Retold by Ashley Ramsden, illustrated by Ed Young,
Seven Fathers
Roaring Brook Press, 2011.

Age 4-8+

The talented award-winning illustrator Ed Young collaborated with renowned storyteller Ashley Ramsden to bring to life the Norwegian folk tale on which Seven Fathers is based. Young’s cut-paper collages, dusted with splatters of snow white and other colors on kraft paper backgrounds, create a powerfully evocative mood for Ramsden’s account of a traveler seeking refuge in the deep Scandinavian winter.

The traveler sees a light and approaches a house glowing through the heavy snow. He finds on the front porch “an old man busily chopping wood.” Young shows us only large fur-gloved mitts holding a marbled blue ax over a patchwork stump. The traveler asks, as he will again six more times in this story, if there is a room where he could spend the night. And the old man replies, in words that will again be repeated, “I’m not the father of the house.” He sends the traveler to the kitchen to an even older man, who repeats that he is “not the father of the house” either, and who sends the traveler to yet another father, in yet another room.

At last the traveler is sent to a father who lives “on the horn in the hall.” The horn, a cutout of an aerial view of suburban tract homes, holds a “little speck of dust.” On the dust is a pillow; on the pillow are two black dots that turn out to be tiny eyes. Finally the traveler is told by a little man in “a voice as tiny as a titmouse,” that, yes, there is a room for him. Magic happens then; at once a feast appears, and the seven fathers “now the size and age of the traveler himself and each wearing a crown upon his head,” watch as he eats his fill, then lay their crowns at his feet.

Who are these fathers, and why does this tale make such deep, resonant sense? That will be a wonderful question for young readers–and for the adults who are privileged to share this story with them–to discover as they ponder the mysteries, patterns and rhythms of this beautifully-told tale and the strong, sensitive images that illustrate it. Seven Fathers is a work of art to be treasured far beyond the age range its surface simplicity may suggest.

Charlotte Richardson
September 2011

Previews, previews!  Lovely little previews!

And we find ourselves back at the Yale Club, across the street from Grand Central Station, and a whopping 10 minutes away, on foot, from my library.  There are advantages to living on a tiny island, I tell ya.

As per usual, Little Brown pulled out all the stops for the average children’s and YA librarian, in order to showcase their upcoming season.  There were white tablecloths and sandwiches consisting of brie and ham and apples.  The strange result of these previews is that I now seem to be under the mistaken understanding that Little Brown’s offices are located at the Yale Club.  They aren’t.  That would make no sense.  But that’s how my mind looks at things. When I am 95 and senile I will insist that this was the case.  Be warned.

A single day after my return from overseas I was able to feast my eyes on the feet of Victoria Stapleton (the Director of School and Library Marketing), bedecked in red sparkly shoes.  I would have taken a picture but my camera got busted in Bologna.  I was also slightly jet lagged, but was so grateful for the free water on the table (Europe, I love you, but you have to learn the wonders of ample FREE water) that it didn’t even matter.  Megan Tingley, fearless leader/publisher, began the festivities with a memory that involved a child’s story called “The Day I Wanted to Punch Daddy In the Face”.  Sounds like a companion piece to The Day Leo Said “I Hate You”, does it not?

But enough of that.  You didn’t come here for the name dropping.  You can for the books that are so ludicrously far away in terms of publication (some of these are January/February/March 2012 releases) that you just can’t resist giving them a peek.  To that end, the following:

Liza Baker

At these previews, each editor moves from table to table of librarians, hawking their wares.  In the case of the fabulous Ms. Baker (I tried to come up with a “Baker Street Irregulars” pun but it just wasn’t coming to me) the list could start with no one else but Nancy Tafuri.  Tafuri’s often a preschool storytime staple for me, all thanks to her Spots, Feathers and Curly Tails.  There’s a consistency to her work that a librarian can appreciate.  She’s also apparently the newest Little Brown “get”.  With a Caldecott Honor to her name (Have You Seen My Duckling?) the newest addition is All Kinds of Kisses.  It’s pretty cute.  Each animals gets kisses from parent to child with the animal sound accompanying.  You know what that means?  We’re in readaloud territory here, people.  There’s also a little bug or critter on each page that is identified on the copyright page for parents who have inquisitive children.

