When I first read Bolormaa Baasansuren’s My Little Round House (Groundwood, 2009) to my daughter, she was captivated.  What’s not to like, after all, about the story of a baby?  But Jilu, of course, is a special baby whose first of year of life is charted through the nomadic seasonal migrations of his Mongol parents.  Jilu is born in a ger – the “little round house” of the title of the book.  The ‘ger’ is a kind of a metaphor for the world from which Jilu emerges; it is comforting and warm like the womb, and it is the one constant in his family’s life of migration.

When my daughter and I read this book together, we got a good sense of the passage of time.   And of course, one year in the life of an infant is quite amazing!  The world of their consciousness  — from being held and suckled, to their first independent movements, to their growing perception of the world outside of themselves — is all contained in this wonderful book.  By the time one year passes, little Jilu is old enough to truly enjoy the season — summer — he was born in, outside of the ger.

Baasansuren’s illustrations are lovely and rich.  My Little Round House is a picture book of the first order and this is one of the reasons why it was selected for the Spirit of PaperTigers project.   Do read the PaperTigers interview with Baasansuren.   And of course, do seek out the book itself either at your local library or bookstore!

One of the books selected for the Spirit of PaperTigers 2010 Book Set is My Little Round House by Bolormaa Baasansuren (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi press, 2009). In a Personal View for PaperTigers, Helen Mixter describes the book’s journey from its creation in Mongolia to Japan, and her adaptation of the Japanese edition for publication in English, after being asked by Groundwood to provide a rough translation of the Japanese text:

The rough translation was very useful for its factual content. It explained what was happening in the pictures and also conveyed the emotional tone of the book. It is a book that expresses very convincingly a baby’s feelings of being loved, of being safe and warm and cozy despite what to many non-Mongolians might seem to be the hard life of a nomad. All the elements of this wonderful story were there except that the text did not really resemble a picture book text that would work for North Americans.

The publisher had told me about [Japanese illustrator] Hideko Nagano’s story of working with Baasansuren on the theme of roundness to give the book its shape. So I decided that I would use this idea as the thematic centre for the English version. And roundness is certainly a dominant presence in this baby’s life – from his mother’s womb, to his ger, to the little basket in which he travels through a snowstorm to the family’s winter quarters. Roundness is there in the turn of the year as the family literally moves through four seasons, each with its own pastures and quarters for the animals. It is there in the family that lovingly surrounds him. Only at the very end, when he runs through the grass with the dogs on his first birthday, do we see the baby breaking out of his small round world into the greater, flatter world of the outdoors – though the sky is still a round canopy over his head.

The fact that the “original text” came through such an unusual route in some ways made the whole process much freer than usual. Whereas usually as a translator I work very hard to keep the voice of the original text intact and to remain as true as possible to the word for word of it, this process wasn’t really possible here. Because the illustrations show the story and the feelings of the book so clearly, and because the rough translation had the same emotional texture, it seemed to be okay to try and re-tell the story rather than to “translate” it. I think it works and that the English book is true in spirit and form to the original.

This book is a personal favourite of mine. It is so true to the emotional world of a baby while showing us such a wonderful and completely different way of life.

You can read the whole article here. I found the notion of translation vs adaptation particularly interesting. It would be interesting to know readers’ views on this too…

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.
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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!…