English-language Asia-set Children’s and YA Fiction ~ by Holly Thompson

Part 2 of 3 (read Part 1 here)

Some years back as we settled into our bicultural family life with young children here in Japan, although we were surrounded by books in Japanese and took full advantage of Japan’s healthy picture book and middle-grade market, we discovered that finding English-language reading material to support our bilingual children was no easy task. Because our children attended Japanese schools, English education happened in our home, and we needed a steady supply of English-language books. But libraries in Japan stock few English-language books, and bookstores here carry very few and at hefty mark-ups, so whenever friends or family visited from the U.S. they brought books to us. Returning from a trip back to the States, our luggage was always heavy with books. We book-swapped with families in Japan, we ordered from Scholastic with our English-after school group, and we pounced on book sale tables at international school fairs. At last, Amazon Japan with free and quick delivery of affordable overseas books came to the rescue.

Always on the lookout for books relating to our lives while raising our bilingual children, we soon became aware of a lack of English-language children’s books that reflect Japan. English-language picture books set in Japan were rare, and those that existed, we discovered, tended toward folktales and nonfiction. Where were the day-to-day stories that reflected the landscapes and people and value systems surrounding us? Where was Japan?

We treasured our Allen Say books, especially Kamishibai Man and Grandfather’s Journey.

We read and reread the bilingual Grandpa’s Town by Takaaki Nomura. We enjoyed folktale retellings like The Seven Gods of Luck by David Kudler and Yoshi’s Feast by Kimiko Kajikawa. and biographical works like Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs by Matthew Gollub. All excellent, but we were discouraged that such English-language titles set in Japan were few and far between.

Searching for other Asian cultures in English-language picture books yielded similar results—folktales, nonfiction and concept books, but few fictional stories set in Asia.

As the children grew older, we came to realize that even less common than English-language picture books set in Asia were English-language middle-grade and YA novels set in Japan and Asia. What we found was mostly historical fiction. Of course we read and loved Korea-set historical novels by Linda Sue Park, Japan-set novels by Lensey Namioka such as Island of Ogres, Geraldine McCaughrean’s China-set The Kite Rider, and Minfong Ho’s Cambodia/Thailand-set The Clay Marble. We had our antennae out searching for Asia-set stories, and this 2009 blog post by librarian and children’s literature specialist Jenny Schwartzburg lists many of the titles we discovered.

But we wanted more. Contemporary realism in all its guises. Fantasy. Humor. Mysteries. Sci-Fi. The full spectrum. We wanted the ordinary everyday life of tweens and teens in Japan and Asia in English. Translations (to be addressed in Part 3 of this 3-part series) would seem to be the solution, but there are so few Japanese, and more broadly, so few Asian children’s and YA books translated into English that our choices were extremely limited.

At long last, though a bit late for our grown children, I think we are beginning to see an upswing. More English-language children’s and YA fiction titles set in Asia, are being published and winning awards. And these are being written not just by authors with limited, surface experience in Asia, but by those with solid footing in Asia such as Candy Gourlay (Tall Story), Mitali Perkins(Bamboo People), and Uma Krishnaswami (The Grand Plan to Fix Everything).

And in many parts of Asia there are laudable efforts in place to nurture English-language, as well as local-language, writers. There are now professional organizations like the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators providing networks and mentoring for English-language writers and illustrators in Asia. There are conferences such as Singapore’s Asian Festival of Children’s Content, the Japan Writers Conference, the Manila International Literary Festival, and Asia Pacific Writers, which will hold its third summit this year in Bangkok. We now have the Scholastic Asian Book Award and the new SingTel Asian Picture Book Award. There are creative writing MFA programs in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and AsiaWrites now announces residencies and opportunities. These are welcomed developments for the future of Asia-set and Asia-related books for children and young adults. Hurrah! An Asia-grown literature boom is long overdue.

Why is it so important to cultivate English-language writers in Asia? Because not only do the vast numbers of English-language readers in Asia need to find Asia in all its manifestations in the books they read, but English-language readers around the world need the opportunity to set foot in the different universes of Asia through literature.

When books are published these days, they travel the world. A book, like a website, goes abroad. A children’s or YA book in English does not only communicate with readers in the country in which it is published but it speaks to English-language readers wherever it may travel. Let’s hope that English-language publishers everywhere will come to realize that Asia, with its huge, diverse and growing population, deserves greater attention and more playing time through Asia-set fiction for children and teens.

