Jorge Argueta, illustrations by Fernando Vilela,
Arroz con Leche: Un poema para cocinar / Rice Pudding: A Cooking Poem
Groundwood Books, 2010.

Ages 4-7

Rice is an important staple all over the planet, but each cuisine that features rice often makes it seem as if the simple grain belongs to that tradition alone. The young boy at the center of Jorge Argueta’s latest bilingual cooking poem is aware of rice’s versatility, however, and he likes “all kinds of rice”:

I like white rice,
brown rice,
fried rice,
stewed rice,
watery rice,
chicken and rice,
beans and rice.
I guess I like rice with anything.

“But what I like best and love the most” he goes on to say “is rice pudding.” And, just as his counterpart in Argueta’s 2009 poem Sopa de Frijoles/Bean Soup did, this child wastes no time showing the reader how to make this simple yet special Latin dish.

Listing utensils and ingredients as he gathers them together in the playful illustrations by award-winning Brazilian illustrator Fernando Vilela, the boy gets to work while his mother, a silhouette in the background, watches from a distance.

Each step is more joyful and poetic than the last. Filling the pot with water “makes me feel like/ there is a creek flowing through the kitchen.” “The flames heating the pot/ are rainbow hands…hugging the pot.” Boiling water makes “maraca music,” and “Foamy waves and clouds turn the pot into sea and sky.” When he pours the milk, “there is a white waterfall in the kitchen” to which the child adds “salt stars and sugar snow.” The excitement of creating is equaled only by the anticipation of the delicious arroz con leche the boy looks forward to serving his family.

Like Bean Soup, Rice Pudding celebrates traditional foods—and the values they embody: family, warmth, sharing—along with a child’s growing independence. Vilela’s illustrations contrast the cool grey-green-blue of the creative kitchen with the warm comfort of gold and orange in the rest of the home. When the whole family joins hands around the table to “slurp up” this delicious treat, readers will wish they could actually be there. This sweet, joyful poem about a sweet, comforting food will surely inspire new cooks and perhaps some new poets as well.

Abigail Sawyer
April 2011

February is Black History Month in Canada so I trundled off to the library to find some good books on the topic.  The librarian showed me a new book they had just received for their collection: Viola Desmond Won’t be Budged by Jody Nyasha Warner and Richard Rudnicki (Groundwood Books, 2010)  This book tells a little known story of a black woman, Viola Desmond, in 1946 who refused to move out of her seat on the main floor of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia to the balcony where, as the usher tells her, “your people have to sit.”   Viola, however, does not budge.  Eventually she is arrested by the police, put in jail over night, and fined twenty dollars for her resistance.   Clearly, Viola’s act of defiance  was in reaction to racist treatment, but the people of the time somehow could not articulate this second-class treatment of her as such.  Viola was jailed and fined, ostensibly, for not paying the higher ticket price for sitting on the main floor, even though she offered to pay the extra one cent in tax required for such a privilege.  When the black community of Nova Scotia rallied around Viola to appeal her conviction, the case was thrown out of court on a procedural technicality.  The battle was not won; however, the point was made.

When I read this book to my daughter, the moment the theatre usher says to Viola  “You people have to sit in the upstairs section,”  she sensed something was wrong, but had trouble articulating it.   Finally, she said “It’s racism, isn’t it?”  stumbling a little over the R-word.  She could hardly believe that Viola had to go to jail and be fined twenty dollars (which at the time would have been a significant amount to pay,) for not going upstairs to the balcony.   As obvious as the racist treatment was in the situation, the word ‘racism’ somehow just didn’t seem to come up in the text or in the story — it was like the white elephant in the room.  Racial segregation, did in fact, exist in Nova Scotia, but no one wanted to acknowledge it in this situation but Viola herself, by refusing to budge.  And that was what made her rather singular much like Rosa Parks in the U.S.

This is a story Canadians need to know about themselves.  I’m glad to have read it to my daughter whose eyes were opened to the history and experience of black Canadians in Nova Scotia.

When PaperTigers’ book reviewer Abigail Sawyer mentioned to me that she is going to be hosting a Blog Carnival about bilingualism over at Speaking in Tongues, she got me thinking. Again. I first started mulling over bilingual children’s books here in relation to Tulika Books, a publisher in India that produces bilingual books in many different Indian languages alongside English, and to former IBBY Preisdent and founder of Groundwood Books Patsy Aldana’s comments in an interview with PaperTigers, and I will quote them again here:

I have always been opposed to the use of bilingual books, however given that Spanish-only books hardly sell at all, I have had to accept that books in Spanish can only reach Latinos if they are bilingual. This goes against everything I believe and know to be true about language instruction, the joy of reading in your mother tongue…

I was surprised by Aldana’s dislike of bilingual books because I love them and my children love them, and I have found that they can be a joy for inquisitive children seeking to learn independently – but I do realise that our contexts are different. Aldana’s dislike of them seems to stem from their being a substitute for monolingual Spanish books in an English-biased market, and she has found a pragmatic way of providing books in their mother-tongue to the Latino community in North America.

