Auction #121: A Spirit of PaperTigers 2010 Book Set of Seven Picture books, some signed. From PaperTigers.org

Description: You are bidding for a set of seven high-quality picture books (all hardcover) which were selected as the Spirit of PaperTigers book set for 2010 to be sent to different schools and libraries around the world.

The Book Set comprises the following titles with some, as indicated, containing book plates signed by the author/illustrator:

First Come the Zebra – SIGNED
Written and illustrated by Lynne Barasch
Lee & Low, 2009. Ages 4-8

Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing – SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS
Written by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann
Barefoot Books, 2008. Ages 9-12

My Little Round House - SIGNED
Written and illustrated by Bolormaa Baasansuren
Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 2009. Ages 4-8

One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference – SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR
Written by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes
Kids Can Press, 2008. Ages 7+

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai – SIGNED
Written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola
Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Ages 5-8

The Storyteller’s Candle / La velita de los cuentos – SIGNED BY THE ILLUSTRATOR
Written by Lucia Gonzalez, illustrated by Lulu Delacre
Children’s Book Press, 2008. Ages 4-8

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon – SIGNED
Written and illustrated by Grace Lin
Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009. Ages 9-12

Estimated Value: $150

Bio: PaperTigers.org is a colorful website devoted to multicultural books from around the world for children and young adults, with a particular focus on the Pacific Rim and South Asia. We seek to promote the celebration and tolerance of diversity, and to nurture literacy and a love of reading. As well as highlighting the world of multicultural children’s and ya literature on our website and blog, we work to reinforce our goal of promoting cross-cultural understanding via our Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach, under the banner Books and Water: Nourishing the Mind and Body.

PaperTigers’ website: www.papertigers.org

Much has been written already about SPT book choice Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow  (Barefoot Books, 2008) in PaperTigers, but one more post won’t hurt, I’m sure!  This book was selected as an SPT book because it told a good story and was beautifully illustrated.  Little Leap Forward, the boy in the story, lives in Beijing in 1966.  He captures a songbird, but it does not sing.  Why?  Set as the story is at the advent of the Cultural Revolution; the caged bird becomes a metaphor for the larger scene about to unfold.   The story is powerfully and simply told.  I found myself near tears, reading at the end, at how Little Leap’s life was mirrored in the biography of one of its writers, Guo Yue.   The story also made the ‘leap,’ as it were, to the stage as well in a theatre production in the UK which PT contributor, Marjorie wrote about in this post. 

Little Leap Forward is an illustrated novel and is for middle readers.  It made an interesting counterpoint to the other selected SPT title, Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, a story about a spirited young Chinese girl and her adventures in a mythical and magical ancient China.  Although China is loosely the connection between these two books, they are as different as — well, apples and oranges!  Both, however, are ripping good reads and are also gorgeously produced.  Do check them out if you have a chance.

Lucia Gonzalez, author of The Storyteller’s Candle (Children’s Book Press, 2008):

I would like The Storyteller’s Candle to travel to Puerto Rico, to be in classrooms, libraries, and homes from the smallest town to the capital city San Juan. I want children in the island to know and be proud of the work of Pura Belpré, and to re-encounter the stories that belong to them.

and Lulu Delacre, the book’s illustrator:

I would like to send The Storyteller’s Candle to Tibetan schools for monks and nuns in Ladakh, India. Their lovely children have no libraries, and live off the generosity of others. They are taught English and the lesson that Pura Belpré imparts at the end of the book might be one they truly connect to.

Katie Smith Milway, author of One Hen (Kids Can Press, 2008):

If I could send One Hen anywhere in the world right now, it would be to Haiti, in Creole, to inspire children there to play an entrepreneurial role in rebuilding their nation. Happily, a Haitian Creole edition of the book is due out in 2010 through publisher EducaVision.

and Eugenie Fernandes, the book’s illustrator:

One Hen is already at the White House, so… after that I would like to send it… everywhere!, because it’s a book that connects us all.

Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, authors of Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing (Barefoot Books, 2008):

Little Leap Forward is about the lives of children who are growing up in a very poor, overcrowded society, in which food is rationed and there are no toys (beyond what they can make themselves) – a closed society in which freedom, knowledge and creativity are suppressed, and the people they love are about to be taken away from them. It is also a story about the irrepressible power of friendship, love and the imagination, even in the face of hardship and revolution.