Next up, a treat for all you Grace Lin fans out there.  If you loved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat then you’ll probably be pleased as punch to hear that there’s a third

When PaperTigers’ book reviewer Abigail Sawyer mentioned to me that she is going to be hosting a Blog Carnival about bilingualism over at Speaking in Tongues today, she got me thinking. Again. I first started mulling over bilingual children’s books here in relation to Tulika Books, a publisher in India that produces bilingual books in many different Indian languages alongside English, and to former IBBY Preisdent and founder of Groundwood Books Patsy Aldana’s comments in an interview with PaperTigers, and I will quote them again here:

I have always been opposed to the use of bilingual books, however given that Spanish-only books hardly sell at all, I have had to accept that books in Spanish can only reach Latinos if they are bilingual. This goes against everything I believe and know to be true about language instruction, the joy of reading in your mother tongue…

I was surprised by Aldana’s dislike of bilingual books because I love them and my children love them, and I have found that they can be a joy for inquisitive children seeking to learn independently – but I do realise that our contexts are different. Aldana’s dislike of them seems to stem from their being a substitute for monolingual Spanish books in an English-biased market, and she has found a pragmatic way of providing books in their mother-tongue to the Latino community in North America.

We love reading bilingual books because, although our main vehicle is the English, having another language running alongside, often enhances the reading experience for us, especially where the setting of the story is culturally appropriate to the language. This is true even when we can’t read the script, because even without being able to understand it, we can sometimes pull out certain consistencies. Seeing the writing always provides a glimpse of that different culture.

One of my favorite books of the last few year’s is Jorge Luján’s Tarde de invierno/ Winter Afternoon, published by Groundwood Books – and without the original Spanish and the English lying alongside eachother, we would not have been able to appreciate so fully the simply gorgeous animation Jorge and his family produced of the book (watch it here). Some authors like Yuyi Morales effortlessly slide between English and Spanish (we love her delightful Señor Calavera and Grandma Beetle books, Just a Minute and Just in Case). Some books provide a parallel experience of language, like Demi’s Bamboo Hats and a Rice Cake or Ed Young’s Beyond the Great Mountains. None of these books is truly bilingual, in that they do not provide a similar reading experience regardless of which of the two languages you approach the story from – but they all offer a bridge between languages and cultures that is not to be understimated.

It would be very interesting to hear about the experiences and needs of truly bilingual parents and children. If you are bringing up bilingual children or have bilingual children in your class, do you or they seek out bilingual books? Are you frustrated by what’s out there –

I have been intrigued by the Red Threads in Chinese folklore that link people invisibly and irrevocably, ever since first reading about them in Grace Lin’s beautiful picture book The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale. They then reappear in her wonderful Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Jama at Alphabet Soup quotes Grace as saying: “To me, those red threads, those connections are the stories we share.”…

So I couldn’t resist picking up Ed Young’s Red Thread (Philomel Books, 1993) when I came across it recently: and it’s a wonderful story, which grows in meaning the more you read it. Wei Gu is a young man who, having been orphaned as a boy, is keen to find a wife and be part of a family. Hearing that a matchmaker is going to be in the town of Quinge, he travels there and makes sure he is at the temple good and early – in fact, he is so early that it is still dark (and here, Young’s illustrations are particularly stunning). He meets an old man, a spirit who can tell him that the red thread connecting him to his future wife leads to a three-year-old girl, and that they will marry in fourteen years time. Not only that, but they can go together to see her right there and then. However, Wei Gu is disgusted that she is apparently the daughter of vegetable sellers; and he also finds her ugly. Horrifically, he orders his servant to murder the child – but the red thread cannot be broken so easily and when Wei Gu marries fourteen years later, he discovers that the flower seed his beautiful wife always wears between her eyebrows carries a not unfamiliar story with it…

The narrative is simple but still manages to convey psychological depth; and the complexities inherent in the story mean that the book will grow with young readers. The act of violence is shocking – but as is so often the case in fairy-tales (and I am particularly struck by parallels with the western Snow White here), young readers/listeners will probably be less affected by it than the grown-ups reading it to them. The message that you can’t outrun your destiny is clear – but all the same, Wei Gu is lucky after his wicked act to end up with a loving wife who still loves him, even when the truth comes out.