Holly Thompson was raised in New England and is a longtime resident of Japan. Her verse novel Orchards(Delacorte/Random House) won the 2012 APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature  and is a YALSA 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults title. She recently edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press), and her next verse novel The Language Inside (Delacorte/Random House) will be published in 2013. She teaches creative writing at Yokohama City University and serves as the regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Visit her website: www.hatbooks.com.  Part 3 of her series will be posted here on the PaperTigers’s blog on May 30. Part 1 can be read here.

PaperTigers is a proud sponsor of the 2012 Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC)  which will take place May 26 – 29 at The Arts House in Singapore.  Lots of exciting events are planned this year; check out the featured speakers and programme by clicking here and the 2012 AFCC trailer here. As well organizers have just released the following information about two Asian Book Awards for children’s literature!

Asian Festival of Children’s Content Announces 2 Asian Book Awards

Asian Content for the World’s Children

 Singapore, 27 April 2012– Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) 2012 announces two Asian Book Awards, Scholastic Asian Book Award and SingTel Picture Book Award.

The Scholastic Asian Book Award is a joint initiative of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) and Scholastic Asia to recognise excellence in Asian children’s fiction. In its 2nd edition, this award showcases the diversity of literary talent within Asia and inspires more Asian-themed books and stories.

The winning manuscript will receive a prize of S$10,000 at the award presentation ceremony on 29 May 2012 during this Festival. It will also be considered for publication by Scholastic Asia. The four nominations for the Scholastic Asian Book Award (SABA) 2012 are, Bungee Cord Hair by Ching Yeung Russell (US), Double Take by Katherine Seow (Singapore), Hidden in Plain Sight by Ang Su-Lin (Singapore) and The Locked Up Boy by  Pauline Loh Tuan Lee (Singapore).

The judges for the SABA 2012 are, Chief Judge Nury Vittachi (Hong Kong), Ken Spillman (Australia), Helen McAleer (United Kingdom), Sayoni Basu (India) and Naomi Kojima (Japan).

In 2011, the winning manuscript was from Uma Krishnaswami, titled, ‘Book Uncle and Me’. Uma will be giving a talk during the Parents’ Forum on ‘Using Multicultural Books to Teach Your Child About the World We Live In’. The first runner up was Marjorie Sayer for the novel ‘The Girl Mechanic of Wanzhou’. [N.B. Papertigers' former editor Aline Pereira was a judge for the 2011 award. Read about her experiences here and see photos from the event here].

Ovidia Yu’s story ‘The Mudskipper’ was the second runner up in the Scholastic Asian Book Award 2011 and will launch at this press conference. ‘The Mudskipper’ has reached the publication stage and will be available at the Festival. Based in Singapore, Ovidia Yu is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer whose plays have been performed locally and abroad. ‘The Mudskipper’ is her first book for children.

AFCC also introduces the inaugural SingTel Asian Picture Book Award. This Award will be presented annually for an outstanding unpublished picture book with a distinctly Asian theme offering a total of S$10,000 for the First Prize consisting of S$5,000 for an author and S$5,000 for an illustrator.

The first award will be given in AFCC 2013. Submissions are now open till 31st December 2012.

This Award aims to inspire the publication of and to propel public’s interest and support for more Asian-themed picture books.

Since my last update on this year’s PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge, we have added some great books to our list.

Together, we have read two new autobiographical picture books: Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory (Scholastic, 2011) and Ed Young’s The House Baba Built (Little, Brown and Company, 2011) – both wonderful, and I’m not going to say much more about them here as we will be featuring both of them more fully on PaperTigers soon. Those are our reading-together non-fiction books for the Challenge.

As our local book, we tried reading a book of folk tales from the North York Moors, where we live in the UK, but discovered the stories formed part of a tourist guide, including instructions for getting around… we extracted what we could but it wasn’t a very satisfactory read. It has made us not take beautifully illustrated and retold folk tales for granted!

