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Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, is one of the most important festivals of the Hindu calendar and is celebrated by Hindus—and also by Jains, Sikhs and some Buddhists—all over the world. An important aspect of the celebrations, the lighting of earthen diyas and the burning of firecrackers symbolize the triumph of light over darkness.

There are several legends about the origins of Diwali. In Festival of Light: Deepavali Legends from Around India Canadian-Indian academic of Hinduism, Radhika Sekar, brings the adventures of Hindu gods and demons to life with a selection of these legends, written for children age 6 and older. Whereas the story behind Diwali varies from region to region, its deep spiritual meaning is the same: a celebration of one’s inner light.

For more on the history, traditions and significance of the festival, check this website. For more children’s books on Diwali, see this post.

Happy Diwali to all who celebrate this beautiful holiday!

The Jane Addams Peace Association and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom are pleased to announce that the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award 56th Annual Award Ceremony will be held on Friday, October 16th at 2:30 PM at the 777 United Nations Plaza (2nd Floor) in New York City, NY. This event is free and open to all. Reservations are not needed.

Join us for a memorable afternoon of award presentation and responses by authors and illustrators. Come meet and talk with the honored guests, including Award winner Margarita Engle and honorees Anne Laurel Carter, Lucía González, Lulu Delacre, Scott Reynolds Nelson, and Marc Aronson. Enjoy a reception and an opportunity for book signing after formal presentation of the awards. All the award books will be available for purchase.

The Award Winners:

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola is the winner in the Books for Younger Children Category.

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.

The Honor Books:

Books for Younger Children:

The Storyteller’s Candle/La velita de los cuentos written by Lucía González and illustrated by Lulu Delacre

Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad written and illustrated by James Rumford

Books for Older Children:

The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter

Ain’t Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson with Marc Aronson

For additional information about the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and a complete list of books honored since 1953, click here.

In 2008 Ballet Manila staged a three-part production inspired by some of Lola Basyang’s tales. Penned by Severino Reyes, Lola Basyang’s granny figure is one of the most beloved characters in Filipino literature. The three stories chosen for the ballet were published by Anvil Publishing, retold by Christine S. Bellen and illustrated by Frances Alcaraz.

A forum, “Pages to Pirouettes: Exploring Visual Literature in Ballets,” was also held in connection with the ballet opening. I asked Frances Alcaraz, whose gallery feature is currently highlighted on the PaperTigers website, to tell us a little bit about the project and her involvement in it. These pictures and words are what she shared with me:

The “Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang” ballets were the first theatrical adaptation of the books that stayed faithful to the source. The director of Ballet Manila, Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, and her production team chose three books from the 15 books in the series. All three books happened to be illustrated by me and since dance is also very a visual art, they asked if I would be involved in the process.

To help promote the ballets, we held a forum and exhibit at the Ateneo De Manila University. The speakers at the forum discussed the visual process of translating the books into ballets. I talked about the process of illustrating the books. Macuja-Elizalde, who was also one of the choreographers, discussed the considerations of translating the works into ballets and Jonathan Janolo, the production designer, discussed the challenges involved in staging the ballets.

For “Mahiwagang Biyulin,” the choreographer wanted a gigantic version of the book to be the background, so I recreated the book without the characters. At the finale, all three book covers appeared on stage along with some pages from inside the book.

Comparing these photos, from “Kapatid ng Tatlong Marya” (The Brother of the Tree Marias) and “Mahywagang Biyulin” (The Enchanted Violin), with the ones shown on Frances’ gallery, we see how beautifully her illustrations came to life on stage! Thanks for sharing these images and words with us, Frances, and congratulations on your and Ballet Manila’s fantastic work!

photos: ©Ballet Manila

Now, more than ever, other countries and customs affect our everyday lives, wherever we live, making it crucial to teach our children about the wealth of cultures our world is home to.

This time, our newly added website features focus on the Philippines, whose unique history and complex cultural amalgamation have created a rich legacy borne out in its children’s literature.

