Excitement is building in London, England as the city gets ready to host some once in a lifetime events this summer! Athletes from over 200 countries will converge in London July 27 – August 12  to take part in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Two weeks later (August 23 – 26) children’s literature enthusiasts from around the world will gather at London’s Imperial College for the 33rd IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) International Congress. Here at PaperTigers excitement is also building as we have just learned our editor, Marjorie Coughlan, has been chosen to present her paper at the 33rd IBBY International Congress Parallel Sessions!

The main theme of the 2012 Congress is Crossing Boundaries: Translations and Migrations. Participants will explore how books and stories for children and young people can cross boundaries and migrate across different countries and cultures. The congress will look at issues such as globalisation, dual-language texts, cultural exchange and the art of translation. The programme outline has just been released and can be seen here.

Marjorie’s paper, Escaping Conflict, Seeking Peace: picture books that relate refugee stories, draws attention to picture books in English from around the world about children and young people who have been forced from their homes because of conflict. These are important stories that need to be told, whether they are biographical or fictionalised accounts, for understanding of the past, healing in the present, and hope for the future. Her paper arose in part from PaperTigers’ August 2010 issue that focused on Refugee Children and the abstract for her paper can be read here…. (more…)

Youme,
Mali Under the Night Sky: A Lao Story of Home
Cinco Puntos Press, 2010.

Age 6-9

In Mali Under the Night Sky, Youme beautifully renders the true story of Malichansouk Kouanchao, who, the flyleaf tells us, “walked from Laos to Thailand when she was five years old.” Bordered watercolor paintings capture the simple beauty of her early life in Laos—napping with her family, catching tiny fish in the rice paddies, making spicy traditional foods with her aunts—with key words translated into Romanized Lao as well as the original Lao script.

“But something was changing where Mali lived…Fighting in neighboring countries was bringing danger to the land and the people. Even the birds were disappearing.” Youme pictures a child at the edge of her house, the wide space beyond empty to the horizon. It’s not safe to stay any longer. After a leave-taking that includes the traditional tying of strings around the wrists of each departing family member, Mali, her parents and siblings cross the broad Mekong, offering ritual flowers and rice with prayers for safety. They are met the next day by soldiers and are imprisoned with other refugees. Things look dark, but the strings on her wrists remind Mali of her home, and when she tells the others her happy memories, “their hearts were safe…soag sai—blessings.”

The real Mali, now a beautiful young woman, is pictured on the front flyleaf along with an introduction to her present work as an artist and anti-war advocate. At the back of the book, one of her paintings is reproduced beside her message to young readers: “…when we share about where we have come from, we all find that our homes are safe in our hearts…” A further statement by Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Thavisouk Phrasavath describes the effects of war on children and how books like Youme’s about Mali are a balm to heal those traumas.

Cinco Puntos Press has made a significant contribution in publishing Mali Under the Night Sky. Its tender images and heartfelt words will touch children everywhere. While it ends with Mali in prison, young readers also learn of her subsequent success in life and dedication to healing the wounds of war. The book’s value to Laotian families in diaspora is of course incalculable.

Charlotte Richardson
June 2011

Earlier this year I blogged about Primary Source when they hosted a Global Read of Mitali Perkins‘ book Bamboo People.  On March 2nd Primary Source will be hosting a new Global Read, this time focusing on Christina Diaz Gonzalez‘ YA book The Red Umbrella. The online discussion forum will be followed by a live web-based session with Christina on March 9th from 3:00 – 4:00pm EST.  Anyone interested in global issues is welcome to take part in this free event but must register online here.

The Red Umbrella follows a 14-year-old Cuban girl and her brother sent by their parents to live in the United States during the tumultuous period of 1960s Cuba. Christina says the story was ” loosely based on the experiences of my parents, mother-in-law and many of the other 14,000 children who participated in Operation Pedro Pan.”