Older Brother has read Rainbow World: Poems from Many Cultures edited by Bashabi Fraser and Debjani Chatterjee , and illustrated by Kelly Waldek (Hodder Children’s Books, 2003).  He dipped in and out of it through the summer break and we had to renew it from the library several times…

Older Brother has also been totally captivated by A Thousand Cranes: Origami Projects for Peace and Happiness. After reading the story of Sadako for the Reading Challenge way back in its first year, he’s wanted to know how to make the cranes but I have two left hands when it comes to origami – or at least I thought I did, until I received a review copy of A Thousand Cranes from Stone Bridge Press.  Recently revised and expanded from the original book by renowned origami expert Florence Temko, it’s a super little book, with good clear instructions for beginners like us, and giving background about both the offering of a thousand origami cranes as a symbol of longevity, and specifically the story of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.  Older Brother, now that he is older, (more…)

The deadline for submissions to the 2012 Scholastic Asian Book Award is just under a month away, on 17 October 2011 – 5.00p.m. Singapore time.

The National Book Development Council of Singapore and Scholastic Asia have jointly launched the 2012 Scholastic Asian Book Award (SABA). The award will recognise Asians and writers in Asia who are taking the experiences of life, spirit and thinking in different parts of Asia to the world at large. SABA is awarded to an unpublished manuscript (original or translation) targeted at children of ages 6 to 12 years.

This year’s inaugural award was won by Uma Krishnaswami and we can’t wait to see the book. Former Managing Editor of PaperTigers Aline Pereira was one of the judges: read about her Personal View about the Award and the Asian Festival of Children’s Content, where the Award Announcement was made.

For more information, visit the SABA website.

Aline Pereira is an independent writer, editor and media consultant specializing in multicultural children’s books, and until January this year, she was Managing Editor of PaperTigers, a post she had held since 2004. So we are very happy to welcome her back with a Personal View she wrote following her attendance of the Asian Festival of Asian Content in Singapore in May.

Aline had a special part to play in the Festival as she was one of the judges for the inaugural Scholastic Asian Book Award, along with “Chief Judge Nury Vittachi, journalist and Hong Kong’s best-selling English language author; Anushka Ravishankar, award-winning children’s poet and author (India); John McKenzie, principal lecturer at the School of Literacies and Arts in Education at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand); and literary agent Kelly Sonnack (Kelly grew up in Singapore), from the Andrea Brown Literary Agency (US).”

In her article, Aline shares with us her impressions of the Festival as a whole, and gives us a peek behind the scenes of the award. You can read the whole article here - and here are a couple of extracts to whet your appetite.

The big picture

A consistent thread seemed to run through a good number of the panels and sessions, as well as through informal conversations: “There are plenty of valid ways to produce and deliver a book”. This naturally led to discussions about the enormous changes the publishing world has gone through in the last decade or so, and all the things that have played a part in these changes. And to think that there was a time, not long ago, when people believed the Internet was a passing fad… Now one can only ignore the internet, social media and digital platforms at one’s peril. Without a doubt, these new technologies have affected the way children’s books are acquired, published and marketed, but one of the many things I came away with from those sessions and conversations was that having these new tools, platforms and processes is simply a means, not the end goal. Without losing sight of readers’ needs, the end goal continues to be finding ways to foster the creation, reception, and dissemination of a diverse children’s literature in all genres, mediums and platforms. When it comes to bringing children and books together, it should never be an either/or scenario, but a “the more, the better” one. After all, why get territorial and deaf to voices (platforms, devices) that are not our own? With regards to Asian content, AFCC was a call to join forces in that effort.

One of my favorite sessions was presented by US publisher Neal Porter (Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press) on which types of books travel well to other countries, which don’t, and why. He calls himself (more…)

Uma Krishnaswami, illustrated by Abigail Halpin,
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything
Atheneum, 2011.

Age: 9+

In her exuberant new book, The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, award-winning writer Uma Krishnaswami uses the novel form itself to deconstruct film-making, especially plot development. In the process she creates layers of plot fun for ‘tween girl readers.

Best friends Maddie and Dini are separated when Dini’s physician mom gets a chance to return to India for two years. Through internet and mobile phone technology and her dad’s computer skills, Dini stays connected to Maddie, back in the States, while she attempts to realize their dream scheme: to meet their idol, Bollywood “fillum” star Dolly Singh. Plot reversals abound, of course, but thanks to a conscientious postal worker, an Indian girl with a talent for sound effects, Dini’s tolerant if clueless parents, a bakery that puts chocolate in curry puffs, a singing electric car, and even a goat-herder, not to mention the characters and crises in Dolly’s career and love life, Dini’s dream of meeting Dolly more than comes true.