A red thread runs throughout the book, straight across the pages, separating the text from the main focus of the illustrations, which completely fill each double-page spread. There are grandiose architectural spaces, busy market scenes and energetic close-ups, all depicted in a beautiful pallette of blues and greens, with orange as a striking outline color. In fact, as far as Young’s illustrations go, this for me is right up there as one of my favorites.

Now, there’s a question: which books by Ed Young are your and your children’s favorites? I am being very kind putting it in the plural, because I would find it very hard to narrow it down to just one myself!

Three months to the day before Addison was born, we learned we were getting a little sister. We crowded into the ultrasound room peering expectantly at grainy, elusive images on the monitor waiting for some confirmation. The technician asked if we had any preference, and we were divided. The boys had either been flexible or non-committal until then, but the girls, eight year-old Keilana and I, were decidedly in girl camp. Keilana so she could have a majority and me so I could give Keilana what I never had--a sister. The technician then asked if we had any guesses. Since I had dreamed Addison into being long before she came to be, we all guessed girl. And the woman with the magic wand said, “You got it!” I went straight out and bought the girliest pink shoes I could find, just to make it real, and looked forward to a little sister for my brood. But change is always a bit unnerving. As I left for the hospital on the day Addison arrived, I looked at my two earthside kids, especially Connor, tiny in the middle of a king-sized bed, and wondered how it would work out. I needn’t have worried. After some typical adjustment, Addison became what she was always meant to be: a necessary part of our family. In Ed Young’s My Mei Mei, Antonia longs for a sister until reality trumps fantasy and she’s not so sure. Thankfully, there’s a no refund, no return policy on sisters.
http://www.amazon.com/My-Mei-Ed-Young/dp/0399243399

http://www.embracingthechild.org/Bookspecialyoung.htm

Recently, my daughter and I enjoyed revisiting the story The Sons of the Dragon King by Ed Young.  In this beautifully illustrated picture book, the legend of how the nine sons of the Dragon King came to their particular vocations is told.  Each of the nine sons has either a penchant for something or a talent unrecognized that the king confers a blessing on thus turning his sons into obedient and useful creatures.  For example, bellowing son Lu Pao is urged by his father to use his voice to become musical and so it is that Lu Pao’s dragonly  visage decorates Chinese musical instruments to this day.  Ba-Sha,  another son,  is a good swimmer and becomes the dragon on the bridges that span the country’s waters and watches  over those in boats.  Even the unruly traits of bellowing and anger by son Ya Zi are channeled into — where else — but the military where Ya Zi’s fearsome visage is emblazoned on weaponry.

Ed Young’s wonderful ink-and-brush illustrations marvelously display the dragons at their boisterous best, whether perched watchfully on a roof, or bearing a heavy pillar on their back, or cavorting through the water.  The medium is perfect for catching the fluid movement of the dragons with their snake-like long bodies; alongside the ink-and-brush image is a more static picture of the dragon as it would appear on the edifice or object with which it has become associated.

The tale of the Dragon King itself is an old Chinese legend.  As Young points out in his Author’s Note, the ancient Chinese tribes who used to each have a totem animal, formed a union to be ruled under one totemic animal — the Dragon King.  Variations of the folktale exist in different parts of China but all of them speak of the king having nine sons.   “The Sons of the Dragon King” in which all nine sons  are accounted for is the version of the story Young chose for his book.  And indeed, a good choice it was as evidenced in the pleasure my daughter and I experienced in reading it!

How lovely this picture book is, I can't quite put into words, but trust me, you want to read it. Whether you have a library or a classroom full of children, a family at home, or just yourself, you'll want to read it.

Ed Young, winner of the Caldecott Medal has written and illustrated Hook, the story of an abandoned egg, found by a boy and given to chickens to raise. Once the egg has hatched, however, the chickens quickly determine the baby chick was simply not meant for Earth, but for greater things. Hook, as he has come to be called, learns to fly, eventually growing up to be one of the most beautiful and beloved bald eagles.