We love reading bilingual books because, although our main vehicle is the English, having another language running alongside, often enhances the reading experience for us, especially where the setting of the story is culturally appropriate to the language. This is true even when we can’t read the script, because even without being able to understand it, we can sometimes pull out certain consistencies. Seeing the writing always provides a glimpse of that different culture.

One of my favorite books of the last few year’s (more…)

Groundwood Books Publisher Patsy Aldana has been appointed as a member of the Order of Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian honors given in recognition of a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to community and service to the nation. The announcement was made in Ottawa on December 30, 2010 and Aldana was chosen for her contributions to children’s publishing in Canada and around the world.

Aldana has just completed a term as the President of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and was also recently named the 2011 recipient of the Ontario Library Association Les Fowlie Intellectual Freedom Award.

This excerpt from the Jan 3, 2011 edition of the Globe and Mail outlines Aldana’s beliefs on the importance of reading:

Adults sometimes forget what reading means to children… Reading is a window into oneself and others. Reading is a bulwark of democracy. And we don’t do enough to nurture our children’s love of reading.

Each child should have access to books that are right for him or her…[Reading] talks to you about who you are, or it tells you something about who the other is… and it’s essential to becoming a free person in a democratic society. If you become a reader, you have a chance to become a critical thinker, to be a person who has some power over your life.

Congratulations, Patsy! It is a well-deserved honor. We hope more and more people will embrace your message of helping children discover the pleasures and experience the power of reading!

Emily Carr was a Canadian painter who is known for her paintings of the west coast of British Columbia.  Her now iconic depictions of the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the totem poles and carvings of the First Nations people of the coast are infused with grandeur and beauty.  Emily Carr was an unusual woman for her time — an independent soul, greatly devoted to her art with a visionary sensibility.  In Four Pictures by Emily Carr by Nicolas Debon (Groundwood Books, 2003), four stories from Carr’s life are drawn in strips.   Each strip explores a time in Emily’s life in which epiphanies occur about the meaning and significance of art.

Although much has been written about Carr in print, I found Debon’s graphic novel approach to Carr’s life refreshing and engaging.  It must have been a daunting task as an illustrator and artist to have taken on the life of this great painter in pictures, no less!  But Debon does a wonderful job; near the end of the book, he presents a  stunning two page rendition of Emily looking on at a vision she painted herself of a lone pine tree reaching up to the heavens (Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky painted in 1935).

This is a great little book to inspire any young artist in the family and I recommend it highly for anyone interested in the life of this unusually talented and gifted Canadian painter.

Jack Pine is a book of poetry for children by Christopher Patton, illustrated by Cybele Young (Groundwood, 2007).   It is about the Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana), an ubiquitous member of the pine tree family, seen in most parts of boreal Canada and the northern U.S.   It’s a gutsy, spindly, tenacious tree, that is hardy but not of particular use to humans.  As Patton speaks of the unlovely qualities of the tree, he adds “What matters more than all of this –/he’s useless. Just useless. No good/for lumber, ships, shingles, or crates./Useless!” But this is not entirely true. The Jack pine has another name. It is often called the ‘nurse tree’ and slowly through the book, the poet reveals this inner quality of the tree.

Cybele Young’s wonderful “illustrations” are a bit of a misnomer since they were originally three dimensional collages of etched paper. The etchings show the Jack Pine in its various states of being — as a seedling or fully grown, juxtaposed against some of the settings where the tree is found. Other varieties of pine like the white and red pines, are also displayed and written about. The array of juxtaposed etched images convey a sense of the dynamic range of the Jack Pine in both setting and poetic ‘story.’

Jack Pine felt to me to be a very Canadian poetry book, celebrating a tree most Canadians know well, having seen them from off the highway or in the woods and near farms. When I was young, our family used to go hunting for matsutake mushrooms in the Rockies, and it was under the loose sandy soils where the lodgepole pines (a close relation to the Jack Pine) thrive, that some of the best mushrooms could be found.  For us a stand of these particularly ‘useless’ pines was a sign of treasure for what they ‘nursed’ below!

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Patricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Established in 1978, Groundwood Books is a small children’s book publisher, associated with House of Anansi Press, that specializes in Canadian authored books (with a special interest in books by First Nations authors), bilingual books in English and Spanish, translations from around the world, and a non-fiction line aimed at young adults. Their catalog features a long list of award-winning titles that reflect individual experiences and are of universal interest.

Patricia (Patsy) Aldana, founder and publisher of Groundwood Books (and president of IBBY, the International Board on Book for Young Readers, since 1997), answered our questions about My Little Round Rouse, one of the seven titles selected for inclusion in our Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set Donation Project; her commitment to publishing books by First Nations authors; the multicultural titles on their Fall list, and more.

