve never heard of – and in all cases, the boys have found the pictures and poetry written mostly by children around their age to be inspirational. We’ve also had some interesting discussions about making generalisations, particularly arising from the last two of the three sentences under the title banner – “We eat…”, and “We play…”, and particularly with reference to the UK pages!

Always Jack was another great read. We loved the previous two books in the series, especially I Am Jack, so our expectations were high and we were not disappointed. Jack himself is, as ever, a well-rounded blend of confidence and insecurity, determined to get the last word with one of his (usually) funny jokes. Several highly charged themes run through the book, including cancer (Jack’s mother), dementia (his Nan), and the Vietnam War (through Jack and his best friend Christopher’s joint school project into their family histories). The book made us laugh; it made us sad (and me cry); and it made us think. Both my boys empathised with Jack every step of the way and were delighted when his Mum’s wedding to Rob went ahead – not only because it meant she had won that particular battle against cancer, but also becasue it signified an end to all that mum, sister and best-friend Anna stuff of taking months to decide what to wear etc! Always Jack is an enjoyable, easy read and the book will be a very useful tool to give to children who may be going through similar experiences in their families. It also highlights the importance of keeping the channels of communication open, in the case of illness in a family, or indeed of creating those channels between generations in the first place. In Always Jack, Christopher’s parents had never before spoken to him about their journey from Vietnam for a new home in Australia; for his mother especially it had been too traumatic. Jack himself did not know the story behind his grandfather’s medals. By entrusting these stories to the younger generation, family ties were tightened and wounds had a chance to heal. So yes, Susanne has done it again. All thre of us wholeheartedly recommend Always Jack and just wish there could be more.

And what about other participants in the Challenge? Sandhya over at My Handful of the Sky has completed it, both on her own account and with her daughter. You can follow links to her posts on all the books they read in her round-up post here – definitely worth delving into.

If you took part in the Challenge, do let us know how you got on, if you haven’t already – and look out for the post (imminent) for the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge 2012.

Together, we have read two new autobiographical picture books: Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory (Scholastic, 2011) and Ed Young’s The House Baba Built (Little, Brown and Company, 2011) – both wonderful, and I’m not going to say much more about them here as we will be featuring both of them more fully on PaperTigers soon. Those are our reading-together non-fiction books for the Challenge.

As our local book, we tried reading a book of folk tales from the North York Moors, where we live in the UK, but discovered the stories formed part of a tourist guide, including instructions for getting around… we extracted what we could but it wasn’t a very satisfactory read. It has made us not take beautifully illustrated and retold folk tales for granted!

Older Brother has read Rainbow World: Poems from Many Cultures edited by Bashabi Fraser and Debjani Chatterjee , and illustrated by Kelly Waldek (Hodder Children’s Books, 2003).  He dipped in and out of it through the summer break and we had to renew it from the library several times…

Older Brother has also been totally captivated by A Thousand Cranes: Origami Projects for Peace and Happiness. After reading the story of Sadako for the Reading Challenge way back in its first year, he’s wanted to know how to make the cranes but I have two left hands when it comes to origami – or at least I thought I did, until I received a review copy of A Thousand Cranes from Stone Bridge Press.  Recently revised and expanded from the original book by renowned origami expert Florence Temko, it’s a super little book, with good clear instructions for beginners like us, and giving background about both the offering of a thousand origami cranes as a symbol of longevity, and specifically the story of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.  Older Brother, now that he is older, enjoyed reading this factual account here, and learning more about the Peace Park in Hiroshima.  He is now determined to make a string of 1,000 cranes himself and send them to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial: full details of how to do this are included in the book.  There are also lots of ideas for other craft projects, though I’m not sure any of us is quite up to making anything like the amazing example shown of pictures made with 1,001 cranes as wedding gifts.  But with such clear instructions, the only difficulty now is choosing which of the 48 pieces of beautiful Japanese chiyogami paper included to make the next crane with…  And we’re thinking of taking up the book’s suggestion of encouraging our local community to create a string of 1,000 cranes together.

