After our Jul/Aug special literacy focus, we now make way for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sep 15 – Oct 15), a celebration of the cultures and traditions of US residents who trace their roots back to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The theme this year is “Getting Involved: Our Families, Our Community, Our Nation.”

There will be all sorts of events happening throughout the country, and here’s what you’ll find on our website: interviews with author Pam Muñoz Ryan and youth services librarian Rose Zertuche-Treviño; gallery features showcasing the work of David Diaz and Susan Guevara; original heritage-related essays by Yuyi Morales and Juan Felipe Herrera, and plenty more. So dive in, and have fun – and check back here, too, as we continue the fiesta of Hispanic Heritage Month by blogging about it through Oct 15. There’s plenty of pride, information and fun to be gained from going deeper into this celebration!

In July 2008, Just One More Book!!, the lovely, “free online audio program (podcast) about children’s books we love and why we love them,” celebrated its second anniversary and 400th episode of promoting children’s books and literacy. As part of their celebration, they invited illustrators of all backgrounds and ages, including wee ones, to submit a logo-like illustration on the theme of reading. The result was an online gallery of wonderful images. One of my favorites is the one featured here (click the image to enlarge), by Canadian author/illustrator, Lee Edward Fodi, titled “He Was a Tiger of a Storyteller,” and I bet you can guess why…

Busy parents and educators will treasure all the great content and resources Just One More Book!! has to offer. And here’s our shout out to listeners: anyone can participate by calling in and leaving a message about a favorite children’s book (the number is available on their website). The recorded messages will become part of the show. Isn’t that great? Isn’t it wonderful to have venues such as this (and the PaperTigers blog, too, let’s not forget) to share about them?

Heads up: on Monday, the PaperTigers celebration of “Hispanic Heritage Month” will be live on the website, so keep your eyes peeled! We’ll be blogging about books and topics related to the theme through Oct 15.

San Franciscan Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, reviewed several children’s books in a New York Times piece not too long ago, including Zen Ties, writer-illustrator Jon J. Muth’s sequel to his Caldecott winner, Zen Shorts. Handler is allergic to preachy moralisms of the sort often smuggled into children’s so-called spiritual books (and dissed in this blog on a few occasions), and while overall he finds Muth’s new book undercompelling, his thoughts on how it goes wrong are compelling. (Muth comes to writing from his background in graphics, however, and Handler heartily approves his visuals.)

Both Muth books have been widely and appreciatively reviewed by bloggers. A quick perusal of the blogosphere indicates one obvious reason why: spiritual books for children provide busy parent readers with spiritual sustenance as well.

Silent Music, written and illustrated by Hawaii-based James Rumford, and published this year by Roaring Brook Press, tells the story of Ali, a soccer-loving boy in Baghdad who also practices calligraphy, just like his idol Yakut, who lived 800 years ago. When the Mongols attacked in 1258, Ali learns, Yakut fled to a high tower. “He shut out the terror and wrote glistening letters of rhythm and grace.”

So in 2003 Ali recalls the practice of his hero and also writes through nights of bombing and war. He notices how much easier it is to write the “long sweeping hooks” of the word HARB, the word for war, than it is to write the “difficult waves and slanted staffs” of SALIM, the word for peace.

Rumford’s illustrations are collage-like, and wonderful. Silent Music is a good fit with our current website focus on literacy, as is linguist and world traveler Rumford’s Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing, a 2005 Sibert Honor winner.

On a recent visit to Tucson, Arizona, I enjoyed checking out some of the marvelous children’s books that introduce the Sonoran desert region to local and visiting kids. The desert of Southern Arizona and northern Mexico is home to some mighty unusual creatures. Jenny Shank‘s review of publisher Rising Moon’s books about western animals, including geckos and coyotes, is a good starting place for resources.

In Don’t Call Me Pig: A Javalina Story (RGU Group, 1999) by award-winning Arizona author Conrad J. Storad, we learn that the shy desert creature called the javelina is not a pig at all, but a “collared peccary,” and that “being different makes all the difference.” A great followup to Storad’s book is Josefina Javelina: A Hairy Tale (Rising Moon Books, 2005), the lively biography of one ambitious javalina itching to leave the desert for the bright lights. Author and Tucson resident Susan Lowell amusingly recounts Josefina’s dramatic leaving for Pasadena to be a ballarina. Josefina is discovered by a wolfish-looking agent who compares her to famous predecessors of her species (Gregory Peccary, Cary Grunt, Frank Swineatra, Hairilyn Monroe) and becomes famous, but eventually she gratefully returns home, a star, to perform in her old desert haunts.

In Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson, illustrated by Megan Lloyd (Henry Holt, 1991), kids learn about the venerable and protected saguaro cactus and about the many desert animals it shelters. Did you know the saguaro doesn’t even begin to develop the limbs that define its shape until it’s at least 75 years old? Conrad J. Storad’s Lizards for Lunch (RGU Group, 2002) uses rhyme to get across a lot of information about road runners and their desert life and cuisine. Illustrators Beth Neeley and Don Rantz, who also illustrated Storad’s Don’t Call Me Pig, add much to the charm of this Sonoran special.

Whether you’re preparing for a desert trip, looking for books to remember one by, or just armchair and bedtime traveling, these books will bring alive for children and adults a very special world.

Children’s stories told and/or illustrated by Aboriginal people have been receiving serious attention for several decades now. It’s a different world from that of early pioneers like Australian Dick Roughsey, of Mornington Island in Queensland. I’ve posted previously about illustrator Bronwyn Bancroft and Magabala Books in western Australia. To delve deeper, this article about the history of aboriginal children’s literature illustrators features work by another early favorite, Pat Torres.