By paying tribute to both old and new narratives in English from and about the country, and to the talented writers and illustrators who bring them to life, we hope to encourage readers to explore the bigger—much bigger!—picture of children’s literature from the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora.

Please keep in mind that we will continue to explore the topic here, on the blog, through the end of November, so make sure to stop by again to join in the conversation! We are counting on your feedback—and really appreciate your help with spreading the word on these features, too.

Heartfelt thanks are very much in order to Filipino editor and English teacher Tarie Sabido, who blogs at Into the Wardrobe, for her interviews and book review contributions. Thanks a million, Tarie!

Amy Bowllan at Bowllan’s Blog has a series of posts titled “Writers Against Racism,” in which she asks authors about their experiences of racism and their opinion on the ways in which literature can be used to combat its effects. The ongoing series so far includes interviews with Zetta Elliot, Mitali Perkins, David Yoo, Neesha Meminger, Tanita S. Davis, and many more. In one of the August installments, Bowllan interviewed children’s literature specialist—and PaperTigers contributor/consultant—Laura Atkins. Laura’s views on the topic are very interesting, and partly informed by years of working in the children’s publishing industry developing multicultural picture books (her insightful paper “What’s the Story? Reflections on White Privilege in the Publication of Children’s Literature,” has recently become available online).

Laura says on her blog of the “Writers Against Racism” series: “The questions and answers reveal how the personal and the political are intimately linked. Each person has their own experiences, their own stories to tell—and all of us have connected to and through literature as a way of combating racism.” I can’t imagine a more effective weapon than literature in this worthwhile battle. Can you?

Take a look at this evocative article written by Sally for Canada’s The Globe and Mail.

She brings alive the joy of summer-reading and discusses Moomin-creator Tove Jansson’s modern classic, The Summer Book.

Sally also poses the question, “What are you reading this summer?” - has this been a time for reducing those piles of must-read books in your household? And if, instead, you are emerging from winter-time, has there been some opportunity to escape into a good book?

In our family, Little Brother has been as voracious a reader as ever; and it has been a relief to find Older Brother with his nose in a book at every opportunity too. Discovering Anthony Horowitz’ Alex Rider series, as well as various graphic/cartoon books has definitely helped here…

“Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us,” says Dr. Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at the Boston Conservatory, in a beautiful speech from 2004 that has now made its way through the internet. And the same could be said—has been said—of good literature. So now imagine the effects of literature and music combined!

To help children begin to explore this powerful pairing, I suggest you take a look (if you haven’t yet done so) at the features currently highlighted on our website. I also recommend reading Paulnack’s speech on the value of music in its entirety. Here’s another excerpt, as way of enticement:

“I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.”

Southeast Asia’s literature is as rich and diverse as the region itself, but unfortunately, there’s still a derth of books for children by Southeast Asian authors translated into English. Even when they are written in English by Southeast Asian writers, such as the books by Singaporean Shamini Flint and Malaysian Margaret Lim), they rarely find their way into the US or other English speaking countries. It’s fairly easy to find factual books or folktale retellings, but the majority of the books in English related to the region are written by European or American authors.

PaperTigers this week joins many other bloggers on a virtual tour of children’s literature from/about Southeast Asia by pointing readers to reviews and blog posts written by our team:

Former PaperTigers blog contributor Janet Brown has looked closely at the book Happiness of Kati, by Thai writer Jane Vejjajiva. Aimed at 12+ year-olds, the book was the first children’s book to win the S.E.A. Write Award, given to the best literature by Southeast Asians. Read Janet’s three posts about the book (1, 2, 3), as she gets deeper into the beautifully layered story of a Thai girl and her family. And for an interesting look on the world of children’s books in Thailand, read the transcript of a paper by Jane Vejjajiva, presented at the IBBY Congress, in 2008.

Reviewed by Charlotte, The Killing Sea (Simon & Schuster) by lifelong Bali resident Richard Lewis is a fictionalized account of the impact of the 2004 Tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, particularly in the lives of two teenagers caught up in the tragedy. Lewis’ The Flame Tree, also set in Indonesia in post 9/11, is another important title, as it helps dispel stereotypes, especially common since then, about the Islamic world.