Dini knows that there is something mysterious about how everything works out in Dolly’s fillums, but orchestrating to her purposes the characters in Krishnaswami’s fictional Indian hill town, Swapnagiri (Dream Mountain), is a big challenge for an 11-year-old–even after Dini learns that Dolly is staying in the very same town. However precocious and however loyal a fan Dini is, she needs vision, luck, courage, energy—and kismet!—to realize her dream. Patterning herself on Dolly in her fillums, Dini aspires to have everything come out right, every dream come true.

Abigail Halpin‘s humorous black-and-white drawings and cover illustration give just the right amount of visual suggestion to young imaginations. Krishnaswami’s lively plot exudes entertaining references. No mention of Mumbai passes without reference to fillum people who still call the city Bombay, for example. Dini’s puzzlement about a grip’s role on a film becomes an extended joke. Her dad’s penchant for nifty phrases introduces homespun English idioms. As Dini follows Dolly’s musical advice to “Sunno-sunno, dekho-dekho” (listen-listen, look-look), she becomes part of the Swapnagiri community and everything does come out right. Krishnaswami’s brilliant, multilayered book will delight her readers. Younger ones will love the story for itself, while older girls will also appreciate her nuanced message, plot dissection, and linguistic in-jokes.

Charlotte Richardson
June 2011

In 2010 the National Book Development Council of Singapore announced the establishment of The Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award. The prize, valued at S$10,000, is to be presented biennially for an outstanding children’s book so as to recognize and to inspire excellence in children’s literature published in Singapore.

Mrs Hedwig Anuar was the first Singaporean Director of the National Library of Singapore, a position she held from 1960 until her retirement in 1988. Though she put in place the foundations of the modern library system in Singapore and made contributions to all aspects of library work, this award recognises her outstanding contribution to children’s librarianship and the promotion of books and reading for children. Mrs Anuar was particularly interested in drawing children to the library, especially the baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s. These people had very little opportunities for education.

Mrs Anuar raised the reading levels of all sectors of Singapore society and especially the children and young people. Numerous programmes were organised to promote the joys of reading. Storytelling sessions for young children, lectures and classes for students and cultural events for the general public were daily affairs at the libraries even then. She was the key inspiration behind setting up the Asian Children’s Collection at the National Library which has now become an outstanding research centre for Asian Children’s Literature.

On May 27th the inaugural Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award winner was announced at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content. I was thrilled to attend the evening event which consisted of the Singapore Children’s Literature Lecture followed by the Awards Presentation. The ceremony took place in the historic Chamber Room of  The Arts House and was attended by approximately 200 including Mrs. Anuar. Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, H.E. Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta delivered an inspiring lecture and then presented the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award to The Book That was Handed Down written by Yixian Quek, illustrated by Grace Duan Ying and designed by Goh Caili.

The inaugural Scholastic Asian Book Award winner was also announced: Uma Krishnaswami. Uma was unable to attend the event so author Pooja Makhijani accepted the award on her behalf. Former Managing Editor of PaperTigers, Aline Pereira, was a member of the judging panel for this award. I’ll post more details about it in the upcoming days as unfortunately it is time right now for me to pack my bags and depart lovely Singapore. However, in the meantime, be sure to read  the blog tour for Uma’s new book  The Grand Plan to Fix Everything.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the PaperTigers blog and what could be a better way to celebrate than to be welcoming author and fellow-blogger Uma Krishnaswami on this the third leg of what promises to be a scintillating blog tour for her new book The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, illustrated in black and white by Abigail Halpin and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers. You can find out more about the illustration process from yesterday’s stop on the Blog Tour, when Abigail Hilpin met up with Joy Chu over at Got Story? Count Down, along with a few other surprise guests. And don’t miss Uma’s insightful interview from Day 1 with Cynthia Leitich Smith over at Cynsations (where it’s so good to learn that there is a grand plan for a 2012 sequel to The Grand Plan to Fix Everything).