So if we could send the book to children in areas of need in the world, it would be to any country where people are not free to express themselves, where families are divided, and children suffer from hunger, fear and poverty. In some small way, we would love to give those children the feeling that they are not just tiny grasses blowing helplessly in the wind (there is an old Chinese saying about this), but that they can find strength through nature and friendship, and hope for a better future by making the most simple gestures of freedom and compassion, whether it is releasing a caged bird (as Little Leap Forward does), finding music in everyday sounds, taking care of a friend, or flying a homemade kite in the wind.

and Helen Cann, the book’s illustrator:

I’d like Little Leap Forward to go anywhere where lives are repressed and people are told what to think and do. Little Leap Forward is about the triumph of hope, love and imagination over oppression.

Once again, those interviewed have provided us with plenty of food for thought – and perhaps you have very particular ideas about where you’d send special books like those that make up the Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set? Do let us know…

Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing has been selected for the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set. A wealth of information about the book can be found here on our PaperTigers main website.

Tessa Strickland, Barefoot Books’ co-founder and editor-in-chief, answered our questions about Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing, one of the seven books selected for inclusion in our Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set Donation Project, and about other topics related to the company and to multicultural children’s literature.

Q&A

PT: How did Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing come about as a project for Barefoot Books?

TS: This project came about in quite a circuitous way. First, I was contacted by Clare Farrow, who wanted to know if I was interested in having her retell any traditional Chinese tales. In the course of our conversation, I learnt that she and her husband, Guo Yue, had just completed a manuscript about his life, Music, Food and Love. It so happened that this telephone conversation came about just as I was starting to cast around for stories for older readers, and I was fascinated by what Clare told me about Yue’s childhood in Beijing. So, I asked to read a copy of the manuscript.

PT: When you acquired the manuscript, did you know from the get go that you would publish it as an illustrated middle grade book, or was the decision regarding full plate illustrations made later in the process?

TS: When I read Music, Food and Love (Piatkus, 2006), I thought that the best way to tell Yue’s story to children would be to focus on the summer of 1966. The manuscript went through about four drafts and was a close collaboration between Yue and Clare, me, and an excellent editor, Anne Finnis. The decision to make full-plate illustrations was made once we had a manuscript that everyone was happy with.

PT: What can you tell us about the pairing of Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s text with Helen Cann‘s art?

TS: We have done a number of books with Helen Cann; I knew that she would be a delight to work with. Not only is she very talented, she is also extremely interested in developing her own style and in working
collaboratively. She had some very fruitful meetings and discussions with Clare and Yue, who were both extremely happy with her illustrations.

PT: How do you think the public’s attitude toward multicultural books for children has changed since Barefoot Books was founded, in 1992? Are there any major differences between the US and the UK markets in that regard?

TS: As Barefoot has always focused on multicultural books, it is hard to say with very much claim to objectivity how the public attitude has changed. That said, there was a significant surge in demand after 9/11. Also, before we set up our own business in the US, we used to go on selling trips (this was in the 1990s) to New York and Boston, and it was quite surprising how ‘multicultural’ to the publishers we visited seemed to equal ‘African-American and Hispanic’ and not much beyond that. The challenge for a publisher with a multicultural focus, I think, is the same as that facing a publisher with any work of fiction: how to find a writer and an illustrator with a disctinctive voice, and with the ability to show their world to a reader/many readers from other worlds so well that a bridge is crossed, a new understanding offered.

PT:What would you say is the most challenging aspect of being an independent publisher of children’s books these days?

TS: Ah, they are too many to count! BUT, one of the great things about being independent in the digital world is that it offers us a way of reaching our customers far more effectively than we could when we were dependent on the traditional supply chain. We have always enjoyed robust support from the institutional market, but been regarded as too niche by high street chains. It is not insignificant that our fastest-growing account is Amazon; the beauty of the internet is that it gives customers a chance to find their way to content beyond the standard character-driven mass market offer. And we have great faith in the fact that there are other parents and teachers out there, just like us, who want to introduce their children to different traditions and cultures; to question and reflect; to imagine what it would be like if…

PT: As of a few years ago, Barefoot books can no longer be found in chain bookstores. How did this reality come about, and what has the impact of adopting a more grassroots approach to sales/distribution been on the business?