The Bee Tree

The round-up of the Southeast Asia blog tour, with links to all participating posts, will be posted at Chasing Ray on Wednesday, 08/12 (which means bloggers still have time to send in their posts!). We are looking forward to finding out what others have contributed to the feast!

Perhaps it’s because she shares her name with the title character that my daughter just loves the “Emma” picture books by award-winning author Margriet Ruurs. Emma, the book version that is, is a hen with personality, persistence and pluck. Her barnyard adventures are hysterical to both young and old readers and as one reviewer says “Emma is a hapless heroine who always seems to triumph in the end – a true role model for the underdog.”

I love the Emma books too: however, my favorite book by Margriet is My Librarian is a Camel. Inspired by a newspaper article, this book describes unusual mobile libraries found in thirteen countries, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. Besides bookmobiles, this book shows librarians using animals (camels, horses, donkeys, elephants), bicycles, and even a wheelbarrow, to bring books to children in hard-to-reach areas. Complete with world map and text boxes with country information, this book received the International Reading Association’s Notable Book for Global Awareness recognition and has led to schools adopting mobile libraries projects around the world.

Following a similar photo-essay format, Margriet’s newest book My School in the Rain Forest: How Children Attend School Around the World is now available! Several years in the making, this book shares stories and information about many countries around the world and how children attend school. Readers get to know students — from the arid plains of southern Afghanistan to the rain forests of Guatemala — who are pursuing their dreams of a brighter future. At a school that sits on the edge of the Sahara, students are learning to speak English from a teacher who stands in front of a Webcam in North America. In another part of the world, kids aren’t waiting to ride the bus to school — they are waiting to hop in a boat that will take them to a school that floats on a river. And some kids don’t mind heights, especially those who attend a school on the slope of a mountain in the Himalayas, in one of the most remote corners of the earth.

Margriet often does school visits and will be doing slideshow presentations about her travels and the making of this book. Keep an eye on her blog and hopefully she will share some of the details with us.

The winners of our second “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” book draw are Morgan and Alastrin, from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Their prize—a selection of 5 multicultural books—will be on its way shortly. Thanks, Kathleen, for submitting a photo of their bookshelf. It’s wonderful to see a two- and a three-year-old already hooked on books!

All photo entries, excluding previous winners’, are entered in our bimonthly draw, regardless of when they were submitted, so we encourage you to send us a picture of your kid/kids’ home library (whatever format it may take in your household). We look forward to featuring it here and to further connecting through books and reading!

To see all bookshelf photos submitted to date, click on the “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” logo on the sidebar, and for more details on the project and the idea behind it, check out our call-out , as well as Janet’s post “Looking at Bookshelves and Wondering“.

Coleen Mondor (Chasing Ray), Liz Burns (A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy) and other bloggers are organizing a new “One Shot World Tour,” a multi-blog effort to promote children and ya literature from/about different parts of the world.

Some of you might remember their Australia edition in 2007, and the Canada one in 2008. This time they encourage everyone to explore Southeast Asia. Needless to say, we will be joining in on the fun (there’s even rumor of an interview with PaperTigers, which will be such an honor for us!). The round-up of posts will be hosted by Chasing Ray on Aug 12, so if you have book reviews, interviews or other content that relate to the region by way of author, illustrator or theme, make sure to send them your permalinks. For the sake of this project, the focus will be on: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines, so don’t miss out on the chance to participate and share your old favorites and/or new discoveries with all of us!

Whenever I visit Jama’s Alphabet Soup, I feel hungry - and today is no exception! She’s hosting today’s Poetry Friday with a bowl full of peaches, as well as a poem to go with them, to feed the soul!