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything is a middle-grade novel that will have its readers laughing aloud as they encounter a cast of characters who become closely knit through coincidence and accidents or deliberations of circumstance. We will be publishing a full review of the book soon, in the meantime here’s a brief introduction from its blurb before we meet Uma herself:

“Eleven-year-old Dini loves movies – watching them, reading about them, trying to write her own – especially Bollywood movies. But when her mother tells her some big news, it does not at all jive with the script of her life she has in mind. Her family is moving to a tiny village in India, far from her best friend Maddie and the grand plans they’ve made for the summer.

So now, Dini is hard at work on a new script, the script in which she gets to meet the amazing Dolly Singh, Dini’s all-time favorite Bollywood star. But life is often more unpredictable than the movies, and when Dini starts plotting her story things get a little out of control.”

…and here’s the book’s trailer, put together by Uma’s son, Nikhil Krishnaswamy:

Uma, thank you for dropping by the PaperTigers blog. Right in the inside jacket it says: “they’re moving to a teeny, tiny town that Dini can’t even find on a map: Swapnagiri. It means Dream Mountain, a sleepy little place where nothing interesting can happen..” Well, by the end of the story, no one is going to agree with that final statement – but I have to admit, I did try looking Swapnagiri up on a map and I couldn’t find it. Is Swapnagiri a real place or did you invent it? Can you tell us something about the locations in the book and your connection with them?

Dini couldn’t find Swapnagiri on a map (and she’s pretty thorough) so of course, neither can you. All right, all right, I made it up!

It’s based loosely on several hill towns in a real region of south India, the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains. So the mountains are real, but the town is made up. The house Dini and her family live in is real, but the tea estate is made up. That is a tea-growing area, though, so that was an easy fictional step to take. My family lived in that part of the country when I was very young. I don’t remember it, as we left there before I turned two, but I heard about it often as I was growing up. I visited it later and fell in love with that house. It seemed to be crying out loud to be placed in a story.

As for Takoma Park, Maryland, my husband and I lived in the DC suburbs for nearly twenty years before we moved to New Mexico. Of all the suburban communities in that area, Takoma Park seemed the right one to place Dini and her family in.

Reading the book gives a sensation of worlds within worlds, so that by the end readers may well be questioning themselves about the notion of reality – also bearing in mind that the book itself is a work of fiction. How easy was it to jump between the different levels of reality in your writing?

Oh, I don’t think I even realized I was doing that until several rounds into the process. Then when I did begin to sense it, I found that I could play with the notion. That’s how all the commentary on film and filmmaking came to be. That’s when Dini began to make little asides on her life as a movie. But I do think that it began with that part in the opening chapter about Swapnagiri not being detectable on a map.

I think my inspiration for this came from the P.G.Wodehouse books I read growing up. They’re spoofs of a small social setting seen from close up—but then there’s a pig, and newts, and hordes of batty people. The whole thing is not so much realistic as idealized. If I’ve managed even a tiny, tiny fraction of what Plum accomplished in those wonderful books, I would be a happy woman.

As soon as you say that, I can totally see it. Just you have monkeys, goats and a peacock – and hordes of batty people! And I came away from reading the book with just the same sunny outlook on life that reading Wodehouse engenders.

There were a couple of places where I laughed aloud because you allow the reader the conceit of knowing what is going to happen before the characters do – and then turn those expectations on their head. Was this intentional and what do you think it adds to the notions of kismet and coincidence that run through the book?

That’s a very perceptive observation. I wish I could say that I plotted those bits out carefully and then wrote them. But the truth is that I wrote some very messy drafts and then combed through them looking for cues. When I found some that I could turn on their heads like that, I was delighted. I worried for a while that scattering so many chapters about without Dini in them would drain all suspense, but then I remembered something that E.M.Forster said. He wrote it about fantasy but it applies equally to many kinds of fiction: The writer, Forster says, “manipulates a beam of light which occasionally touches the objects so sedulously dusted by the hand of common sense, and renders them more vivid than they can ever be in domesticity.” I hope I’ve found that beam of light in this book.