A very simple story, with such a complex meaning, I was incredibly impressed with the work of Young on Hook. The illustrations are really beautiful, done in soft tones (Amazon says the illustrations are chalk) that compliment the short-but-sweet text on the page. Children will enjoy seeing something "different from the crowd" turn into a gorgeous eagle, and parents will enjoy the compassion of the chickens that help to raise Hook and the boy determined to see him fly.

Overall, a truly wonderful book for both library and home shelves. This was a great one folks!

To learn more or to purchase, click on the book cover above to link to Amazon.

Hook
Ed Young
32 pages
Picture Book
Roaring Brook Press
9781596433632
April 2009

Celebrations are in full-swing for Asian Heritage Month which is celebrated in both Canada and the USA during the month of May. This a time to honor the legacy of generations of Asian Canadians and Asian Americans who have enriched their country’s history and are instrumental in its future success. It is a time to participate in festivities that celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Asians who, throughout history, have done so much to make Canada and the USA the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nations we know today.

As part of their celebrations for Asian American Heritage Month, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association announced the winner and honor books in the 2009 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. These awards promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage based on literary and artistic merit, and our congratulations go out to Wabi Sabi, written by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young, which won the picture book award. Back in 2008, PaperTiger bloggers Marj and Aline were thrilled to see the proofs for Wabi Sabi at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Marj posted a great review of Wabi Sabi here.

Winners have also been announced in the Growing Up Asian in America Art and Essay contest, which is open to students in grades K - 12 who reside in the San Francisco area. This year’s theme was “Change- If you could change one thing to make the world a better place, what would that be?”. I was especially drawn to Claire Dworsky’s essay entitled Change Your Assumptions in which she wrote:

To me, growing up Asian is the same as any kid most of the time. I go to school, gymnastics, soccer, play with my dog, play outside – normal stuff.

But sometimes other people say things that make me feel sad or different. They make fun of my eyes and call me Chinese. They yell, “Hey Chinois!” They ask questions that aren’t really questions, like “Are you really adopted?” I say “Yes I was adopted from Kayakhstan, a country between Russia and China. I can show you on a map if you want.” But they’re really using these questions to make fun of me. And it’s even worse. When Asian girls pick on me by saying “Oh, you have blue eyes you think you are all that.” Racism is hurtful, no matter who says it.

Claire concludes her essay with a powerful statement that all of us, young and old, should take to heart: “When you know how it feels to be discriminated against you should use that feeling to imagine how others feel, and change yourself so you can help others.” The winning entries of the Growing Up Asian in America contest will be on exhibit at several locations throughout the Bay Area until February 2010. Click here to see the schedule.

We will be publishing a full review of Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein with art by Ed Young in our next issue of PaperTigers so I’m not going to say much now - except that it is stunning and enriching, a gentle, heart-warming delight that lends itself to being read aloud in many different ways! It had already been nominated for a Fiction Picture Book Cybils Award by the time I got round to it (as had a couple of others on my list, making decisions much easier… I finally plumped for Colors! ¡Colores!, which I blogged about last week…).

We’ve been waiting for Wabi Sabi to come out for a while – and one of Aline’s and my thrills at the Bologna Book Fair in April was being shown the proofs for the book by Andrew Smith at Little, Brown and Company, where we learnt that we were not looking at the original but at the second version of art-work…

Yes, this book has an amazing, Wabi Sabi-esque story behind it. It’s hard to explain but Alvina, over at Blue Rose Girls, is the book’s editor and has blogged about its amazing story in four installments – read from Number 1 now! In the meantime, here’s what she says about what Wabi Sabi actually means:

Mark spent some time living in Japan, and while there he was introduced to the concept of wabi sabi. He asked many people about it, and they all paused and said, “That’s hard to explain.” but they would offer a poem, or a photograph, a small description, and gradually, Mark began to piece together the meaning of wabi sabi.

So, what is wabi sabi? Well, as I understand it, it is a Japanese philosophical belief in finding beauty in the imperfect, the unexpected, in simplicity and modesty. For example, a old, cracked clay tea cup is wabi sabi, but a fine china cup is not. Fallen leaves in muddy water is wabi sabi. A scruffy, multi-colored cat can be wabi sabi. Mark actually named his cat in Japan Wabi Sabi!