Over the last few months, Little Brother has probably read more than all of us put together, but for the purposes of the Reading Challenge, he has read the Spirit of PaperTigers book set as one item on his Challenge list.  He loved Biblioburro, and then finding out more about the library via internet videos etc;  A Child’s Garden has touched him profoundly; and he has read and reread as many of James Rumford’s books as he can lay his hands on, thanks to Rain School.

He has also read Manolito Four-Eyes by Elvira Lindo, illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga and translated by Joanne Moriarty (Marshall Cavendish, 2008).  Here’s what he say about it:

Manolito Four-Eyes is ten years old and he lives in Carabanchel, Madrid, Spain. He says that he wouldn’t manage to write about the first ten years of his life in the next ninety! He’s always falling out with his best friend Big Ears López. Manolito says he can sometimes be a dog or a traitor and sometimes a dog-traitor. He eventually makes friend with Ozzy the school bully.

My favorite bit was in the chapter called “A Pretty Original Sin”, when Manolito and his grandfather meet a mugger who turns out to be from Grandpa’s village.

Manolito Four-Eyes is extrememly funny and if you like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you’ll enjoy this too.

I, meanwhile, have read what I realise is my third non-fiction book  set in the Second World War: The Zoo-Keeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, based on the journals kept by the wife of the head of Warsaw zoo before and during the war.  It’s beautifully written and a very powerful read – shocking and terrifying, and intensely moving.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I’ve also included Uma Krishnaswami’s glorious The Grand Plan to Fix Everything as one of my books – I loved it, and if you missed my interview with Uma as part of her blog tour when the book came out in May, you can read it here.

Uma has herself signed up for The Reading the World Challenge – you can read  her book list here on her own blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk, and why she chose some of them here, in a great Guest Post Uma wrote over at The Brain Lair about being a book traveller or a book tourist …

And Sandhya over at My Handful of the Sky has posted about the books she has read with her daughter: Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine as their non-fiction book, and Oranges in No Man’s Land by Elizabeth Laird, set in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war.  Sandhya has scooped the non-fiction, poetry and local categories of the challenge into one book for her own read, A Poem for CRY - CRY being the non-profit Child Rights and You.

If you are taking part in the Challenge (and there is still probably just about time to squeeze it in before the end of the year, if you haven’t started yet!), do tell us what books you’ve read and leave a link to any posts you write about them.

As well as Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I blogged about last week, we have read Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord together, an exciting read from beginning to end. It’s the story of two German boys Prosper and Bo, who, after the death of their mother, run away from the aunt who wants to give a home only to the younger Bo. They go to Venice, because their mother filled them with stories of the city’s magic, and there they end up living in an abandoned cinema with some other stray children, under the protection of Scipio aka the Thief Lord, who is not much older than them. They find plenty of adventure and magic of their own, not to mention a certain amount of disaster and worry, before the story reaches its ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Bedtimes stretched out as we found it harder and harder to put the book down, and it was just as well we reached the school holidays about 80 pages before the end, because we were then able to swallow the last eleven chapters whole in one wonderful morning!

Little Brother (10) has read his non-fiction selection: three of the books in Fifth House Publishers/Fitzhenry and Whiteside’s wonderful The Land is Our Storybook series. Here’s what he says about them:

We Feel Good Out Here by Julie-Ann André and Mindy Willett, Photographs by Tessa Macintosh (2008):

I liked the story about how Atachuunkaii, the man in the canoe tricked a giant called Ch’ii Choo.

The Delta is My Home by Tom McLeod and Mindy Willett, photographs by Tessa Macintosh (2008):

I enjoyed the bit about the muskrat push ups – it was really interesting and I liked the pictures because they were funny – and impressive because Tom McLeod drew them himself.

Come and Learn With Me by Sheyenne Jumbo and Mandy Willett, photographs by Tessa MacIntosh (2010):

I liked the “Clean Socks” story about Ashley and Selena, who was her mum. Sheyenne wrote it – I haven’t read Robert Munsch’s book called Smelly Socks, which is actually what inspired her – but her story is about new socks – also because she can’t get socks where she lives.

All in all:

These are amazing books. They help me to see what is going on in other children’s lives in the far north of Canada, beyond the Arctic Circle and I think it’s amazing that nearly all the books are written by children. I enjoyed finding out some of the stories they have, like the trickster ravens. I’d like to make bannocks and go kayaking but I wouldn’t like to have to prepare muskrat skins or have to get on a plane to go to town. I’m glad there are no Residential Schools anymore.