Talking about why she wrote the book, Christina says:

“Obviously, this is a personal story and part of my family history. In fact, it’s an important part of American history and yet there wasn’t much written about it, especially from the point of view of the children who experienced it. The book showcases how the U.S. has always been a haven for those seeking refuge from injustice and oppression and how average Americans have stepped up to help those in need, even if they were foreigners in our country. I also wanted to show the pride immigrants (in this case Cubans) have for their homeland, but how, in the end, family is what matters most… home is not a physical place. It’s where you feel you belong, where you are surrounded by people who love and accept you.”

The Red Umbrella has been appearing on many YA book lists since being published in May 2010, including ALA/YALSA’s 2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults. You can read an interview with Christina here, and there is also an amazing book trailer made by Christina’s brother-in-law:

For children caught in the chaos of war and disaster, school is a safe haven, teachers are healers, and books are prized possessions.

As students head back to school, the International Rescue Committee invites you to watch a short video that showcases the important gifts education can bring to a child who is making the journey from harm to home.

Welcome to the Second Part of our Guest Post from photographer and journalist Caroline Irby, whose interview with PaperTigers is also featured in our current issue. If you missed Part One, then head on over there straight away to take a look at her stunning photographs of some of the children from her recent book A Child from Everywhere (Black Dog Publishing (UK), in association with Oxfam, 2010) – and without further ado, here are the rest of the photographs that Caroline has kindly shared with us, along with some of the background to each one.

I’ve taken photographs for the NGO WaterAid a few times in Africa, and their head of photography in London offered to help with this project, knowing that some of their UK-based employees are from overseas. Alexander’s father, Anthony, came forward.

The Community of Malian Refugees introduced me to Oumou’s family, now living in London.

BBC World Service were a brilliant resource: their journalists come from all over the world and I spoke with people working on every different language desk there. A woman on the ‘French for Africa’ desk gave me Boubacar’s contact details.

Daniel’s father was working for a refugee organisation in Scotland, and they put me in touch with him.

I met a Cuban on the London underground; he knew no Cuban children in the UK but did have a Peruvian contact, whom I called and who invited me to a party for Peruvians near Waterloo. There were no Peruvian children at the party born in Peru, but I was given contact details there for a boy called Luis…

I joined an online chatroom for people from St Vincent and the Grenadines living overseas; Andree-Ann’s much older sister responded to my message that I was looking for a young St Vincentian in London, and suggested her younger sister…

I met Emmanuel through an organisation called Refugee Action, which provides support to refugees who have arrived in the UK direct from refugee camps, as part of the UK government’s Gateway Protection Programme.

Bola was the last child I interviewed for this project. After trying all the more obvious routes (the Swazi embassy, South Africans living in the UK, online chatrooms etc), I contacted an independent newspaper in Swaziland, hoping I might find a journalist there who’d studied in the UK and had connections in this country. There I found a man called Welcome, who gave me the number of a Swazi lady living in London.

Oxford University put me in touch with Fiona’s family: her mother is a postgraduate student here.

I met Emilia at her school, in a very multicultural area of Leeds.

The Scottish Refugee Council gave me Fernanda’s details; she was one of the first children I met with.

Thank you again, Caroline, and many congratulations on the arrival of your own baby son in August.

The exhibition of A Child from Everywhere has now closed in London but will be opening in Japan later this month: at Okazaki World Children’s Art Museum from 18th September to 28th November 2010, then at Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo, from 21st December 2010 – 23rd January 2011.

Walking into the Young Adult graphic novel section of the main branch of the public library in my city, I noticed one particular book prominently featured on a stand.  It was Palestine: The Special Edition (Fantagraphics  Books, 2007) by Joe Sacco.  I picked up the book with some interest as our current issue of PaperTigers is all about refugee children.  Palestine is a comic book style rendering of author and artist Joe Sacco’s foray into the Occupied Territories of Palestine during the latter years of the first Intifada in the mid 1990′s.    It is a startling account for its time and place in form and style, particularly for North American readers,  although now — a decade later — it could be said there is more widespread knowledge of  the displacement of Palestinian peoples by the state of Israel.