The poem I’ve chosen today is about food too - but it’s an elephant doing the eating and I’m not sure that I would exactly want to join in with his feast… Elephants are, however, my absolute favorite animal and I can’t resist sharing this one with you today:

Little Elephant Swaying

Little elephant swaying.
Growing up breathing fresh air
And eating fresh branches.
Little elephant,
Swaying this way and that,
Eating the heart of the kia plant.

It’s a nursery rhyme from India, translated from Hindi, and is included in Floella Benjamin’s lovely anthology Skip Across the Ocean: Nursery Rhymes from Across the World, richly illustrated by Sheila Moxley (Frances Lincoln, 2007/8). The rhymes really do come from all over the world - and many of them are given in their original langauge too, which makes this a particularly intriguing book for young children, especially as, being nursery rhymes, there’s plenty of onomatopoeia to play with. The rhymes are divided into four sections: Lullabies, Action Rhymes, Nature and Lucky Dip. In her introduction, Floella says:

“Rhymes are children’s first introduction to rhythm, poetry, music and the world around them. [...] They explore feelings and help children to develop important social skills while passing on cultural values and traditions to the next generation.”

By dipping into so many different cultures, this great book broadens the horizons of young children, and gives them the opportunity to have great fun with sounds and rhythms in other languages. What a feast!

Five year-old Shashank, the winner of our first “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” book draw, received his books! The following is a note from his father:

The books have arrived, and they are so wonderful! Thank you very much! I have already read them several times to Shashank. His favorite one is ‘Homes,’ and the page he likes the most is the one where crying clouds make rain!. Take a look at all the new books on our bookshelf!

Thanks for the feedback, Prashanth! It’s great to see Shashank smiling, with his new favorite book in hand!

Readers, take note: on Jul 15th we will draw a new winner, so keep sending us photos of your children’s bookshelves. They could be the next to win a set of age-appropriate multicultural books!

Here is a list of the books we sent to Shashank:

Homes, by Yang-Huan, illustrated by Hsiao-yen Huang

Speak Chinese, Fang Fang! written and illustrated by Sally Rippin

No English by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Amy Huntington

Colors, Colores! by Jorge Luján

Loongie, The Greedy Crocodile by Lucy and Kiefer Dann, illustrated by Bronwyn Houston

Well, we knew it would be a success and it was! Check out Grace Lin’s blog to read and see photos of her recent book launch party for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Congratulations, Grace!

Also, be sure to check out Grace’s charity project, Small Graces: A Painting a Month for the FCB. Each month this year, she is auctioning off a piece of her artwork to benefit the Foundation of Children’s Books, a small, non-profit organization in Boston that makes a big difference in the lives of young readers by bringing children’s book authors and illustrators into under-served schools in Boston for visits and residencies. This month’s auction takes place June 15th - 19th and features a lovely original painting by Grace depicting the Chinese proverb “Flowers leave their fragrance on the hand that gives them”.

Award-winning author/artist Belle Yang has skillfully drawn on family history and anecdotes to write and illustrate highly praised books for children, including Hannah Is My Name (2004), selected as a National Council for the Social Studies Notable Book for Young People, and Always Come Home to Me (2007), winner of the 2008 Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award.

This 6-minute cut of a documentary called “My Name is Belle” (the story behind Hannah is My Name), reveals Yang’s story of emigrating from Taiwan to the United States with her parents, in 1967 (after spending some years in Japan), where she adopted an American name, a new language, and had to adjust to a new culture.

Foo, The Flying Frog of Washtub Pond, a fable crafted from an Asian folktale and a real occurrence in her life, is her most recent picture book. She just completed the manuscript for Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy, a graphic novel to be published in 2010 by W. W. Norton. Forget Sorrow will be the third book in her wonderfully illustrated non-fiction trilogy, which includes Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders and The Odyssey of a Manchurian. Whether aimed at children, teens or adults, Yang’s stories always succeed in their exploration of Chinese culture, the plight of immigrants in America and the complexity of relationships within families.

For more about Belle Yang, check out her gallery on PaperTigers, and visit her website. And for more prize-winning books and book creators, our website’s new features should prove a treasure trove.