Meanwhile Older Brother (12) has been doing some catching up and has read Thunder Over Kandahar by Sharon E. McKay (Annick Press, 2010), which is about two girls caught up in the “terror and chaos of present-day Afghanistan”:

In Thunder Over Kandahar there is reality and evil. There were some parts that really, really moved me. It’s about Yasmine, who’s from England but her parents came from Afghanistan and they’ve all moved back there, and her friend Tamanna. The Taliban are after them. At one point there’s a suicide bomber. The book really brings to life the utter horror of war and also how love and friendship are greater than that.

I can vouch for how gripped he was by the book, since from the moment he started reading it, we hardly saw him until he emerged from his room at the end of it. I think first off he was attracted by the three choppers on the cover and wasn’t really expecting the realistic depiction of life for two girls under the Taliban that accompanied what was obviously a very exciting read. The book has made a deep impression and he has persuaded me that I must read it. I will certainly do so; in the meantime, I just think it’s great that he has been so affected by a story about girls – all kudos to Sharon E. McKay.

He has also read Linda Sue Park’s The Kite Fighters (Clarion Books, 2000/Yearling, 2002):

I loved this book! Set in Korea in 1473, it’s about a younger brother, Young-sup, who wasn’t allowed to speak his own mind. He meets the king and shows him his kite-flying skills. The king asks Kee-sup, the older brother, to make a kite for him. I loved this story because it’s about brothers who stand together and help each other. It’s a very happy story.

And what about news about the Challenge from around the world?

Sandhya over at My Handful of the Sky has posted about her own read, or rather reads – Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and two follow-up novels, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley and Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig; and also the book she has shared with her daughter – Ramayana: Divine Loophole by Sanjay Patel (Chronicle Books, 2010). Sandhya makes some astute observations about the particular value of the book as an introduction to the Ramayana for children not brought up with Indian folklore – do read her review.

Those amazing bloggers over at Gathering Books have completed the Challenge. Myra’s posts are an absolute treat – if you missed either of them when they first went live, take the time to explore them now: Suzy Lee’s wordless picture books, and “Dual Tastes of Morocco and Sydney: Mirror by Jeannie Baker”. And for their non-fiction and local book, Mary introduces us to Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo, and most specifically his book Dirty Dancing: Looking Back 2. Mary’s post has made me realise what a bonus it is for everyone else that one of this year’s Challenge books has to be a local book – a little bit of insider knowledge certainly opens up possibilities for the rest of us!

For my own books in the Challenge, I’ve read Torn Apart by Derek Flory (Mainstream, 2008), a moving, true story with its roots in Burma at the outbreak of the Second World War, about two sisters reunited after 65 years of separation; and A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal (Profile Books, 2009), a stunning, humbling, inspirational book that wrung me inside out.

It’s certainly not too late to take up our PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge 2011 – in fact, with long summer vacations around the corner for many children, and even short, winter holidays for others, now could be the ideal time to start! And don’t forget to let us know about the books you’ve read.

But back to the story. We both adored it. I was practically tied down at bedtimes and made to read on. For any child (or adult) who loves words and playing with language and ideas, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Haroun’s father, the Shah of Blah, has lost his story-telling Gift of the Gab because his wife has left him. Haroun, who has become a little jaded with his father’s focus on fiction himself, soon finds himself in possession of Iff, a Water Genie’s Disconnector and spinning into a spiral of adventures. He discovers that stories are physically real and that the balance of human happiness is being threatened because the menacing land of Chup, where it is always night, is poisoning the Sea of Stories, despite all the attempts to keep it clean by the happy land of Gup across the water, where it is always light…

Haroun meets a wonderful array of characters – as well as Iff, there is Butt, the oxymoronically magical mechanical hoopoe depicted on the book’s cover; Bagha and Goopy, two of the plentimaw fishes who swim in the sea (don’t you just love it?!), Mali the Head Floating Gardener, and many more – and of course, there are also the often shadowy baddies, led by the terrifying Khattam-Shud. Despite all the P2C2E, Processes Too Complicated To Explain (I told you you’d love it!), Haroun finds a way to help his new friends, and in so doing restores the balance of happiness to his own life.

