Holly Thompson (Japan/USA)

Holly Thompson was raised in New England and is a longtime resident of Japan. Her verse novel Orchards (Delacorte/Random House) won the 2012 APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and is a YALSA 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults title. She recently edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press), and her next verse novel The Language Inside (Delacorte/Random House) will be published in 2013. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers was selected by the National Council for the Social Studies in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council as ‘A Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2009′. Holly teaches creative writing at Yokohama City University and serves as the regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Visit her website: www.hatbooks.com

Tarie Sabido (Philippines)

Tarie is a lecturer of writing and literature in the Philippines and blogs about children’s and young adult literature at Into the Wardrobe and Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind. She is also on the staff of Color Online, a blog about women writers of color for children, young adults and adults. Tarie was a judge for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (CYBILS) and the 2010 Philippine National Children’s Book Awards. At the 2010 Asian Festival of Children’s Content, Tarie and I joined Dr. Myra Garces-Bacsal in the panel discussion Building a Nation of Readers via Web 2.0: An Introduction to the Kidlitosphere and the YA Blogsphere.

René Colato Laínez (El Salvador/USA)

René Colato Laínez was born in El Salvador. At the age of fourteen he moved to the United States, where he later completed the MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults at the Vermont College. René is the author of I Am René, the Boy, Waiting for Papá, Playing Lotería, René Has Two Last Names and The Tooth Fairy Meets El Ratón Pérez. His picture books have been honored by the Latino Book Award, the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, the California Collection for Elementary Readers, the Tejas Star Book Award Selection, the New Mexico Book Award and he was named “Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)” by latinostories.com. His goal as a writer is “to produce good multicultural children’s literature; stories where minority children are portrayed in a positive way, where they can see themselves as heroes, and where they can dream and have hopes for the future. I want to write authentic stories of Latin American children living in the United States.” Read our 2006 interview with René here.

Interviews with:

Dutch photographer Taco Anema who tells us all about his project that took him around the world photographing children and water and resulted in his beautiful book Tales of Water.

Acclaimed author Linda Sue Park who talks with us about her award-winning book A Long Walk to Water.

The Illustrators’ Gallery which features the work of :

Acclaimed Indian artist Pulak Biswas.

Chinese artist Li Jian.

Water illustrations selected from previous PaperTigers Gallery features.

Personal Views:

A River of Stories: Water-Themed Stories for Multicultural Readers by Alice Curry (who we had a lovely chance meeting with at the 2012 Bologna Children’s Book Fair)

My Water Story by Deepa Balsavar

Book of the Month:

One Arm Point Remote Community School,
Our World: Bardi Jaawi, Life at Ardiyooloon
Magabala Books, 2010.

A stunning, encyclopaedic book put together by the children from the One Arm Point Remote Community School at Ardiyooloon in Western Australia, along with their School Culture Team, School Staff, and Community Elders, as well as others from the local community.

Be sure also to pay a visit to the PaperTigers Outreach site and find out all about our Spirit of PaperTigers project, seeking to further our goal of fostering empathy, understanding and peace, by focusing on books and water as ways of promoting education, literacy and development.

Ages: 12+

Arctic Giants is part anthropology, folklore, and story-telling.  It tells of mythical beings – races of giants – long present in the Inuit world.  Drawing from research in archives, explorer accounts, and interviews with elders, author Neil Christopher has assembled a comprehensive array of stories and accounts of various kinds of giants that inhabit the Arctic regions.  The giants can generally be divided into two groups – the lesser giants and the greater giants.  The greater giants, known as Inukpasugjuit, are of massive scale in size and strength.  Giants of this size fish for whales like catfish, affect the weather, and can alter the landscape with their girth and might.  The lesser giants – the Inugaruligasugjuit – are considerably smaller in size but are still larger and mightier than humans. They are sometimes cannibalistic and prey on humans.

Arctic Giants is divided into two main sections covering stories of the lesser giants and the greater giants.  These fantastical and magical beings are illustrated in comic-book style by Eva Widermann.  She does excellent renderings of the giants in the Arctic landscape, wearing typical Inuit clothing such as the amauti (the traditional cape) and parkas made of animal skins.  It’s always fun to find the little human in some of the illustrations, either perched on a giant’s shoulder or sitting on his palm, or hiding behind a boulder.  Since some of these giants are cannibals, they are often terrifyingly depicted with human skull necklaces and pupil-less eyes, or as one grisly illustration would have it, feasting on human limbs.  So, a warning:  this is not a book for the faint-hearted!  I’m sure there’s much ink to be spilled on the psychological and spiritual implications of these beings who live side-by-side with humans in the largely inhospitable and severe terrain of the Arctic, but this book’s purpose is to introduce to the reader a certain pantheon of super-beings that have existed in the Inuit imagination for centuries.  For anyone interested in Inuit folklore and ethnography, Arctic Giants makes for an informative and entertaining study.  And for lovers of comic book heroes and villains, this is a new go-to book for inspiration!