The new issue of PaperTigers, focusing on Children’s Book Awards, is now live! The homepage welcomes readers with a quote from Astrid Lindgren, whose Memorial Award is among the most prestigious in the world:

Somewhere inside the secret rooms of the soul a child, alone with a book, creates personal images that surpass everything else. Such images are necessary for human beings. The day
that children’s imaginations no longer have the energy to create them will be the day when the human race becomes poor. All the big things that happened in the world happened first in the imagination of one person, and how the world of tomorrow will look depends largely on the measure of imaginative power in the minds of those who right now are learning how to read. That is why children need books.

Lindgren’s powerful words leave no doubt as to the importance of children’s books… But how do we find the best books, if we can’t read them all? That’s one of the reasons why we need book awards.

Our newly-added features highlight prize-winning books, book creators, and the many awards that honor them and help the shining light of great stories reach near and far… Some of the new features include: interviews with Américas Award Coordinator, Julie Kline; Asian/Pacific American Award Committe Chair, Dora Ho; and Jane Addams Award Committee Chair, Susan C. Griffith. Plus opinion pieces by Malathi Michelle Iyengar and Mitali Perkins, illustrators’ gallery features, and more. Enjoy them, and let us know what you think!

We’ll also be further exploring the theme of children’s book awards, here, on the blog, for the next two months, so check back often for more treats and information!

image credit: © Wen Hsu, winner of the 2009 NOMA Concours Grand Prize

Cristy Burne, winner of the 2009 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, has set up a blog to track the progress of her novel Takeshita Demons from winning the award through to publication. She is running a series of blog posts featuring a questionnaire completed by each of the people on the shortlist - check out the first one, Folake Idowu of Nigeria, who wrote the intriguing-sounding Gbenga and the Reticent Chromosome, and who also has a blog… These interviews will be well worth following - voices of new writers from across the world!

With Korea being a focus for PaperTigers, I’ve chosen a book called In the Moonlight Mist retold by Daniel San Souci (illus. Eujin Kim Neilan)  published in 1999.  This delightfully illustrated picture book is a retelling of a folktale about a virtuous woodcutter who saves the life of a deer from hunters.  The deer rewards him with the knowledge of how to attain a wife.  There is a pond in which heavenly maidens bathe; if the woodcutter hides the clothes of one of the maiden’s, he will have her as his wife.  Troubled by having to commit such trickery, the woodcutter consults his ageing mother about what to do.  She advises her son to do as the deer instructs.  Luckily for the woodcutter, the heavenly maiden whom he selects falls in love with him.  But such a union, of course, cannot last and soon, the maiden begins to pine for home.  What will the woodcutter do?

Folktales like this one often illustrate culturally-related family dilemmas –  in this case, the woodcutter is faced with what he feels he must do for his wife and what he must also do for his aged mother.  What is the right decision?  What is the virtuous action?  Who does Heaven reward?  These are the many questions this simple folktale poses.  Folktales are rich cultural repositories of narrative wisdom from which the modern day reader can glean much knowledge.   Their retelling, therefore, is an important contribution to cultural understanding world-wide, especially for children.

Are there folktales you were fond of reading when you were a child?  Where did you find them?  What folktales have you read to your children?

Yikes, I’m falling a bit behind on reporting back on this year’s PaperTigers’ Reading the World Book Challenge - but we have been cracking on so I hope I’ll be back in a week or so with Book #3. How are you all doing out there? For those of you who haven’t picked up on it, or need reminding, check out my initial post here - there’s still plenty of time to join in…

In the meantime, here’s what we’ve read for our books #2:

Together we read Tales Told in Tents: Stories from Central Asia by Sally Pomme Clayton and illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer (Frances Lincoln, 2006). We loved it! Sally Pomme Clayton is a performance storyteller as well as a writer. Her storyteller voice makes these tales a joy to read aloud and she unobtrusively inserts cultural details, which deepen understanding, as well as some of her own experiences while gathering the stories on her travels through Central Asia, most notably in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. We learned the legend of how felt was invented; added to our growing collection of beautiful creation stories; marvelled at magic; revelled in riddles; and sought out the mythical storyteller whose presence wove itself through the different stories. Herxheimer’s beautiful illustrations help to convey the magic and even after we had listened to the story we had to go over each one again with attention fixed on the pictures.