In our series of interviews with the publishers of the books selected for our Spirit of PaperTigers project, I normally start by asking how the book in question came about as a project for the publisher. Since we already know the answer to this question in relation to My Little Round House, both from our interview with author Bolormaa Baasansuren and from translator Helen Mixter’s article, My Little Round House: The Journey of a Picture Book from Mongolia to Canada, we’ll start by asking…

PT: What in particular attracted you to My Little Round House?

PA: I thought it was a really special book about people whose lives are very different from ours. I also thought it was a very unique look at a baby’s life, a life that despite being nomadic seemed wonderfully cosy and safe.

PT: The books you publish often tell the stories of people whose voices are underrepresented. What first motivated you to start on this path and how do you manage to stay true to your mission?

PA: Being a Guatemalan, I guess that seeing the world through the eyes of the marginal has always come naturally to me. There are so many books published from and for the mainstream that, for me, focusing on underrepresented authors and illustrators was one way to justify being a publisher. As a small Canadian house, this focus has also been a way for us to distinguish ourselves from the huge multi-nationals with whom we have to compete.

PT: How did the decision to stop selling rights to the American market and to start publishing your books in the US come about?

PA: As US publishing changed from the editor-driven houses that I first came to know (Margaret K McElderry, Dorothy Briley, Susan Hirschman, Phyllis Fogelman, etc.), it became harder and harder to sell rights to our books in the US. At the same time Canada began to cut funding to school libraries and as a result (more…)

PaperTiger’s current issue features an excellent interview with internationally acclaimed author, humanitarian and peace activist, Deborah Ellis. Deborah has traveled the world to meet with children affected by poverty, war, racism and illness and to hear their stories. Her fiction and non-fiction books give us a glimpse into the lives of children from Afghanistan (The Breadwinner Trilogy), Bolivia (I am a Taxi, Sacred Leaf), the Middle East (Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak) and Southern Africa (The Heaven Shop).

Deborah’s latest book, Off To War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children is a collection of interviews with children of Canadian and American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her next book, Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees, is due out in March, 2009. Royalties from both books are to be donated to the Children in Crisis Fund of IBBY. This Fund is a program designed to bring books to children whose lives have been disrupted through war, civil disorder or natural disaster. The two main activities supported by the Fund are the therapeutic use of books and storytelling in the form of bibliotherapy, and the creation or replacement of collections of selected books that are appropriate to the situation. IBBY hopes that the program will not only provide immediate support and help, but that it will also make a long- term impact in the communities, thus supporting IBBY’s goal of giving every child the Right to Become a Reader.

Tomorrow, January 23rd, from 7:30 – 9pm, Deborah and Groundwood Books, in partnership with USBBY, are presenting a special fundraising event for the Children in Crisis Fund at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver, Colorado. Attendees will hear Deborah reflect on her conversations with the children whose words and experiences are shared in her most recent books and will have the opportunity to chat with her. Patsy Aldana, president of IBBY and publisher of Groundwood Books, will speak briefly about the IBBY bibliotherapy programs already underway. Signed copies of Deborah’s books will be for sale and all proceeds from the event will go to the Children in Crisis Fund.

Ah, Bologna!

Aline and I have much to tell about our fantastic trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair at the beginning of this month. There really is no better event to take the pulse of the children’s book publishing world: and what a world that is!

We’ve met so many interesting people and enjoyed putting faces to names of organisations and publishers; we’ve attended inspiring presentations; and have been dazzled by the quality and endlessly varied styles of the illustrations we’ve come across, both in the books we have browsed through and as part of the fair’s special exhibits. The overall impression was of immense industry – people in deep discussion, buying and selling rights; looking through artists’ portfolios; rushing between presentations – what a buzz!

Over the next few weeks, Aline and I will be posting on a variety of topics. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights for us, in no particular order:

Looking at the proofs for Ed Young’s new book, Wabi Sabi (written by Mark Reibstein);
Meeting librarians from all over the world at a session organised by the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions) – so lively that we were asked to be quiet…! – and hearing IBBY President and Canadian Groundwood Books publisher, Patricia Aldana’s presentation entitled “Books as Mirrors”;
Attending the launch of the International Youth Library’s White Ravens 2008 catalog;
Listening to poets Michael Rosen (UK Children’s Laureate) and Jorge Lujan’s contributions to a panel titled “Poetry Break: Poetry in Children’s Books”;
Attending the award-presentation of the Bologna Raggazzi “New Horizons” Award to Chennai-based Tara Publishing, for the hand-made book The Nightlife of Trees, and watching how the book came into being;
Hearing illustrators Robert Ingpen and Paul O. Zelinsky talk about their contributions to the book Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children About Their Art (the proceeds of which go to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.)…

Well, I could just keep going – and I will. And so will Aline: so keep coming back as the full picture unfolds…