Yes, this is definitely one of the most wonderful readalouds we’ve shared. The prose is like poetry – you almost chew the words. We relished the huge, unanswerable questions that the book explores – what is Reality? What is Story? Who is that character, that person… who am I? – as well as the allegories of light and darkness (which make this so relevant to an adult as well as a young audience), environmental responsibility and empathy. And we revelled in each little bit of wordplay, from character names to gleeful patter.

If your child enjoys stories of worlds within worlds, like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, or the Harry Potter series, they will love Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

In our family we have all joined together and read picture books set in Mongolia, which is our current focus on PaperTigers. I had to hunt around a bit but we came up with a good selection. I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail here as they are all gathered up in my Personal View, Taking a step into children’s books about Mongolia. We have really enjoyed delving into the culture and heritage of Mongolia and these picture books have been read all together and individually.

One bedtime Older Brother read Horse Song: the Naadam of Mongolia by Ted and Betsy Lewin (Lee and Low, 2008) to Little Brother – quite a long read and they were both engrossed. Watching them from the outside, as it were, I came to an added appreciation of the dynamics of Ted and Betsy’s collaboration, both in the energy of their shared enthusiasm and participation in the events surrounding the famous horse-race, and also of being struck by a busy, crowded scene one page and then giggling at the turn of expression on an individual study’s face the next.

And I’ll just share with you Little Brother’s reaction to Suho’s White Horse, which you can read about in a bit more detail in my Books at Bedtime post earlier this week:

It was a moving story. The governor made me angry because he broke his word and was cruel to Suho and his horse.
[Listening to the musical version played on the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, the morin khuur] Once you know the story, you can tell which part of the music is telling which part of the story. How do they make that music with just two strings? It fills me with awe.

I also read The Horse Boy: A Father’s Miraculous Journey to Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson (Viking, 2009), an amazing story of a family’s journey to Mongolia in search of horses and shamans to seek healing for the torments that were gripping their five-year-old autistic son’s life: as Isaacson puts it with great dignity, his “emotional and physical incontinence”. If you have already read this humbling, inspiring book (and even if you haven’t), take a look at this recent interview three years on from their adventurous journey. Now I need to see the film!

And talking of films (which we don’t very often on PaperTigers, but I can’t resist mentioning this one), The Story of the Weeping Camel is a beautiful, gentle film that takes you right to the heart of Mongolian life on the steppe. Who would have thought a documentary film about a camel could be so like watching a fairy tale? Don’t be put off by the subtitles – our boys love this film. Take a look at the trailer -

But now it’s time to leave Mongolia and find out what everyone else has been reading…

Sandhya, who blogs eloquently at My Handful of the Sky has re-read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time since she was a teenager – and her post makes me think I should do the same.

Sandhya is also doing the Challenge with her daughter A. and together they have read two books. Firstly The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean, a formidable partnership: read Sandhya’s great post here. And secondly, from India and as their non-fiction book, Aajoba – My Grandfather by Taruja Parande (Tulika Books, 2010): read her beautiful review here, following on from her celebrating fifteen years of Tulika Books.

Myra at Gathering Books, who was raring to go with the Challenge is already nearly half way through reading the world (well on the PaperTigers Challenge anyway!) – she started off, during Black History Month, with Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou and illustrated by Jean-Michel Basquiat, as a poetry book from North America. Although I have read Maya Angelou’s autobiographies, I didn’t know about this book and wow – I have to get hold of it! The art-work, some of which you can see in Myra’s wonderful post is astonishing.

Book Number 2 is actually two books reviewed together in her post Of Vanishing Villages and Round and Square Houses: A 2-in-1 Ann Grifalconi Special – and again, I have to thank Myra for introducing me to two very special picture books, both written (and the second one illustrated) by Ann Grifalconi, which she says embrace “the magic of storytelling and weaving words together that makes one’s eyes close and one’s heart open”: The Village that Vanished illustrated by Kadir Nelson (set among the Yao people, east of Lake Malawi) and The Village of Round and Square Houses (set in the Cameroons).