Older Brother, 10 1/2, read Ice Trap! Shackleton’s Incredible Expedition by Meredith Hooper, illustrated by M. P. Robertson (Frances Lincoln, 2000) (and I think it’s published in the US as The Endurance: Shackleton’s Perilous Expedition in Antartica by Abbeville Kids, 2001). Here’s what he says about it:

I enjoyed this book a lot because of the excitement. In 1914 Shackleton set sail to Antarctica as he wanted to be the first person to walk all the way across the Antarctic Peninsula but his ship was caught in pack ice. Then their ship was crushed by the ice. They sailed in lifeboats to Elephant Island, which was uninhabited, then Shackleton took five men in a lifeboat. They wanted to sail to South Georgia but in sight of the cliffs they got caught in a hurricane, which blew them to the wrong side of the island, so they had to climb over mountains to reach the town. Then eventually everyone was rescued by a steam boat.

It was very exciting because a lot of unexpected things happened and also it’s true, which makes it even more exciting because it’s about Man against Earth and people belong to Earth. And Earth/Nature is stronger than Man and actually, they couldn’t control the ice.

I think they were brave. It was nearly the first time anyone had tried to get there. And there was a stowaway on board, which made it harder for them to survive because there wasn’t enough food. Not a single person died in two years. I’ve read this book three times - once my Grandad read it to us. That was special because he spent a year in Antarctica a long time ago.

Little Brother, 8, read Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter (new edition, Knopf Books, 2008):

Peg Leg Joe is a sailor with a missing leg and he sings a song which will help lead slaves to freedom. It’s called “Follow the Drinking Gourd” - the Drinking Gourd is a constellation which we call the Plough and in America it’s called the Big Dipper and it’s part of the Great Bear. It points to the Pole Star so it always points North. There’s a slave who is about to be sold the next day away from his wife and children who are in slavery as well. That night they all follow the Drinking Gourd. It’s not an easy journey and in the pictures there are some Wanted! posters of them. Then they meet Peg Leg Joe at a river in a boat. He rows them across the river in his boat and then he goes back to collect some more slaves who have also followed the Drinking Gourd, leaving the family at a trail he calls the Underground Railway. It’s a trail of houses with safe places to hide. They hide and rest in the day and move at night so they can follow the constellation and also so they can’t be found so easily. They make it to safety and freedom.

This really happened. I knew that there were people who used to be slaves but I never knew they tore families apart. I’m glad that some people escaped to freedom but slavery is wrong and everyone should have the right to be free.

Back in April, my friend, PT book reviewer and former blog contributor, Charlotte Richardson, wrote a beautiful review of Yoon and the Jade Bracelet, the third in a series about a young Korean girl trying to adjust to life in the US. In the Jade Bracelet, Yoon wants a jump rope for her birthday but instead gets a bracelet and a Korean folktale about a girl who outwits a tiger.

When Charlotte finished her review, she passed the book on to her 13 year-old friend, Daniel, a Mexican boy who immigrated to the US and lives in Tucson, Arizona. Daniel, who attends Mansfeld Middle School as a 7th Grader, read the book (”I thought the story was great because it warns you about what can happen if you trust someone that you just met“) and decided to send it, along with his own Spanish translation, to his younger sister Karen, who lives in Mexico. “I decided to translate the book because my sister’s 10th birthday gift was a bracelet and this story talks about a bracelet, too. She hasn’t received my gift yet, but I hope she will, soon.”

Like Yoon, Daniel is adjusting to life in the US. Like Yoon, he builds bridges between his two worlds through his open-heartedness, cleverness and curiosity. How beautiful to imagine Karen opening her birthday gift to find a bracelet and a story translated specially for her—a gift that will tell of her brother’s love and, perhaps without him even realizing it himself, of his challenges and accomplishments in this new land.

