We are very proud to announce the new book set for our Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach Programme. This year we have selected four books in total: three books that will be sent to all the schools and libraries around the world participating in the Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach, and one more that will go to certain places that have older students. So, without further ado, the books are:

You can read more about the books with more links to PaperTigers features here, and the 2012 Book Set also features on the homepage of the PaperTigers website.

A fabulous selection of books heads the awards list for this year’s Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) Awards, announced on Monday. The winners in the children’s/YA categories are:

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu by Wendy Wan-Long Shang (Scholastic, 2011)  – Children’s Literature Award;

Orchards by Holly Thompson (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2011) – Young Adult Literature Award;

The House Baba Built: An Artist’s Childhood in China by Ed Young (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2011) -  Picture Book Award.

The Honor Books were:

Vanished by Sheela Chari (Hyperion, 2011) – Honor Book, Children’s Literature Category.

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang (First Second Books, 2011) – Honor Book in the Young Adult Literature category.

Hot Hot Roti for Dada-ji by F. Zia, illustrated by Ken Min (Lee & Low Books, 2011) – Honor Book in the Picture Book category.

And following on from Corinne’s post about some of this year’s ALA Awards, here are some more highlights:

Allen Say‘s Drawing from Memory (Scholastic, 2011) has won a 2012 Robert F. Sibbert Informational Book Honor Award. To see all this year’s winners go here. Read our Q&A with Andrea Pinkney, the book’s editor, here.

As well as being outright winner of the 2012 Pura Belpré Author Award, Under the Mesquite, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Lee and Low Books, 2011), was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, along with Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys (Philomel Books, 2011). Go here to find out more.

What a superb selection of books!  Many Congratulations to all the winners.

The relationship between an author and his or her editor is not necessarily foremost in a reader’s mind when enjoying a book, but there’s no doubt that it’s important. I was struck when reading Allen Say‘s latest book Drawing from Memory (Scholastic, 2011) by a comment he made in his moving Author’s Note: “When my editor, Andrea Pinkney, and I first talked about the book, she asked me if it was possible to include some of my master’s work in it. The thought had never occurred to me; I didn’t think any of Sensei’s work could be found today.” So began the quest to seek out some of Noro Shinpei’s work – and Say did eventually bring together some wonderful examples in Drawing from Memory, including himself as a cartoon character, which must resonate as a dream come true for many of todays’ young readers. Say himself would probably agree that the book is all the richer for exploring Noro Shinpei’s work in more depth: indeed, his description of the quest shows clearly what those channels in his graphic narrative meant to him. So we are delighted to welcome Andrea Pinkney to the PaperTigers Blog to answer a few questions about Drawing from Memory, as well as her current projects as Vice President and Executive Editor with Scholastic Trade.

Andrea is also an acclaimed author of children’s books herself, including Coretta King Honor Picture Books Let It Shine! Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters, illustrated by Stephen Alcorn (Gulliver Books, Harcourt), and Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra, illustrated by her husband Brian Pinkney (Hyperion Books for Children) – as well as novels such as, most recently, Bird in a Box (Little, Brown Young Readers, 2011). You can read an in-depth interview with Andrea about her own writing at The Brown Bookshelf here, and more about her career as an editor here.

I believe Drawing from Memory is Allen Say’s first book published by Scholastic.  How and why did Scholastic acquire the book?

We’re so proud and happy to welcome Allen Say to Scholastic! Drawing from Memory marks an important and exciting change of direction for Allen. He is known by many for his work as a brilliant picture book creator, and Caldecott medallist. But in this book, Allen extends his talent to create a stunning work that is part memoir, part graphic novel, part narrative history. With Scholastic’s tremendous reach into schools, to teachers, and to young readers through our vibrant distribution channels ― including Scholastic Book Clubs and Book Fairs ― along with our Trade publishing program, we felt strongly that Drawing from Memory was the perfect vehicle for giving Allen Say a new publishing home.

What was your involvement in the editorial process?  Were there any particularly special moments for you?

