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By:
Aline Pereira,
on 5/23/2012
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English-language Asia-set Children’s and YA Fiction ~ by Holly Thompson
Part 2 of 3 (read Part 1 here)
Some years back as we settled into our bicultural family life with young children here in Japan, although we were surrounded by books in Japanese and took full advantage of Japan’s healthy picture book and middle-grade market, we discovered that finding English-language reading material to support our bilingual children was no easy task. Because our children attended Japanese schools, English education happened in our home, and we needed a steady supply of English-language books. But libraries in Japan stock few English-language books, and bookstores here carry very few and at hefty mark-ups, so whenever friends or family visited from the U.S. they brought books to us. Returning from a trip back to the States, our luggage was always heavy with books. We book-swapped with families in Japan, we ordered from Scholastic with our English-after school group, and we pounced on book sale tables at international school fairs. At last, Amazon Japan with free and quick delivery of affordable overseas books came to the rescue.
Always on the lookout for books relating to our lives while raising our bilingual children, we soon became aware of a lack of English-language children’s books that reflect Japan. English-language picture books set in Japan were rare, and those that existed, we discovered, tended toward folktales and nonfiction. Where were the day-to-day stories that reflected the landscapes and people and value systems surrounding us? Where was Japan?
We treasured our Allen Say books, especially Kamishibai Man and Grandfather’s Journey.
We read and reread the bilingual Grandpa’s Town by Takaaki Nomura. We enjoyed folktale retellings like The Seven Gods of Luck by David Kudler and Yoshi’s Feast by Kimiko Kajikawa. and biographical works like Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs by Matthew Gollub. All excellent, but we were discouraged that such English-language titles set in Japan were few and far between.
Searching for other Asian cultures in English-language picture books yielded similar results—folktales, nonfiction and concept books, but few fictional stories set in Asia.
As the children grew older, we came to realize that even less common than English-language picture books set in Asia were English-language middle-grade and YA novels set in Japan and Asia. What we found was mostly historical fiction. Of course we read and loved Korea-set historical novels by Linda Sue Park, Japan-set novels by
0 Comments on PaperTigers’ Global Voices feature with award winning author Holly Thompson (USA/Japan)~ Part 2 as of 5/23/2012 10:49:00 AM
Drawing from Memory by Allen Say is victorious in
SLJ's Battle of the Books. I was right again. For some reason, I am a bit nonplussed. I wish there was some way that
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything could get the recognition it deserves. Well-written FUN books lack respect in the world of books. And that is not right because the fun books, the so-called "light" or "fluffy" books, are what keep a LOT of kids reading.
Anyone who has ever watched and delighted in the coincidences of a Bollywood film (or "fillum") will understand what is happening in
The Grand Plan. The heroine MUST reunite with her jilted lover. The friends MUST stay tight. And the lovely postal worker on his honeymoon MUST find a job in this Eden like village. Barbara O'Connor, the judge in today's BoB match-up, mentioned these coincidences and I think she was not sure she liked them. I LOVED them. These coincidences lifted me from my rather coincidence free humdrum existence to a place where the sun shines and birds sing and the crowds break into dance with colored scarves and bells on their ankles.
HOWEVER,
Drawing from Memory is, as Barbara O'Connor so aptly puts it, an "experience". I had tears in my eyes as I closed this book about Allen Say's journey to become the great artist that he is. I felt enriched and enlightened after I read
Drawing from Memory and I feel it would best almost any other book on this list. But I am at a loss for words to describe it. It needs to be read and studied and felt.
Both books take American readers into other cultures and climates. Imagine! A twelve-year-old is given his own apartment so he can go to school!!!! Monkeys take over a bakery!!! Reading is the cheapest way to travel.
Tomorrow's match is between Kadir Nelson's
Heart and Soul and
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. My vote goes to
Inside Out and Back Again.
Let's see if I am right.
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 10/31/2011
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Since my last update on this year’s PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge, we have added some great books to our list.
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
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 6/11/2011
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Uma Krishnaswami, illustrated by Abigail Halpin
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything
Atheneum, 2011.
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
In her Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, Uma Krishnaswami ponders some of the questions that have come her way as a writer recently. Make sure you head on over to the main website to read the whole article; in the meantime, here’s the introduction. I found her pondering over the word ’swale’ particularly fascinating as I live not too far from Swaledale in the UK – and it certainly catches a lot of rain too! – could there be a connection?
Four years ago, an uncle of mine, D.V. Sridharan, started the crazy, impossible, madcap project, of restoring a wasteland in a rural area near the city of Chennai in India, and turning it into a sustainable farm. The reason this has anything to do with my own crazy, impossible, madcap occupation, writing books for children, is that his endeavor too had to do with words.
Words like “swale”: Roll it on your tongue. How round and beautiful it is. How it creates a resonance in the air. Swale. A low tract of land, a swale follows the contour line, and can catch water when it rains. Holding the rush of a monsoon shower, the swale in turn recharges underground water sources so that in the dry season, wells can remain refreshed. Swale. The thing is as magical as its name.
The name of that restoration project is “point Return.” The capitals are intentionally placed, intentionally withheld. The point, Sridharan says, is to return. To come back again and again to the places and the ideas that give us sustenance and hope, that are generative and regenerative in nature, that keep us going, that lead to a larger sense of who “we” are.
Story does this too. Thinking of story as cyclical in nature rather than linear, with a beginning, middle and end, changes everything. It stops me from rushing after answers, grabbing the first one that comes along. It allows me instead to live with questions.
I am happy to say that I have managed to make a career out of living with questions.
As I said, do read the rest of the article, in which Uma talks about her latest picture-book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! (illustrated by her near-namesake, Uma Krishnaswamy, Tulika Books, 2010), which certainly provides scope for lots of questions, and gives a tantalising look ahead at her forthcoming middle-grade novel The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum Books, due ot 2011) – and then pay a visit to Uma’s wonderful blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk.