Magabala publishes a list of Australian and New Zealand children’s books by and about Aboriginals. AustralEd also has a list of books about Australian indigenous peoples, many by Aboriginal writers. Indij Readers publishes school reading materials by Aboriginal people that provide “diversity of Aboriginal identity, voice, and representation.” Here’s an introduction to their work.

In Canada, Pemmican publishes children’s books by and about the Metis aboriginal people. The Penumbra Press, a small fine-art and literary publishing house, offers many books for children based on Northern and Native literatures. And the Our Story website publishes stories by young winners of the Canadian Aboriginal Writing Challenge.

Unsympathetic governments worldwide, east and west, make it difficult for the stories and traditions of native peoples to be passed on to subsequent generations. It is gratifying to salute the great work of organizations, writers and illustrators who bring these treasures to all of us.

On a recent brief trip to the beautiful little city of Victoria, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, I spent some time in the well-stocked children’s book section of the local Chapters Bookstore, where a helpful clerk gave me a quick tour of local favorites, starting with a local resident David Bouchard. Saskatchewan-born, Bouchard has written a couple dozen-plus books for kids, including many award winners and many that reflect his own Metis (the Canadian term for mixed European and Native) origins.

Nokum Is My Teacher, available in English or French with Cree alongside, was the Ânskohk Aboriginal Children’s Book of the Year for 2007. Buddha in the Garden, with illustrations by painter Zhong-Yang Huang, recalled to mind Phillis Gershator’s Sky Sweeper, a story with a similar theme. Click here for information on Bouchard’s upcoming books.

I also took time for a delightful few minutes with Vancouverite Nan Gregory’s Pink, unquestionably a book for the top of the list of every little pink-loving girl (and perhaps her parents as well, with their gender-associated color questions!).

On the shelf with other Canadian favorites was one I recalled from my pre-multicultural southern U.S. childhood, Robert Service’s wonderful poem The Cremation of Sam McGee, in a 2006 re-issue of the 1986 edition with illustrations by painter Ted Harrison. Back in the warm-drowsy long-ago afternoons of my musty Virginia schoolroom, it seemed cautionary tale on complaining about the heat; I wondered at how differently a 21st century Canadian child takes in the story today!

Elatia Harris‘ post Monday on one of my favorite sites, 3 Quarks Daily, is a long reminiscence on her fascination, beginning at age 9, with things Japanese. Her mom had already introduced her to western art at Boston museums and galleries, but delving into aesthetics Japonesque, she was on her own. Harris’ report on books that helped her explore her interest is evidence that children need adult books as much as adults need children’s books. Through her beloved childhood books and her own imagination, her nascent multicultural awareness led to a profound and lifelong appreciation of art. Here’s an excerpt from her post, but please don’t miss the treat of reading it in its entirety.

I needed a guide to that universe of art and taste that drew me in, and it could not be my mother…”

“Enter Elise Grilli – a woman whom I suppose I never knew, although it does not feel that way. I first encountered her name on the cover of one of my most beloved childhood books, Golden Screen Paintings of Japan. You can see the scan of my personal copy below left – it’s dog-eared the way a book gets if you sleep with it for many years. On the upper right corner, there is ink I spilled from copying something inside it. Akiyama Teruzawa’s big book from Skira, Japanese Painting, was similarly pored over by me, and is now obviously distressed, like the Modern Library edition of The Tale of Genji, written by the world’s first novelist, Lady Murasaki, and translated by Arthur Waley. Nobody in this bunch wrote for children, but in fact they all wrote for me. Especially Elise Grilli.

Here’s Eliata’s description of her growing aesthetic awareness–a great example of the natural (untutored) capacity of a child to resonate with art that arises out of profound awareness:

Trying to find the right way to draw things, I was instinctively attracted to an individualistic painter of wide-ranging genius [the 16th century painter Hasegawa Tohaku], and my first sensations of wonder and bewilderment have stayed with me always. They are the correct response to the daring and naturalism I saw, that I was too young to know I could not as an artist aspire to.

Harris then discusses a Hasegawa 12-panel screen, his early understanding of abstraction, and a one-brushstroke tree trunk that demonstrates how form and content are one!

One of the intriguing aspects of walking around the Bologna Book Fair was perusing the array of books in so many different languages and wondering which ones would be the ones to be chosen for translation for editions in other countries… and why.

It was fun to see books we have featured on PaperTigers – like The Magic Horse of Han Gan in Italian -

but there were also lots of beautiful books that caught the eye, and which unfortunately I cannot yet begin to read. I thought for my Books at Bedtime post this week I would just share a few of these images with you, starting with one that immediately struck me as being perfect for a bedtime story:

The little girl (more…)

Hot Springs, N.C., a beautiful little town on the French Broad River, deep in the heart of Appalachia, may not appear to be much of a multicultural environment at first glance, but check out what my nephew and his wife, who live there, have been reading to their boys, aged 7 and 5. Quoting from a recent email:

“A copy of Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto and Ed Martinez came home for good the other day when the librarian decided the cover was too damaged for further circulation. Our house rabbit had reduced its size by about 20% – apparently those tamales looked pretty good to him too.

“Recently we’ve been reading the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. Quite compelling, full of historical facts and adventurous enough to enthrall a second grader. Day of the Dragon King concerns the rescue of a legend written on bamboo before it is to be burned. So far we’ve been to Pompeii, a medieval Irish monastery and a Civil War field hospital; later books deal with even more magical and fantastical themes.

“Last week the boys had me read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi for several nights in a row (yes, I do the voices – can’t help it). I had picked up [Caldecott Award winner] Jerry Pinkney‘s adaptation of this classic Rudyard Kipling story from the library because the illustrations caught my eye. The artwork is beautiful.”

Thanks for the field report, Melody! Keep ‘em coming…