Palestine was originally a set of 24 to 32 page comic books released every few months from early 1993 to late 1995.   It features a young man who appears like Sacco touring the Occupied Territories, relating his adventures.  After getting his journalism degree in Oregon,  Sacco decided to go to the Occupied Territories because, as he says himself, “I felt compelled to.”   Politically, as an American taxpayer, he felt irked by the thought of his money going to the state of Israel to “perpetuate the occupation” and as a journalist, he felt the state of reportage about the Palestinian people woefully inadequate.  So in the winter of 1991-1992, armed with a camera and notebook, he headed off to the Occupied Territories to begin his quest for journalistic verity — that is, of his own unique making in a form he himself calls “comics journalism.”

Children feature in the various strips.  In a section called “The Boys,” a 15 year old youth named Firas who is a worker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is interviewed.   He is a dedicated stone-thrower like so many Palestinian youth.  When asked about school, he responds, “In the morning, if I go in the streets and see the soldiers, I’ll fight them.  I won’t go to school.”  In another strip, one particularly bright and curious girl of 10 turns the tables on Sacco when she plies him with a barrage of questions like “What does the water taste like in your country?  Do you have the soldiers and the Jews and Fateh and the Popular Front in your country?  Can a man have two wives?”  The girl’s interrogation ends when the grandmother tells her that if she wants, she could marry Sacco in two years when she becomes a woman, to which the girl replies “Why not?”

Many Palestinians are third generation refugees.  Paradoxically, they are the homeless in their own homeland.  Sacco’s rendering of their situation is a deeply moving and compelling account of their world, and is well worth the read.

A young Afghan boy shares his life and dreams for the future with us in The Roses in My Carpets by Rukhsana Khan and illustrated by Ronald Himler (Holiday House, 1998), a beautiful, thought-provoking picture book set in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He doesn’t like school but loves the afternoons he spends weaving carpets from brightly colored threads that all hold special meaning for him: although “Everything in the camp is a dirty brown, so I do not use brown anywhere on my carpets.”

One day his work is interrupted by the shocking news that his sister has been badly hurt. He runs to the hospital. His mother is already there, too distraught to think rationally. Our young narrator takes charge, sending his mother home while he waits for news at the hospital. Fortunately, this being a children’s story, the news is good – which in turn allows for a breathing space that alters the nightmare of conflict he describes at the beginning of the book: that night his dreams open up to allow a tiny space out of danger for him and his beloved family.

Reading a story that includes issues of conflict and hurt needs plenty of thinking and discussion space around it, especially at bedtime – but Rukhsana Khan has written this story so deftly that they too will be comforted by the ending. This wonderful book includes a lot of incidental detail, such as the muezzin calling people to prayer and the boy’s musings about his overseas sponsor. Particularly convincing is the way the boy and his mother can hardly eat at the end of the day, after their terrible fright; and also the reality depicted of a boy who is very mature – who has had to grow up too quickly and take adult responsibilities on his shoulders. The attention to detail also carries over into the fine ilustrations – and young readers, and perhaps adults too, may be particularly struck by the mud buildings in the refugee camp.

I have included The Roses in My Carpets in my Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, which focuses on Refugee Children. Rukhsana also talks about the book in her interview with us last year; and do listen to her reading it here. On her blog, she has been discussing Ramadan recently – and I particularly enjoyed this post with an Afghan fable. Yesterday Aline pointed to some books for children that focus on Ramadan – including another of Rukhsana’s…

And please, please spare a thought for all those caught up in the floods in Pakistan, including Afghan refugees like the boy and his family in The Roses in my Carpets. If you’re looking for a charity who are sending relief, take a look at Sally’s post for some links.

