Last week, I talked about Patricia Aldana’s address to the International Meeting of Children’s Librarians in Bologna. Our second speaker on that occasion was Viviana Quiñones, who spoke to us about the French national children’s book organisation La Joie par les Livres. After running through its history, she told us about some of their initiatives in promoting children’s books, such as travelling exhibitions of African books and books about the Arab world, the Caribbean and around the Indian Ocean. They also publish two magazines: “La Revue des livres pour enfants” and “Takam Tikou”, which focuses on multicultural books in French.
Of particular interest was what Viviana had to say about their work with libraries and independent publishers in Africa. Like Patricia Aldana, she stressed how important it is for children in Africa to find their own experiences mirrored in the books they read: and to read books that are reasonably up to date and written in their own language. In 1985, internationally renowned librarian Geneviève Patte visited Mali and other African countries, where she found that all the library books were old and in French… In 1987 she set up a service within La Joie par les Livres to collaborate with libraries and the publishers of African children’s books to promote books in the local languages. La Joie par les Livres also trains librarians, which raises the status of the libraries in the eyes of local communities.
Viviana said that there are still challenges, for example, with the distribution of books, but that in the world of African publishing, there are some inspirational stories. Afterwards, she recommended a book to me called Courage and Consequence: Women Publishing in Africa edited by Mary Jay and Susan Kelly and published by the African Books Collective. In fact, I had been sitting right next to Pili Dumea from Tanzania and across the room from Antoinette Correa from Senegal – both librarians turned publisher, whom I’ll be talking about in Part 3…