Much of the novel revolves around friendship – maintaining a friendship across different time-zones; realising that making new friends does not have to mean being disloyal to older ones; “Giving an inch” when it matters; and being open through “listen-listening, look-looking” to finding friendship in unexpected places. There are no “baddies” in the story, except by proxy, as it were, from descriptions of Dolly’s films, but lots of people are feeling harassed by a variety of circumstances. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

I think that a story finds its own trajectory, when the writer establishes the right premise and manages to place the right combination of characters on its stage. I often feel as if I’m inviting a range of characters to come audition for a story, and then when they show up and start talking I can figure out if they’re going to last or not. So what can I say? No real baddies showed up. I don’t think any were needed. On the other hand, if there were, say, criminals hanging around in Swapnagiri (and maybe there are a few) they’d have their own stories and they’d be forgiven in the end. It’s that kind of place.

There is absolutely nothing didactic about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything but “listen-listening, look-looking” readers will learn some interesting facts about India. How do you generally approach conveying the cultural aspects of what you are writing?

Seamlessly, to the extent I can. I try to refrain from giving explanations unless the story needs them. I never use the shorthand convention of using a parenthetical comma phrase to translate from an Indian language into English. I try to make everything clear in context, so that there are no gratuitous facts strewn about for their own sake. I trust my readers. Young people are capable of “listen-listening” and “look-looking” with their whole bodies and minds with an ease that we adults have to make an effort to recapture. Maybe they tend to do so in smaller snatches than adults, but still, I trust them to connect the cultural dots in the story.

Are you a “true fan” of Bollywood films?

Not really. My father was of the opinion that no good films had been made in India past around, oh, let’s say 1949. So Hindi movies were not standard fare. But if you grew up in north India in the 60’s the music was everywhere, so the ethos of the movies got to you whether you knew it or not. I did watch several rather wonderful movies, and skimmed through some that didn’t grab me as much, while I was writing the book.

Your writing very much reflects the narrative’s focus on film, whether it’s Dini’s preoccupations with film-scripting the events around her, or the make-believe Bollwood world of her beloved “fillums”. Did you approach writing the novel as though you were writing a script, with locations, dialogues, props?

I approached it through Dini’s sensibility, and that in turn led me to thinking (as I watched those “fillums”) about the narrative voice that sometimes shows up in Hindi movies. In Lagaan, for example. It’s a sonorous kind of voice, with a high degree of omniscience, and it inserts commentary on the story at intervals along the way. That was the kind of voice that in the end spliced the events of the novel together for me. It was less a conscious effort to mimic the movie form and more that I had certain instincts—short scenes, that wacky narrative voice, cutting away from scenes to follow letters and e-mails and so on. At some point along the way I gave up trying to control the plot and instead followed those instincts.

Wouldn’t it be great if The Grand Plan to Fix Everything was made into a film! If you were in charge, how would you go about it?

Well, Dolly and Mr. Soli Dustup could probably pull it off. Wait—they’re characters in the book! Too bad. I did have a dream once in which the story became an animated film, but I’m a bit foggy on the details, on account of waking up in the middle.

Can you tell us what your plans are following The Grand Plan to Fix Everything’s release, and do you already know what you’re going to write next?

I’m working on a couple of novel projects right now that are still taking shape. They’re amorphous enough that I’m worried if I talk them out they’ll vaporize! And I always have a couple of picture book projects in the hopper, but again, they’re in the early stages.

I can tell you that my picture book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! published last year in India by that little press with a big vision, Tulika, is to be published in a 2012 North American edition by Canadian publisher Groundwood Books. That’s very exciting to me, as we generally tend to see subrights sold in the other direction, with books published first in the US and then in overseas editions.

That really is great news about Out of the Way! Out of the Way! -we’ll certainly be looking out for it next year. And I just can’t resist this one final question about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Chocolate is prominent in the story – in fact, my mouth was watering at various points in the book – what’s the story behind the curry puffs? Can you possibly point us towards a recipe?

When I was younger than Dini is in the book, we lived in Delhi. My family hardly ever ate out, but every now and then my aunt Viji, my father’s sister, would take me shopping to Connaught Place which was at the time the major shopping center. Now Delhi has all kinds of fancy malls and whatnot but back then CP was it. We’d go to a restaurant called Nirula’s which still exists. And I would order curry puffs. http://nirulas.in/images/products/large/681-b.jpg. They call them “vegetable patties” now but I’m pretty sure they were called “curry puffs” back in my time.