And Book Number 3 is a gorgeous, wordless picture book by Chilean author/illustrator Fernando Krahn – The Self-Made Snowman – read Myra’s in-dpeth review here.

Zarah over at School Librarian in Action has read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows – read her insightful review here.

Amy at Delightful Children’s Books has posted lists of 10 Books About Children From Around the World and her children’s top 10 books about South America – if you’re looking for inspiration, you’ll definitely find it there, especially non-fiction; and she has also just posted a list of educational resources for reading around the world…

If you haven’t joined us yet, then please do – it’s so great to be joined by friends around the world. Remember there’s no time limit in this year’s Reading the World Challenge, apart from completing it by the end of the year – and that’s lots of books away yet! I’ve also tried to make it so that it could fit in with school programs – so how about getting your class involved if your in school? If any children would like to contribute their responses to books, we’d love to feature it too. For details, read this year’s introductory post…

Now on to the next book – Happy Reading!

The Challenge for the last two years has revolved around geographical boundaries, as is perhaps to be expected of a World focused challenge – however, following deep consultation with Little Brother (9), we have come up with an extra geographical consideration this year. We have also decided to make the time factor as flexible as possible, in the hope that some teachers/librarians might be tempted to engage children in the Challenge during school term time. So without further ado, we present the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge 2011:

1. Choose six books from/about/by or illustrated by someone from different countries anywhere in the world, 3 of which must be in different continents.

2. Choose one book from/about your city/district – as local and as relevant to your geographical setting as you can find.

3. You should choose at least one book of each of the following: fiction, poetry and non-fiction.

4. Have the books read aloud to you or read them yourself; share them as part of a book-group or in class. Combine your choices with other reading challenges.

5. There is no time limit for this year’s Challenge, apart from completing it by the end of the year.

Do join us, and keep us posted as to how you’re doing – we love reading all your posts. You can find lots of ideas in the PaperTigers Reviews and Reading Lists sections, as well as in many of our Personal Views – or do let us know your own suggestions.

Happy Reading!

And P.S. If anyone would like the code for adding the button to their blog, please email me – marjorie(at)papertigers(dot)org.

Here are details of the rest of the books we all read (you’ll have to go back to here, here and here to find out the first ones…)

Together we read Goodbye Buffalo Bay by Larry Loyie with Constance Brissenden (Theytus Books, 2008). Even though I’d read it before, it was very hard to keep my composure for some of this traumatic but ultimately uplifting story, all the more engaging because it is both autobiographical and narrated in “Lawrence’s” engaging teenage voice. The first half of the book deals with Lawrence’s last year at a Residential School for First Nation children in Canada; and the second part is about how Lawrence then sets about finding himself again after leaving. It was the first time my two had become aware of residential schools and it provoked a lot of discussion about the treatment of First Nation people both in Canada and elsewhere. And as well as the ethical discussion, there was also plenty to talk about as regards Lawrence’s actual, individual experience. We all loathed Sister and we loved Sister Theresa. Then later, Lawrence’s different itinerant jobs, such as firefighting and working at a sawmill, were heroic in the boys’ eyes, and they were delighted at the end that his ambition to become a writer had so obviously come to fruition. We all of us cannot recommend this beautifully written story highly enough – and I would say that it would be a perfect book for reluctant readers, boys especially, as it is fairly short and succinct.

We also read and enjoyed Golden Tales: Myths, Legends, and Folktales from Latin America by Lulu Delacre (Scholastic, 2006) and Myths and Legends of Aotearoa, which I blogged about recently; and Little Brother and I read together the powerful and moving Grandfather’s Story Cloth/ Yawg Daim Paj Ntaub Dab Neegwritten by Linda Gerdner and Sarah Langford, illustrated by Stuart Loughridge (Shen Books, 2008).

Older Brother and Little Brother both read Señor Cat’s Romance: and Other Favorite Stories from Latin America by Lucia Gonzalez and Lulu Delacre, as I mentioned here. Older Brother is just coming to the end of Where in the World by Simon French (Little Hare, 2002); Little Brother read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (First Second Books, 2006), filched from Older Brother, and he’s still quoting it; The Rabbits by John Marsden, illustrated by Shaun Tan; and Animal Poems of the Iguazu by Francisco X. Alarcón, illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez (Children’s Book Press, 2008).