Who’s to say where the book and translation will go after Karen’s read them? I like to think about the ripple effect of stories. Once they are out there, there’s no telling who they will reach or resonate with.

Here’s an excerpt from Daniel’s translation document, which he titled “Karen’s new book”:

Yoon y la Pulsera de Jade
escrito por Helen Recorvits, ilustrado por Gabi Swiatkowska
Traducción en español: Daniel Pérez Ángeles Russell-Neeley

“Mi nombre es Yoon. Vengo de Corea, un país muy lejos.

Poco después de que nos acomodamos en los Estados Unidos, era tiempo para celebrar mi cumpleaños. Esperaba que me regalaran un regalo muy especial – una cuerda (riata). Miraba a las niñas de mi escuela brincar la cuerda y cantar canciones felices. Yo quería brincar la cuerda y cantar con ellas, pero yo no había sido invitada todavía. Yo seguía siendo la niña nueva.

El día de mi cumpleaños, mi mama me llamo y me dijo: “Pequeña Yoon, ven! Tengo un regalo para ti.” Yo aplaudí y corrí hacia ella. Me dio algo delgado y liso, envuelto en un bonito papel. “Feliz cumpleaños!” me dijo. Pero las cuerdas no son delgadas y planas, eso pienso. Trate de no mostrar mi desilusión. “Gracias mama,” le dije sonriendo. Mi mama me miraba con entusiasmo mientras abría mi regalo. Ere un libro de historias Coreano de una niña chiquita que había sido engañada por un tigre. Yo sabía la historia y me reí de la niña tontita…”

Today we are thrilled to announce the winner of our first “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” book draw. The lucky child is 5 year-old Shashank, from Bangalore, India. Congratulations, Shashank! PaperTigers will be sending five multicultural picture books for you to add to your bookshelf! Please let us know what you (and your friend Mickey Mouse) think of the stories, when you’ve had a chance to read them!

So far, we have heard from The Philippines, Canada, the UK, US, Sweden and India. We want to see bookshelves from all corners, though, and to hear about the books that inhabit them, so please keep those photos coming! Your young bibliophile could be the winner of our next book draw, which will happen on Jul 15.

To see all bookshelf photos submitted to date, and to catch a glimpse of a world made smaller through books and reading, click on the “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” logo, on the sidebar.

Ten days ago I reported on the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Book Award Presentation, which took place at Seven Stories, The Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle, UK – and I definitely want to tell you more about this wonderful place! We’re lucky – we live reasonably close to Newcastle, though far enough away that it took us a few years of living here to get ourselves there, which we did in the last school-holidays. I now know that the path will start to become a well-travelled one…

The name of Seven Stories not only refers to the axiom that there are but seven stories in the world told in an infinite variety of ways, but is also played out in the Centre’s daily life: it is housed in a seven storey building that is open seven days a week for a seven hours a day.

The late-nineteenth-century building was originally a mill warehouse. Many original features have been restored and the interior spaces have been designed with imagination and children in mind. The criss-cross of original beams in the top-floor room, beautiful to behold, also gives you a start, as you realise that there is a weird, curvy beam, winding its way through all the other beams – what structural use can it possibly be? Aaah – it is a bookshelf! And as it snakes its way down almost to floor-level, it houses enough copies of Julia Donaldson’s Playtime! for young visitors (and older ones too!) to come together and put on a play in the theatre corner, with the help of a sumptuous array of costumes. These include Donaldson’s and Axel Sheffler’s creation, the Gruffalo and the Mouse (and by the way, read this lovely interview with Julia Donaldson by Vulpis Libris - Part 1 and Part 2). Under this panoply of beams are also to be found a story-teller’s area complete with its exuberant throne, and a vast selection of books for a family storytime.