Sally Ito
May 2012

Ages 5-8

Every child knows that feeling of disappointment. Those wild hopes and dreams stirred by the sight of some toy or object spotted on a store shelf or in the hands of a classmate – the toy or object so desperately wanted – but which remains behind on store shelves as parents choose the option that is practical, functional, or affordable. Rubber Shoes tells this age-old tale that crosses cultural lines through the bilingual story of the spirited Gladys Elizabeth, who comes to learn that sometimes even the things we do not value have value beyond that we originally see.

When Gladys’ mother tells her they are going to buy her new shoes, Gladys dreams of what may come. “Maybe I’ll get shiny black shoes like Marilyn Jane … or ..sparkly white sandals like Nicky’s … or ruby red slippers like Dorothy’s…” But her mother crushes her hopes when she buys Gladys the “ugliest shoes in the world,” brown rubber ones that will not get lost or destroyed, no matter what Gladys tries.

But like Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy in Little Women, an encounter with another child less fortunate then her helps Gladys eventually come to see the brown rubber shoes in a new light, one that makes her realize that perhaps there is more value in the shoes than originally realized. Written in English and Spanish by first-grade teacher Gladys Elizabeth Barbieri, Rubber Shoes tells a somewhat well-worn tale of gratitude, although one worth repeating. Wordiness and some bumps in plot timing point to the author’s first-time author status, but she nonetheless delivers an important, if cliched, message about gratitude for all we have, rather than discontent about that which we don’t.

Sara Hudson
May 2012

During TD Canadian Children’s Book Week twenty-nine English-speaking and five Francophone authors, illustrators and storytellers are visiting schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres in every province and territory across the country. In addition to the tour participants’ websites and blogs be sure to check out the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Facebook page to see the latest news, press clippings and pictures from the tour.

TD Canadian Children’s Book Week is organized by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, in partnership with the Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada, and is made possible through the generous support of sponsors and funders.

Asian Festival of Children’s Content Announces 2 Asian Book Awards

Asian Content for the World’s Children

 Singapore, 27 April 2012– Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) 2012 announces two Asian Book Awards, Scholastic Asian Book Award and SingTel Picture Book Award.

The Scholastic Asian Book Award is a joint initiative of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) and Scholastic Asia to recognise excellence in Asian children’s fiction. In its 2nd edition, this award showcases the diversity of literary talent within Asia and inspires more Asian-themed books and stories.

The winning manuscript will receive a prize of S$10,000 at the award presentation ceremony on 29 May 2012 during this Festival. It will also be considered for publication by Scholastic Asia. The four nominations for the Scholastic Asian Book Award (SABA) 2012 are, Bungee Cord Hair by Ching Yeung Russell (US), Double Take by Katherine Seow (Singapore), Hidden in Plain Sight by Ang Su-Lin (Singapore) and The Locked Up Boy by  Pauline Loh Tuan Lee (Singapore).

The judges for the SABA 2012 are, Chief Judge Nury Vittachi (Hong Kong), Ken Spillman (Australia), Helen McAleer (United Kingdom), Sayoni Basu (India) and Naomi Kojima (Japan).

In 2011, the winning manuscript was from Uma Krishnaswami, titled, ‘Book Uncle and Me’. Uma will be giving a talk during the Parents’ Forum on ‘Using Multicultural Books to Teach Your Child About the World We Live In’. The first runner up was Marjorie Sayer for the novel ‘The Girl Mechanic of Wanzhou’. [N.B. Papertigers' former editor Aline Pereira was a judge for the 2011 award. Read about her experiences here and see photos from the event here].

Ovidia Yu’s story ‘The Mudskipper’ was the second runner up in the Scholastic Asian Book Award 2011 and will launch at this press conference. ‘The Mudskipper’ has reached the publication stage and will be available at the Festival. Based in Singapore, Ovidia Yu is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer whose plays have been performed locally and abroad. ‘The Mudskipper’ is her first book for children.

AFCC also introduces the inaugural SingTel Asian Picture Book Award. This Award will be presented annually for an outstanding unpublished picture book with a distinctly Asian theme offering a total of S$10,000 for the First Prize consisting of S$5,000 for an author and S$5,000 for an illustrator.

The first award will be given in AFCC 2013. Submissions are now open till 31st December 2012.

This Award aims to inspire the publication of and to propel public’s interest and support for more Asian-themed picture books.

