Later today we will be launching a new feature here on the PaperTigers’ blog entitled Global Voices. Each month we will be inviting a guest to join us and write three blog posts. The posts will be published on three consecutive Wednesdays within each month under the title “Global Voices”. Our guests, located around the world, are all involved in the world of kid and YA lit and include award winning authors and illustrators, bloggers, librarians, educators and more! It is our hope that through the Global Voices posts we can better highlight the world of multicultural kid lit and YA lit in different countries around the world. The Global Voices line-up for May, June and July is:
Holly Thompson (Japan/USA)
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. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers was selected by the National Council for the Social Studies in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council as ‘A Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2009′. Holly 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
Tarie Sabido (Philippines)
Tarie is a lecturer of writing and literature in the Philippines and blogs about children’s and young adult literature at Into the Wardrobe and Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind. She is also on the staff of Color Online, a blog about women writers of color for children, young adults and adults. Tarie was a judge for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (CYBILS) and the 2010 Philippine National Children’s Book Awards. At the 2010 Asian Festival of Children’s Content, Tarie and I joined Dr. Myra Garces-Bacsal in the panel discussion Building a Nation of Readers via Web 2.0: An Introduction to the Kidlitosphere and the YA Blogsphere.
René Colato Laínez (El Salvador/USA)
René Colato Laínez was born in El Salvador. At the age of fourteen he moved to the United States, where he later completed the MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults at the Vermont College. René is the author of I Am
I had the great pleasure this past weekend of going to Tokyo for two PaperTigers related events — one, to give a talk about PaperTigers to the SCBWI Tokyo chapter, and two, to visit the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Exhibit held annually in Japan at the Itabashi Art Museum. On Friday, July 8 a small but enthusiastic audience of SCBWI members came to my talk at Tokyo’s Women’s Plaza in Shibuya to hear me explain what
PaperTigers is all about. I told everyone how there were three main components to PaperTigers — the blog, the website, and the outreach program. When my focus turned to the SPT outreach program, I was also able to introduce host Holly Thompson’s particular outreach contribution which involved a set of books being donated to the Butterfly School in Cambodia. That was a great plus! After our talk, we had a round of Q and A about PaperTigers and I got to see some of the lovely work of illustrators such as Izumi Tanaka and hear about writer and illustrator Yoko Yoshizawa’s work with the retelling of folktales around the world, using the work of local illustrators. I met Ruth Gilmore, librarian and church worker, and author of kidsermons– a four book series of children’s sermons. I was able to meet with Annie Donwerth Chikamatsu, creator of the wonderful website about Japan called Here and There Japan. And of course, it was quite exciting for all of us to chat about Holly Thompson’s new fundraising project, the Tomo anthology of Japan-related YA fiction, which is now receiving submissions. Check out the Tomo blog as well as Holly’s own blog and website, Hatbooks.
The following Saturday I went to the Itabashi Art Museum to see the 2010 Bologna Book Fair exhibit. The Book Fair exhibit tours
Japan annually. In the Tokyo area, the hosting museum is the Itabashi Art Museum which has been hosting the book fair for thirty years. I was most intrigued by the artwork of the winner of the 2010 International Award for Illustration, Philip Giordano. His illustrations were for a rather fantastical re-telling of the famous Japanese fairytale — Kaguyahime. There were many other wonderful illustrations, but I was a bit dismayed by how few there were from the Americas — south and north. Yet, I was very glad to get a taste of some of the world’s best art for children; it certainly inspired me to think about writing for children in a new way! I picked up the Illustrator’s Annual and have been enjoying browsing through it.
As delightful as my Tokyo visit was, it ended rather soberly with tremors from a 7.3 earthquake that hit Tohoku on the morning of July 10. I was in my cousin’s apartment when things started to sway and shake