The current exhibitions are All Aboard, Away We Go! and From Toad Hall to Pooh Corner – both a feast for the eyes, ears and hands, and each with its own beautifully produced interactive trail. During our family visit, we chanted Mrs Armitage’s Mantra (“What we need, what we really need…”) and flew a plane while marvelling at Robert Crowther’s intricate paper-engineering from his book Flight. We discovered new-to-us old stories, like The Little Train, ostensibly by Dorothy Craigie but really written by Graham Greene and illustrated by Dorothy Glover (read this great post from Bear Alley for the full story…). We toot-tooted our way to (imaginary!) destruction in Toad’s car and, the highlight for me, we gazed on original’s of Robert Ingpen’s beautiful illustrations for Wind in the Willows, then looked at them in the book, while listening to the appropriate extract, seated in a replica, from the illustration, of Badger’s kitchen. Perfect!

I was astounded, when speaking to Lynda Jackson, Seven Stories’ Exhibitions Curator, to discover that these exhibitions are not permanent but usually run for about eighteen months – and the really good news is that they can tour elsewhere after their space in Newcastle has been taken over by something else… And I was given a sneak preview of what the next something else, From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit: A Judith Kerr Retrospective, will look like. So we’ll definitely be going back in September and I’ll tell you all about it!

In the meantime, I’ll be posting again soon about Seven Stories, with a closer look at its background and its role as a keeper of British children’s books, not to mention its superb children’s bookshop.

Hooray! Thanks to Corinne putting in many hours going through all our past PaperTigers posts, our Book Titles Index is now up and running. It’s hosted on the main PaperTigers website so is a hop, skip and a jump away from all the features on offer there as well.

Next up is an author/illustrator index. We’ll let you know when that’s live too. In the meantime, if you have any ideas or suggestions for the PaperTigers Blog, do let us know…

Bookshelf #8:
Carlos Miguel
1 year & 7 months old
Manila, Philippines

Being a bibliophile myself, I would like my little boy to grow up around books. I would like to instill in him the passion for reading. Books develop and broaden horizons and for little ones, I believe that starting them young will help them as they grow older. I have taken snapshots of little Miguel’s own book collection. He shares a couple of shelves from me so his books will have their own places in the house. Being 1 year and 7 months old, his books range from coloring books to the educational/learning starter books such as the ABCs. The shelf above contains his coloring books, learning the alphabet and numbers books, beginner’s shapes books, board books of trucks, dogs and kittens, illustration books and flashcards with Barney’s photo, too. It also contains the kiddie books we bought from our MV Doulos trip.

This middle shelf contains his other mini board books and some glitter books. He also has some books featuring Winnie D Pooh and friends.

The bottom shelf contains his I Wonder Why books, a gift from his aunt. Also, it houses some baby-kiddie books meant for my reading.

As a mom, I am proud to say that he can now fully recite the ABC, count 1-15, recognize shapes!

Submitted by: Frances
http://ivan-ulrich.blogspot.com

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Press Release
The Américas Award is given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. By combining both and linking the Americas, the award reaches beyond geographic borders, as well as multicultural-international boundaries, focusing instead upon cultural heritages within the hemisphere.The award is sponsored by the national Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP).

The award winners and commended titles are selected for their 1) distinctive literary quality; 2) cultural contextualization; 3) exceptional integration of text, illustration and design; and 4) potential for classroom use. The winning books will be honored at a ceremony (fall 2009) during Hispanic Heritage Month at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

2009 Américas Award Winners:

Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book by Yuyi Morales. Roaring Brook Press (A Neal Porter Book), 2008.

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle. Holt, 2008.

2009 Américas Award Honorable Mentions:

The Best Gift of All:The Legend of La Vieja Belén / El Mejor Regalo del Mundo:La Leyenda de la Vieja Belén by Julia Alvarez. Illustrated by Ruddy Nuñez. Alfaguara/Santillana, 2008.

Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos.Atheneum, 2008.

The Storyteller’s Candle / La velita de los cuentos by Lucía González. Illustrated by Lulu Delacre. Children’s Book Press, 2008.

For additional information including a list of the 2009 Américas Award Commended Titles winners click here.