Her final post on the subject came out on Monday and has had me chuckling aloud – but only after I knew the outcome. All’s well, that ends well! Phew – if ever a book has gone through a parallel journey in real life, this is it!

Ah, Bologna!

Aline and I have much to tell about our fantastic trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair at the beginning of this month. There really is no better event to take the pulse of the children’s book publishing world: and what a world that is!

We’ve met so many interesting people and enjoyed putting faces to names of organisations and publishers; we’ve attended inspiring presentations; and have been dazzled by the quality and endlessly varied styles of the illustrations we’ve come across, both in the books we have browsed through and as part of the fair’s special exhibits. The overall impression was of immense industry – people in deep discussion, buying and selling rights; looking through artists’ portfolios; rushing between presentations – what a buzz!

Over the next few weeks, Aline and I will be posting on a variety of topics. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights for us, in no particular order:

Looking at the proofs for Ed Young’s new book, Wabi Sabi (written by Mark Reibstein);
Meeting librarians from all over the world at a session organised by the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions) – so lively that we were asked to be quiet…! – and hearing IBBY President and Canadian Groundwood Books publisher, Patricia Aldana’s presentation entitled “Books as Mirrors”;
Attending the launch of the International Youth Library’s White Ravens 2008 catalog;
Listening to poets Michael Rosen (UK Children’s Laureate) and Jorge Lujan’s contributions to a panel titled “Poetry Break: Poetry in Children’s Books”;
Attending the award-presentation of the Bologna Raggazzi “New Horizons” Award to Chennai-based Tara Publishing, for the hand-made book The Nightlife of Trees, and watching how the book came into being;
Hearing illustrators Robert Ingpen and Paul O. Zelinsky talk about their contributions to the book Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children About Their Art (the proceeds of which go to the Eric Carl Museum of Picture Book Art.)…

Well, I could just keep going – and I will. And so will Aline: so keep coming back as the full picture unfolds…

I can’t believe this book was first published 25 years ago: but Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China, retold by Ai-Ling Louie and illustrated by Ed Young, is just as fresh today – and of course, being a fairy-tale, it is timeless anyway. It makes a lovely bed-time story – and would work well, too, as a class story-time readaloud.

The story will be familiar in its essence to most children and this is a lovely variation. Or perhaps I should say that the Cinderella story we all know and love follows the pattern of this lovely story: on the book’s dedication page, there is a salient quotation from Iona and Peter Opie’s The Classic Fairy Tales (now a bit of a classic itself). This dates the story of Yeh Shen to The Miscellaneous Record of Yu Yang, which first appeared during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907AD), about 1,000 years before the oldest European version.

The major elements are all there: the rags and chores, the wicked step-mother, the party and the magic slippers. The main difference is that the fairy god-mother figure in the story is actually a magic fish. The fish is Yeh-Shen’s only friend until it is killed by the step-mother. Yeh-Shen learns of it magic powers and gathers up the bones, which can now grant her special wishes. At first, her requests are bound up with survival as she asks for food to eat; but then, as the party approaches:

“Oh, dear friend,” she said, kneeling before the precious bones, “I long to go to the festival, but I cannot show myself in these rags. Is there somewhere I could borrow clothes fit to wear to the feast?” At once she found herself dressed in a gown of azure blue [and] on her tiny feet were the most beautiful slippers she had ever seen. They were woven of golden threads, in a pattern like the scales of a fish…

The fish is also the motif for Ed Young’s stunning illustrations throughout: each image from the story is set against an enormous, carp-like fish, to the extent that sometimes the characters are even enclosed within its gaping mouth. The backgrounds are starkly white but the pages are divided up into red-bordered, screen-like frames, which also help to convey the magic at work, since the fish’s bulk simply moves across them. His shading is beautiful… and I would love to know how many colors he actually used!

In light of the breaking news last week that a 38-year-old man regained speech after brain stimulation, we asked Craig Panner, our in-house expert on all things science and a senior-editor at OUP, what his thoughts were. He immediately thought of Plum and Posner’s Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma 4th edition because Nicholas Schiff, one of the co-authors, was deeply involved in the study that led to brain stimulation. Below is Panner’s first OUPblog post. (more…)

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