Mr. Mani of course adds his own secret ingredient. I must confess that when I threw that secret ingredient into the novel, I was quite pleased with myself. It added just the right touch of eccentricity, not to mention cultural fusion. I didn’t for one minute stop to think that I might actually have to make the things some day. Now, with people asking if I could possibly share the recipe, or even bring a batch or two for book events, I’ve had to test it in real life. Yes, it works. Whew! For your culinary delight, there is a recipe in the activity kit on my website.

Yum! Thank you, Uma. It’s been such a pleasure hearing all about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Enjoy the rest of your Blog Tour – we certainly will! But wait, we’re not quite finished yet… Cue drumroll:

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything is celebrating its launch with a Grand Giveaway! Three lucky Grand Prize winners will each receive one copy of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything along with a starry assortment of bangles and trinkets that Dolly Singh, famous famous Bollywood movie star, would adore! An additional 3 runners-up will receive a copy of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything.

To enter, send an e-mail to GrandPlanGiveaway@gmail.com. In the body of the e-mail, include your name, mailing address, and e-mail address (if you’re under 13, submit a parent’s name and e-mail address). One entry per person and prizes will only be shipped to US or Canadian addresses. Entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on 30th June 2011. Winners will be selected in a random drawing on 1st July 2011 and notified via email.

Shortly we will be moving on to a new update on the main PaperTigers website – but, of course, there’s still time to explore Children’s Literature from India and the Indian diaspora, if you haven’t already, and the features will remain readily available via the permalink to the October/November homepage.

And just to remind you of the wealth of resources and sheer joyful reading out there, here’s a glimpse at some recent blog posts from that rich and varied Indian diaspora, as well as India itself:

Find reviews of Signature: Patterns in Gond Art, edited by Gita Wolf, Bhajju Shyam and Jonathan Yamakami (Tara Books, 2010) and The Yellow Bird by Lila Majumdar, illustrated by Ajanta Guhathakurta and translated by Kamala Chatterjee over at Saffron Tree. Both books sound and look wonderful…

Read this post from author Uma Krishnaswami, in which she muses on cultural perspectives, and on making unfamiliar words clear through their context in a story…

Mitali Perkins is (sort of) on her winter break from her blog (her back-posts are still worth perusing, though) BUT you can read a new interview with her over at Color on Line, conducted by Tarie of Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind…

A recent post on Pratham Books’ blog, Revamping Mythological and Traditional Indian Stories, will be of particular interest to graphic novel fans; and they also have lots of news and photos from the recent Bookaroo in the City festival in New Delhi…

In the Personal Views section of PaperTigers this issue, is a piece by Indian children’s book writer Uma Krishnaswami entitled “Returning to Essential Questions.”  Intrigued by the article, I sought out what books I could find of Krishnaswami’s at my local library and discovered Shower of Gold: Girls and Women in the Stories of India (Linnet Books, 1999) illustrated by Maniam Selven.  Shower of Gold contains 18 traditional stories retold by Krishnaswami about women and girls of India.  There are Buddhist stories and Hindu ones; some are taken from mythology, others are folktales and some are a combination of history and legend.   This is exactly the kind of book I like to read for myself at bedtime so I delved into it well before reading it to my daughter.

Krishnaswami gives a comprehensive introduction to all the stories at the beginning of the book, and each story has a note after, explaining its cultural and geographical origins as well as where Krishnaswami first encountered the tale.  These notes were very helpful.  At the back of the book is a list of characters — also very helpful especially for those stories dealing with the Hindu and Buddhist pantheon of gods and deities — and a pronunciation guide and glossary.

What stories did I like?  “The Goddess and the Girl” is about a young daughter whose parents are on pilgrimage to visit a goddess from whom they hope to receive the blessing of a son; however, when their daughter goes missing, they are suddenly made aware of the importance of their girl-child and change their minds.  The legend of “The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” recounts the story of Queen Lakshmibai who dared to fight the British.  “The Magic Tree” is about a virtuous daughter-in-law who suffers mercilessly under her mother-in-law’s thumb, until finally the mother-in-law gets her just desserts when tangling with two demon women, rakshasis, in their magical tree.   These were but some of the eighteen stories that I enjoyed reading.  Shower of Gold is a great collection, well worth a few bedtimes of reading for sure!