One of the books in our recently announced 2012 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set is the gorgeous Out of the Way! Out of the Way! by the almost-same-named Uma Krishnaswami (author) and Uma Krishnaswamy (illustrator).   I interviewed Author-Uma last year about her hugely entertaining The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, so I caught up with her this last month to ask her a couple of questions about Out of the Way! Out of the Way!, originally published in India by Tulika Books and published this year by Groundwood Books.  (You can read about Illustrator-Uma’s experience creating the book in the Q&A for our Gallery feature of her work.)

Welcome back to the PaperTigers blog, Uma.  What does Out of the Way! Out of the Way! mean to you?

I never understand what a book means to me until quite some time after it’s been published.  I can’t seem to think of it in that way until I’ve gained some distance from the project. On the surface, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! is a simple story, and I am often drawn to simple stories, especially those in which a single action has far-reaching consequences. At another level I suppose it represents my Pollyanna attempt to make things right in this world. In the reality we all inhabit, let’s face it, most of the time, when development demands a road, trees generally lose out. I started out by thinking of the face-off we see so often between human sprawl and green, growing things. The story grew and changed over many revisions and especially over the editorial process at Tulika Books. In the end it became a response to that conflict, questioning it and offering another view.

If you could send it anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?

Well, I’d want to send it to communities on the edges of cities, places where green habitats are rapidly being eaten up by concrete blocks and uncontrolled roads. Places where children and the adults who care for them might feel inspired to look at their environment and begin asking questions about whether and how it’s being sustained. I’m very grateful to Groundwood Books for bringing this book to North America, and to PaperTigers for selecting this title and making it possible for such conversations to take place.

Also, because it was first published in India by the wonderful Tulika Books in English and in eight Indian languages, I’d really like to see sets of regional language editions of the book sent to schools and NGOs in India, in communities where children learn to read in languages other than English.

Thank you, Uma.  You can keep up to date with Uma at her wonderful blog Writing With a Broken Tusk, as well as her website, which currently highlights Out of the Way! Out of the Way! on its landing page.  But don’t go away just yet – the good news is that Uma also has a list of ten favorite  books to share with us for our 10th Anniversary Top 10 series.

A Top 10 of Multicultural favourites by Uma Krishnaswami

I had to think about this. It was difficult to stop at ten!  This list is in no particular order, and includes books across the age range.

~  Indian Shoes by Cynthia Leitich Smith

~  Amadi’s Snowman by Katia Novet Saint-Lot

~  Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke

~  Nabeel’s New Pants by Fawzia Gilani-Williams illustrated by Proiti Roy (originally published by Tulika Books, India as Ismat’s Eid)

~  The Wild Book by Margarita Engle

~  A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

~  Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

~  One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

~  Tiger on a Tree by Anuskha Ravishankar, illustrated by Pulak Biswas

~  Waiting for Mama by Tae-Joon Lee, illustrated by Dong-Sung Kim

I’ve spotted some of my own favorites in Uma’s list too… What about you?  And if you would like to send us a Top 10 of your favorite multicultural books from any genre or theme (we’ll also accept a Reader’s Ten – see Janet Wong’s selection for an explanation), just email me your list to marjoreATpapertigersDOTorg.

During the couple of months since my last update, we’ve included several books for the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge in our reading.

As well as Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I blogged about last week, we have read Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord together, an exciting read from beginning to end. It’s the story of two German boys Prosper and Bo, who, after the death of their mother, run away from the aunt who wants to give a home only to the younger Bo. They go to Venice, because their mother filled them with stories of the city’s magic, and there they end up living in an abandoned cinema with some other stray children, under the protection of Scipio aka the Thief Lord, who is not much older than them. They find plenty of adventure and magic of their own, not to mention a certain amount of disaster and worry, before the story reaches its ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Bedtimes stretched out as we found it harder and harder to put the book down, and it was just as well we reached the school holidays about 80 pages before the end, because we were then able to swallow the last eleven chapters whole in one wonderful morning!

Little Brother (10) has read his non-fiction selection: three of the books in Fifth House Publishers/Fitzhenry and Whiteside’s wonderful The Land is Our Storybook series. Here’s what he says about them:

We Feel Good Out Here by Julie-Ann André and Mindy Willett, Photographs by Tessa Macintosh (2008):

I liked the story about how Atachuunkaii, the man in the canoe tricked a giant called Ch’ii Choo.

The Delta is My Home by Tom McLeod and Mindy Willett, photographs by Tessa Macintosh (2008):

I enjoyed the bit about the muskrat push ups – it was really interesting and I liked the pictures because they were funny – and impressive because Tom McLeod drew them himself.

Come and Learn With Me by Sheyenne Jumbo and Mandy Willett, photographs by Tessa MacIntosh (2010):

I liked the “Clean Socks” story about Ashley and Selena, who was her mum. Sheyenne wrote it – I haven’t read Robert Munsch’s book called Smelly Socks, which is actually what inspired her – but her story is about new socks – also because she can’t get socks where she lives.

All in all: (more…)

As one of the books in our PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge (and I’ll be bringing you a full update on that later on in the week), Younger Brother and I have read together Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (Granta Books, 1990). My brother gave a first edition to my boys several years ago but this is the first time we’ve read it – and I see that it is now available in many editions, with a lovely array of book covers, which I can’t resist including here (and see this project book cover/splash page from Art Slug).

But back to the story. We both adored it. I was practically tied down at bedtimes and made to read on. For any child (or adult) who loves words and playing with language and ideas, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Haroun’s father, the Shah of Blah, has lost his story-telling Gift of the Gab because his wife has left him. Haroun, who has become a little jaded with his father’s focus on fiction himself, soon finds himself in possession of Iff, a Water Genie’s Disconnector and spinning into a spiral of adventures. He discovers that stories are physically real and that the balance of human happiness is being threatened because the menacing land of Chup, where it is always night, is poisoning the Sea of Stories, despite all the attempts to keep it clean by the happy land of Gup across the water, where it is always light…

Haroun meets a wonderful array of characters – as well as Iff, there is Butt, the oxymoronically magical mechanical hoopoe depicted on the book’s cover; Bagha and Goopy, two of the plentimaw fishes who swim in the sea (don’t you just love it?!), Mali the Head Floating Gardener, and many more – and of course, there are also the often shadowy baddies, led by the terrifying Khattam-Shud. Despite all the P2C2E, Processes Too Complicated To Explain (I told you you’d love it!), Haroun finds a way to help his new friends, and in so doing restores the balance of happiness to his own life.

Yes, this is definitely one of the most wonderful readalouds we’ve shared. The prose is like poetry – you almost chew the words. We relished the huge, unanswerable questions that the book explores – what is Reality? What is Story? Who is that character, that person… who am I? – as well as the allegories of light and darkness (which make this so relevant to an adult as well as a young audience), environmental responsibility and empathy. And we revelled in each little bit of wordplay, from character names to gleeful patter.

If your child enjoys stories of worlds within worlds, like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, or the Harry Potter series, they will love Haroun and the Sea of Stories.