In Narmada: A pictorial journey down the river, Vidya Shah uses a naming game played by two children and their grandmother as a segue to a wealth of ecological information. Nine-year-old Avni knows many more words than Aadi, age 5, and enjoys feeling superior. However, when the children realize how much Daadi knows about the Narmada river, their river-naming game turns into a story.

The Narmada is the third largest river in India and one of only three that flow east to west. Along its 300-kilometer route through a rift valley, many tribal cultures still endure deep poverty. The route is a popular pilgrimage path as well, with some ascetics taking two years to complete the round trip, up one side and down the other. Parthiv Shah’s appealing photographs–of temple steps down into the water, of brightly painted sails on narrow flat-bottomed boats, of long-boned, skinny boys leaping joyfully from a riverside cliff–bring the river culture beautifully alive.

Daadi tells Avni and Aadi about the damage sand mining does to the ground water table but also explains how mining sustains impoverished tribal villagers. Text boxes provide additional details, including regional trees and foods, a folk song about the river, and water-saving tips. One photograph depicting a farm is captioned “Domkhedi, now submerged under water following the construction of the Sardar Sarovan dam.” The book doesn’t explain that Domkhedi villagers became famous in 2000 for protesting the controversial dam construction, but mention of the village may stimulate young readers’ further investigation.

A map of the river and a fact sheet review are also provided. Non-Indian readers will find many challenging terms (samadhis, dargahs, ghats) in the story as well as a daunting number of Indian geographical names, but the photographs provide a bridge between the simple narrative structure and the sophisticated factual information. As an introduction to riparian culture in India and as an environmental research source for older children, text and images present an important ecological story.

Pratham Books, a Bangalore-based non-profit, publishes low-cost children’s books in eleven languages. Narmada: A pictorial journey down the river furthers their admirable goal: “A book in every child’s hand.”

Charlotte Richardson
May 2012

Ages: 7+

The 19th century waterways that irrigate the Upper Mora Valley in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains are a marvel of engineering to this day. In places, the water seems to defy gravity, and no one is quite sure how the people who built them—lacking tools as basic as a metal-bladed shovel—accomplished it. Though the history of their construction is lost, stories about the dedicated pioneers who built them have evolved, through oral tradition, into regional legends presented here in picture-book form.

La Acequia de Juan del Oso comes from the story of “The Three Juanes”: the remarkably strong Juan del Oso, son of a local woman and a bear; Juan Mudacerros, who moves mountains; and Juan Mudarríos, who can change the course of rivers. Folklorists Enrique R. Lamadrid and Juan Estevan Arellano recognize similar characters in Spanish tradition, from which the acequia technology of the American Southwest is also derived. The super-human young men, all of them exiled from their communities as a result of unintentionally misusing their special strengths and powers, work together as only they can to bring the water up and over the mountain. Amy Córdova’s rich and colorful illustrations bring the landscape and characters to life in this story that is not only about the reward of hard work but also the pain of exclusion and the value of community.

The authors skillfully incorporate what is known about the building of the canals (such as rudimentary tools, including a half-empty brandy bottle used as a level) with the legend of the boy whose mother married a bear but is forced to return home. When an innocent swipe seriously injures another child, the half-bear Juan flees to the woods where he finds his welcoming father and the other legendary Juanes. Together they accomplish the work that enables the expanding village population to inhabit a valley on the other side of the mountain. This book brings both the folktale and the limited known history of the acequia together in a way that celebrates not only the past and the legends but also the people who live in the Mora Valley today who continue to make a beautiful life in this stark, arid, and high-altitude environment.

Abigail Sawyer
May 2012

Winterberries and Apple Blossoms: Reflections and Flavors of a Mennonite Year

Naomi is the young girl from whose perspective the reader views her world.  Each month is written about in poems.  For example, January opens with a poem called “The Quilting Bee.”

Matilda Martin and Edna Bauman
Mam and Lucinda and me –
my first time quilting with the women.
Noisy greetings as we settle in around the quilt frame,
then silence as each begins.

A lovely painting of Naomi stitching amongst the women is depicted on the facing page. And so the months go, poem by poem, Naomi’s life unfolding before the reader. A Mennonite girl’s life is clearly different from a boy’s — in May’s poem “The Bicycle” for example, we see Naomi covertly attempting to ride her brother’s bike and suffering for it (she crashes, her skirt getting caught in the greasy chains) but two months later in “The Ball Game” we see Naomi whack the baseball well past the older boy’s reach even though they had moved in field expecting her to be a weak hitter.

I liked the pacing in this book. The poems are slow and thoughtful like the kind of lives these children live in their pastoral farm communities. And the paintings that depict the life are easily as bucolic and delightful as the poems.  And as an added bonus, there are recipes at the back of the book, one for each month celebrating the seasonal culinary delights of the community.

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.