TS: We did not fare well with chain stores in the US for the reasons I have outlined above; our focus is on growing a grass-roots community with like-minded business partners and through our Ambassador Programme. This feels much more authentic, somehow; we struggled to get exposure through the chains, and we also struggled with a model that seemed to lack nuance—a scale-out in Borders, for instance, meant the same quantity of books going everywhere across the nation, with no attention to the varying demographics. One size doesn’t fit all, in our view.

PT: What are some of your bestselling titles?

TS: Internationally, Niamh Sharkey’s wonderful picture book The Giant Turnip has been and continues to be a star. So does Debbie Harter’s The Animal Boogie. Of our more explicitly multicultural books, Mama Panya’s Pancakes is exceptional and is a top seller on Amazon too – don’t ask me
why! We don’t publish for quick results, so while we are delighted when books get off to a roaring start, our focus is on content that will stand the test of time and do better year by year.

PT: What are your hopes for the future of Barefoot Books?

TS: After a year which has been devoted to revising our online offer and rebuilding our website, we are confident that we have laid the foundations for a business model which has the potential to grow
exponentially. In the medium term, we hope to exploit the potential for growth through social media and through an offer which enables anyone who likes what we do to sign up, and to buy and sell Barefoot at
attractive discounts, with no strings attached and no start-up costs. In the long term, our hope is that we will become a household name and a destination for anyone who is looking for high-quality art and story for the children in their lives.

PT: Anything else you’d like to add?

TS: We can only do what we do because we have a fabulous, incredibly hard-working and highly motivated team in-house and because we are lucky enough to have tremendous support from a diverse and exciting range of people in the wider world – thank you, everyone!

…

Many thanks, Tessa, for taking the time to answer our questions. We are very grateful to Barefoot Books for donating copies of Little Leap Forward in support of our Spirit of PaperTigers project. We wish you and Barefoot Books continued success!

To find out more about Barefoot Books and to take a peek inside its “creative cauldron”, visit the website. The site also offers a number of inspiring videos related to the company’s activities that are well-worth watching! And please note: you can also follow Barefoot Books on Facebook and Twitter.

Based on Guo Yue’s childhood, Little Leap Forward tells the story of the young, flute-playing Leap Forward’s love for a songbird he keeps in a cage and calls Little Cloud, set against the shadows of the looming Cultural Revolution in China. You can read a full review, including a synopsis, here. Beautifully illustrated with full-page color plates by Helen Cann, it certainly offers a pleasurable read to young, independent readers – but it also makes a lovely bedtime story for older children, who enjoy a sustained read over several evenings. The writing is lyrical and so lends itself to being read aloud; and, although the story itself follows universal themes of friendship, freedom and learning to let go of those we love, the book’s cultural setting may well give rise to questions and discussion. The end-notes provide historical facts about the Cultural Revolution, filling in details of what happened to Yue and his family. An added dimension for us reading the book together was that both my boys were really keen to know everything that was written here and enjoyed making comparisons with the story – yet I know that when they each read the book on their own, they read the captions to the photographs but didn’t really look at the text.

We were also fortunate enough to see the stage adaptation of Little Leap Forward last year (you can read my post about it here) and I have recently come across this “SoundCloud” from its opening sequence – so head on over and close your eyes for a few minutes, imagining Leap Forward and his friend Little-Little on the river bank, flying their kites high into a cloudess blue sky…

Today we are thrilled to be announcing our Spirit of PaperTigers Project, an initiative of Pacific Rim Voices, whose aim is to promote literacy while raising awareness of our common humanity. The idea is to donate 100 book sets of 7 carefully selected multicultural books to libraries and schools in areas of need across the globe.

The following titles have been selected for inclusion in the 2010 Book Set:

Planting The Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai, by Claire A. Nivola. Frances Foster Books, 2008.

First Come the Zebra, by Lynne Barash. Lee & Low, 2009.
.

Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing, by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann. Barefoot Books, 2008.

The Storyteller’s Candle/La velita de los cuentos, by Lucia Gonzalez, illustrated by Lulu Delacre. Children’s Book Press, 2008.

My Little Round House, by Bolormaa Baasansuren, English adaptation by Helen Mixter. Groundwood Books, 2009.

One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes. Kids Can Press, 2008.

Where The Mountain Meets The Moon, by Grace Lin. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009.

Our website currently highlights all the authors and illustrators whose books have been selected, as well as other features related to the project. Please note that we will be further exploring the particular reasons for selecting each title, here, on the blog, during the month of February.