So we were very nearly there in terms of reading – it was the time limit that really got us. Let’s see how we do this year. I’ll be posting details of the 2011 Reading the World Challenge soon…

And very well done to all of you who managed to complete it; I hope you’ll be joining us again – and it would also be great for readers to persuade the young people in their lives to take part. The 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers book set would definitely make a great springboard – and there’s still a chance for you to win one in our 1,000th Post Draw taking place next week. The deadline is Wednesday 19th January and you’ll find full details here.

PaperTigers’ current issue, focusing on children’s literature from India and the Indian diaspora, features personal view pieces by Saffron Tree contributors’ UTBT (Anitha Rumkumar) and Choxbox (Namrata), about Anushka Ravishankar’s books and a young readers’ series on Indian history, respectively. Check them out, on PaperTigers and at their blog! We are big fans of Saffron Tree, and all their talented and passionate contributors, and highly recommend it as a source of excellent multicultural reading material.

Poster artwork by Lavanya Karthik

Together we read The Amazing Tree by John Kilaka (North-South Books, 2009). It had captured my imagination when we met John at the Bologna Book Fair and, indeed, we all enjoyed this fable, which demands a certain amount of audience participation. The story is about how the animals are hungry and there’s only one tree that has fruit on it – but the animals can’t get at the fruit. Rabbit has what they all agree is an “excellent idea”, to go and ask wise Tortoise. Only, they won’t let her go as she’s too small. A succession of delegates chosen from among the larger animals fails to return with the simple answer that wise tortoise gives them, and in the end, Rabbit herself goes and is, of course, successful. We absolutely agreed that they should have managed the task, which was to “call the tree by its name” – but we could also empathise with the animals as we had some difficulty in remembering the Kiswahili name ourselves, although we certainly had it off pat by the end of the story.

John Kilaka originally collected the story from the Fipa tribe of southwest Tanzania and translated it into Kiswahili; his son Kilaka Kenny then translated it into English, ready to be adapted by North-South books. The story is narrated with verve and a freshness about the dialogue that make it a great readaloud. However, what really had us riveted were the illustrations. John Kilaka has developed his own style that combines bright colors and traditional patterns. The animals were intriguing not just because they were dressed in clothes, but because the shapes under the clothes were distinctly anthropomorphic, so that the illustrations make you do a double-take. We enjoyed John Kilaka’s thought-provoking afterword too, where he talks about “Collecting African Stories”.

Little Brother (9½) read Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Sarah Young (HarperCollins, 2009):

When Will’s father dies, his grandmother thinks he and his mother need a holiday so they go to Indonesia for Christmas, where his mother’s family comes from. But it’s 2004, and on Boxing Day the Tsunami struck. Oona, an elephant, stampeded up the beach into the jungle away from the tsunami’s dangers into the jungle’s with Will on her back. With only Oona to help him, Will must survive in the jungle, where he saves some orangutans from hunters who also capture him, and meets other jungle animals: not all of them ones you’d like to encounter. Will Will survive?

Running Wild is an excellent book. I loved the story and I liked the idea of Will being able to communicate with Oona, as they seem to understand each other. I thought that when the odd picture turned up, the style suited the story and I liked how they were simple but detailed at the same time. Michael Morpurgo makes what living in the jungle would do to you very lifelike. There are some moments which are essential in the plot, which show why so many animals are endangered by human causes.

And Older Brother (just turned 12) read Hazel Edwards‘ Antarctica’s Frozen Chosen (which she talks about in her interview with PaperTigers):

Antarctica’s Frozen Chosen is about a man called Kyle who goes to Antarctica to research eles (elephant seals) on an Australian base. Actually, the ship gets stuck in ice so they never get there. They see some poachers who are after rare fish to sell and then some other bad things start happening – but that’s for you to find out…

I really enjoyed Antarctica’s Frozen Chosen because although I found it quite hard going at the beginning and I didn’t think I was going to like it, I soon got into it and by the end, I couldn’t put it down.