Our current issue of PaperTigers focuses on Refugee Children and one of the highlights in the issue is an interview with author Mitali Perkins about her latest novel, Bamboo People. The novel is about children caught up in conflict in modern-day Burma and, once again, as she has done in her previous novels, Mitali illustrates the tension of characters caught between cultures, but in Bamboo People the backdrop is war, and the stakes are higher than ever. This is Mitali’s first novel to feature male characters and has been receiving rave reviews since it was released on July 1st. Here’s an excerpt from our review of the book:

This fascinating story shines a light on the desperate situation of those affected by current Burmese policies and will help educate young readers about that situation in particular and the vagaries and confusion surrounding conflict in general.  The characters, Perkins’s first male protagonists, are very thoughtful, easy to engage with, and surprisingly similar.  In fact, as a reader, it felt as if Tu Reh and Chiko could have been the same person had circumstances not shaped their lives so differently.  This juxtaposition is absolutely brilliant and illustrates the point that war makes enemies out of people who, in a different context, would become the best of friends.

On Aug 19, from 7 – 8:30 pm, Porter Square  Books in Cambridge, MA, USA will be hosting a book launch party for Bamboo People and Mitali will be in attendance. Everyone is welcome to attend and light Burmese refreshments will be served. For more details click here.  Also be sure to check out Mitali’s blog Fire Escape and her Facebook page as she will be writing about the launch and posting some pictures too, I’m sure!

Our current Book of the Month is Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees by Deborah Ellis, which profiles the stories of 24 young Iraqi refugees, aged 8-19, told in their own words.

Two years ago, Save the Children Sweden and Inma Group South Lebanon worked with Iraqi refugee children in Lebanon to create short animated films. Read more about the project here and watch this video, which I found praticularly thought-provoking. The detailing is superb too – note the unhappy expression on the sun on the cover image…

It is a real privilege to welcome photographer and journalist Caroline Irby to the PaperTigers Blog to share some of the photographs from her recently published book A Child from Everywhere (Black Dog Publishing (UK), in association with Oxfam, 2010), in which she has brought together children from 185 countries now living in the UK. In itself it is quite an achievement, but what makes this project so very special is how Caroline has captured the children in her beautiful photographs, and how they then speak to us in their own words.

You can read an interview with Caroline in our current issue of PaperTigers, in which she talks about the project. Here, she gives us an idea of how widely she had to throw her net to track down children from so many countries. Enjoy these stunning photographs – and we’ll be bringing you more in a second post next month.

I called the Andorran Embassy in London and the Ambassador’s wife agreed to help… Andorra is a tiny country with few nationals living in the UK; it took a few months to find an Andorran child here.

An organisation called Education Leeds gave me the details of a few schools in multicultural areas. One of these yielded Akeilah.

I wanted to reflect the extent of the diaspora of the recent wave of immigration; I’d also never been to the Orkneys and was curious to see so I contacted the Orkney Isles Education Authority and they found me Juan.

The Dominica Embassy in London helped me to track down Alissa.

University postgraduate departments are home to many foreign students; Cardiff University put me in touch with this family from Egypt.

I got talking to someone at a Christmas party about this project; her daughter was at school with Elsabet…

The British army recruits soldiers from Fiji, amongst other countries. I knew of an army barrack in Tidworth village, Hampshire, and contacted the local school, who let me interview a couple of children.

A friend of mine living in Oxford has a daughter who goes to school with Aura…

I noticed a sign reading, ‘Ivoirien Computing and Community Centre’ outside a portacabin on an estate near my home. The man working at reception connected me with Inza’s family.

Cambridge Racial Equality and Diversity Service introduced me to a few recently-arrived children who they give English language support to. Moeko was one of them.

I contacted the Pacific Islands Society and they invited me to a party for Pacific Islanders in London. I met Isabella’s family there.

As Corinne wrote a couple of weeks ago, there is an exhibition of A Child from Everywhere now on in London – or do get hold of the book for yourself: not only for the actual photographs, but also to read the insightful, thought-provoking and sometimes funny observations the children make about their new and old homes. I can’t recommend it highly enough! Thank you, Caroline.