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, enjoyed reading this factual account here, and learning more about the Peace Park in Hiroshima.  He is now determined to make a string of 1,000 cranes himself and send them to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial: full details of how to do this are included in the book.  There are also lots of ideas for other craft projects, though I’m not sure any of us is quite up to making anything like the amazing example shown of pictures made with 1,001 cranes as wedding gifts.  But with such clear instructions, the only difficulty now is choosing which of the 48 pieces of beautiful Japanese chiyogami paper included to make the next crane with…  And we’re thinking of taking up the book’s suggestion of encouraging our local community to create a string of 1,000 cranes together.

Over the last few months, Little Brother has probably read more than all of us put together, but for the purposes of the Reading Challenge, he has read the Spirit of PaperTigers book set as one item on his Challenge list.  He loved Biblioburro, and then finding out more about the library via internet videos etc;  A Child’s Garden has touched him profoundly; and he has read and reread as many of James Rumford’s books as he can lay his hands on, thanks to Rain School.

He has also read Manolito Four-Eyes by Elvira Lindo, illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga and translated by Joanne Moriarty (Marshall Cavendish, 2008).  Here’s what he say about it:

Manolito Four-Eyes is ten years old and he lives in Carabanchel, Madrid, Spain. He says that he wouldn’t manage to write about the first ten years of his life in the next ninety! He’s always falling out with his best friend Big Ears López. Manolito says he can sometimes be a dog or a traitor and sometimes a dog-traitor. He eventually makes friend with Ozzy the school bully.

My favorite bit was in the chapter called “A Pretty Original Sin”, when Manolito and his grandfather meet a mugger who turns out to be from Grandpa’s village.

Manolito Four-Eyes is extrememly funny and if you like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you’ll enjoy this too.

I, meanwhile, have read what I realise is my third non-fiction book  set in the Second World War: The Zoo-Keeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, based on the journals kept by the wife of the head of Warsaw zoo before and during the war.  It’s beautifully written and a very powerful read – shocking and terrifying, and intensely moving.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I’ve also included Uma Krishnaswami’s glorious The Grand Plan to Fix Everything as one of my books – I loved it, and if you missed my interview with Uma as part of her blog tour when the book came out in May, you can read it here.

Uma has herself signed up for The Reading the World Challenge – you can read  her book list here on her own blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk, and why she chose some of them here, in a great Guest Post Uma wrote over at The Brain Lair about being a book traveller or a book tourist …

And Sandhya over at My Handful of the Sky has posted about the books she has read with her daughter: Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine as their non-fiction book, and Oranges in No Man’s Land by Elizabeth Laird, set in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war.  Sandhya has scooped the non-fiction, poetry and local categories of the challenge into one book for her own read, A Poem for CRY - CRY being the non-profit Child Rights and You.

If you are taking part in the Challenge (and there is still probably just about time to squeeze it in before the end of the year, if you haven’t started yet!), do tell us what books you’ve read and leave a link to any posts you write about them.

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 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 an “intuitive publisher”, meaning he publishes what he loves, without worrying too much about the marketability of a project – a privilege most publishers these days don’t have, and one he’s earned after decades of hard work and a successful track record. I have always admired Neal’s imprint, so it was wonderful to learn about which of his books have traveled successfully to/from other countries, even if the majority of the examples given were of books that have traveled between the US and Europe.

I would have liked to learn more about what travels well FROM Asia to the US, Europe, Africa, South America – and why or why not. Perhaps such a panel will be a staple at future AFCC conferences and an indicator of AFCC’s success in spreading the word on Asian content to the rest of the world? I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that.

I left Neal Porter’s presentation with the nagging feeling, which I have had many times before, that we need more culturally sensitive publishers like him in the United States, and the West in general: publishers who realize that, yes, sensibilities about language, topics and illustrations differ from culture to culture, but that if one is open and willing, any country has a plethora of voices and experiences that are bound to resonate with audiences outside its geographical boundaries.

And take a look at this picture taken just after Aline unpacked the box of almost 100 eligible manuscripts for the Scholastic Asian Book Award…

The words on the outside of the shipping box said it all: “Whatever it takes”… (See lower left-hand side of the box.)[...]

When evaluating each manuscript, we were to determine if it was strong; what set it apart from others; if the length, language and subject matter were appropriate for the age group the story was intended for; if there was a balance between dialogue and description, etc. Having worked with and around multicultural books for so many years, I also kept asking myself if the cultural references were authentic, well-researched and naturally incorporated into the stories. I had my eyes very much peeled for stereotypes or cultural misrepresentations, since such mistakes have the potential to negatively influence the minds of young readers in their attitudes toward themselves and others.

While some stories introduced me to details and cultural aspects I was not familiar with, many confirmed how certain experiences and common concerns of children transcend the specifics of language and place: spending summer with a grandparent; dealing with school; trying to fit in; experiencing the loss of a pet, or of a family member… In most stories, I found the universal in the specific.

…The award was won by Uma Krishnaswami for a middle grade novel in verse with the working title Book Uncle and Me… Head on over to the PaperTigers site and read Aline’s complete article.

Thank you, Aline, for sharing your experiences with us. It’s been good to have you back.

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

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.

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.

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…

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!

After reading it, make sure to check out Uma Krishnaswami’s metafictional interview with Poppy, the book’s eleven-year-old protagonist. The fact that Uma read drafts of the novel before it was published gave her a privileged perspective on the character’s evolution from idea to full development. Uma’s interview questions prompt Poppy to reveal how she and her story changed in the process of being written.

What a fun way to get some insight into an author’s creative process! That’s what I call giving voice to a character!…

Does anyone know of other interviews with book characters (keeping in mind our focus on multicultural children’s and ya books)? I know Uma also did one with Amadi, the Nigerian boy from Katia Novet Saint- Lot’s picture book, Amadi’s Snowman… If you’re aware of any others, do let us know!

This project was the 2008 winner of a competition organized by E*LIT (Enriching Literacy through Information Technology), a wonderful project created by the Syracuse University’s Center for Digital Literacy to motivate children (K-12) in Central New York to read, work collaboratively and use technology in productive ways. Each year, from 2004-2009, an author whose work showcases the perspective of an underrepresented population was selected as the competition focus. Uma Krishnaswami was the featured author in 2008, and the Bellevue and McKinley Brighton Elementary students did a wonderful job of using her books as a springboard to learn more about the many facets of India.

If you haven’t seen it yet, head on over to our website to check our current celebration/exploration of Children’s literature from India and the Indian diaspora. And come back to the blog after enjoying the highlighted features to let us know what you think of them!