One important aspect of the Spirit of PaperTigers project is that we will be receiving feedback from the book set recipients. In the course of the coming months, as feedback comes in, we will be posting it to the blog and the site, so everyone can find out about where the books are going and who they are reaching.

To learn more about the project and enjoy the new features, visit the website. And please help us spread the word on this exciting new venture!…

In my mind 2009 was truly an outstanding year for children’s and young adult literature especially multicultural books. One of my resolutions for the year was that I would focus on reading more young adult books than adult books and I am proud to say that I succeeded! However I can’t say the same for my other resolution of keeping a list of all the books I read during the year. I’ll have to make a better attempt at that list in 2010!

Some of my highlights from 2009 were:

Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland

What about you? What did you enjoy reading in 2009? Any book related resolutions for 2010?

…the painful but inspiring true story of how music literally saved the life of Arn Chorn-Pond, founder of Cambodian Living Arts, a World Education project.

An orphan of the Khmer Rouge genocide in 1975, nine-year-old Arn was sent to a children’s work camp, where he was underfed and overworked, under the constantly watchful eye of armed and threatening soldiers. When volunteers were called for to play propaganda songs, Arn, who came from a family of musicians, raised his hand. He and five other children were chosen to learn the khim, a traditional Cambodian string instrument. Arn excelled… but once he had learned to play, his teacher and all but one of his fellow students were executed…

Read the complete review

Michelle has also contributed an insightful Personal View, Music as Inspiration and Survival: a Cambodian Journey – definitely worth reading!

Also new on the website, we are delighted to present an interview with husband-and-wife team Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, authors of the powerful and moving illustrated middle-reader, Little Leap Forward (Barefoot Books, 2008). In June I blogged about its powerful stage adaptation and in the interview Yue and Clare talk about it, as well as other aspects of the book.

Little Leap Forward is based on Yue’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution in China. His father, a professional erhu (two-string violin) player, died when Yue was very young; when Yue was seven, he began receiving flute lessons from one of his father’s friends, a musician who lived in the same small courtyard; then, at the age of seventeen, he joined an army music ensemble as a flutes soloist for the People’s Republic of China. With the help of one of his sisters, Yue left China in 1982 to take up a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He now plays all over the world – and by following some of the links in the interview side-bar, you can listen to some examples of his beautiful music…

A powerful combination of masked actors, puppets and shadow-box/animation, not to mention an atmospheric score and cleverly versatile set, the story is told “only” through mime. We followed Little Leap Forward’s dawning awareness of the importance of freedom, both through the political events unfolding around him and through his love for a songbird captured for him by his best friend. No matter how much Little Leap Forward coaxes and bribes with seeds, the bird cannot sing from within the confines of a cage. A “scary” dream sequence that had Little Brother on the edge of his seat alerts Little Leap Forward to what he has to do and he sets the bird free.

I have to say that this particular performance will be looked back on by us – and probably by the cast – with very mixed feelings. There was a group of children in the audience from a local School for the Deaf, who were entranced – picking up enough of the vibrations of the music to get a feel for it, and able to particpate fully in the action on stage. Wonderful. However, the first three rows were taken up by a youth-group outing and it very soon became evident that the children did not know how to behave in a public, live performance. All the more credit to the production, then, that in the scene when Red Guards arrest Little Leap Forward’s mother (an event related in Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s book for adults, Music, Food and Love), there was not a sound from the auditorium.

Afterwards, the four actors/puppeteers gave a short talk to these children (which we gate-crashed!) and again, they captivated their audience. I couldn’t help thinking what a pity it was that the children had obviously not had any sort of introduction to what they were going to see… I wonder how many would have liked to turn the clock back and engage with it more fully, once they’d had a chance to find out a bit more about it?

Little Leap Forward is on tour in England until 17 July – for further details, look here. In the meantime, watch this short video

and read the production blog. If you haven’t come across the book yet, watch this very moving introduction, narrated by Yue and featuring his magical flute-playing; and read our review, here on PaperTigers.

Little Leap Forward was definitely a production not to be missed: a big thank you to Nicky Fearn, Frances Merriman, Jonny Quick and Mark Whitaker, the faces behind the masks; and to Gemma Bonham of The Carriageworks, for an empathetic discussion afterwards.

* Photograph credit: Ian Tilton