I believe an editor’s role is to hold the flashlight while an author and illustrator digs for gold. In the case of Drawing from Memory, Allen delved into his own internal creative fountain to reveal a story that is intensely personal to him ― his journey to becoming the artist that he is today. My job was simply to guide that process, and to work with Allen to illuminate the most relevant aspects of his narrative. As for special moments, Allen is an incredible storyteller. So each and every time we spoke about the particulars of his incredible life and how these would be included in the book, Allen imparted some new detail about his childhood that always brought me to tears of wonder.

What is your favourite part of the book?

This is like asking which of your children is your favorite! I’m hard pressed to find one part of Drawing from Memory that I like more than another. I will say, though, that the moment when Allen knocks on the door of Noro Shinpei, Japan’s premier cartoonist, and the man who becomes Allen’s spiritual father, always fills me with a feeling of awe ― that this eager kid is about to enter a world that will change the course of his life forever.

How do you think Drawing from Memory fits in with Allen’s previous books, in particular the semi-autobiographical The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice? 

In Drawing from Memory Allen takes his creative talents to greater heights by pushing the boundaries of bookmaking with a work that is an impressive amalgam of art styles, text, and perspectives.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

There are always exciting things brewing in our shop! Next fall we’ll publish a novel by Sonia Manzano, the Emmy Award-winning actress who has played the role of Maria on Sesame Street for more than 40 years. Also, multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner, Sharon G. Flake, is at work on a new novel. And the very busy and creative Allen Say has his paintbrush whipping up new books for Scholastic.

Allen Say,
Drawing from Memory
Scholastic Press, 2011.

Ages 10+

Before even opening Allen Say’s latest book, the play on words of the title, Drawing from Memory, gives the reader a frisson of anticipation, enhanced by the simple cover illustration, a self-portrait of a young Allen Say floating, perhaps, in contemporary consideration of what has now become past. By the time we meet the illustration again in its context of an elated twelve-year-old Say having moved into his own one-room apartment, we are well and truly engrossed. Both before and after that defining moment in Say’s life, drawing is central to his existence. His childhood was not straightforward but Say recounts it with a lightness of touch in both words and pictures that is perfectly attuned to his readership. My favourite is perhaps the juxtaposition of a very small Allen drawing, drawing, drawing. Next along, a small boy walks away from his latest work, as his parents look in anger (father) and horror (mother) at the wall that has been turned into an artist’s canvas. The accompanying text, meanwhile, gives his father’s veto of art as a career for his son. This balance of humor and underlying tensions continues through the book, which ends with Say’s departure for America at the age of fifteen, “ready to start a new life with what I could carry on my back.”

Devotees of Say’s work will find vignettes linking to his previous books: however, the greatest parallels can be drawn with Say’s autobiographical novel The Ink Keeper’s Apprentice, for which Drawing from Memory is an absolutely must-have companion. For here at last is a full portrait of the real Sensei Noro Shinpei, the famous cartoonist to whom Say rather precociously and wholly pivotally apprenticed himself. Included in the narrative are photographs, nuggets of wisdom, and absorbing examples of Shinpei’s work. These include two cartoon characters that were Say and his fellow-apprentice Tokida, getting out of all sorts of scrapes. How wonderful is that! Further background about his later contact with Shinpei, who died in 2002, is given in Say’s moving Afterword.

Throughout the book, Say provides many vivid portraits: as well as his family, Sensei and Tokida, there is his art teacher Miss Goldfish, and her former pupil Orito-san, who taught Say karate as well as drawing from classical sculpture. And through it all is the self-portrait of a young man: his determination to be an artist no matter what, set against a complex family background and the cultural context of post-war Japan.

The story of Say’s childhood is a compelling one. It is fitting that, as an artist, he should tell it through pictures as well as words: and indeed, Say’s skilful combination of illustration and writing renders this account a masterpiece of graphic storytelling.

Marjorie Coughlan
December 2011

Since my last update on this year’s PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge, we have added some great books to our list.

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, (more…)