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I’d never before read anything by Nancy Farmer (although as a former children’s bookseller, of course I knew about her) until I picked up A Girl Named Disaster to read as the first Tiger’s Choice. I was lucky to have found it–this book is an outstanding piece of fiction that can be read and enjoyed by a doddering fifty-nine-year-old like me or by people who are substantially younger.

In an earlier posting by Corinne on PaperTigers, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in the Philippines pointed out that children’s literature from different cultures is shaped by differing values. This is made intriguingly clear by the story of Nhamo, the girl who leaves her tribe in search of her one living parent and a family that will be truly hers. Her quest is an adventure, and a solitary one, that takes her into a world populated only by animals. Unlike similar stories written with a differing cultural perspective (Julie of the Wolves, My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Blue Dolphins), this book does not show an anthropomorphic relationship between Nhamo and the baboons who are her neighbors. A lonely and frightened child, Nhamo forges a relationship with a world of the spirits rather than with the animal kingdom. She sustains herself through stories that she knows and loves about beings of an unseen realm, and in her dreams and in her waking imagination, these are the figures that guide her, and who allow her to bring out menacing, and hitherto unexplored, parts of herself by cloaking them under different names and the persona of spirits.

Her three-part story begins with elements of Cinderella, sweeps into a Robinson Crusoe-like world, and ends with a modern-day transformation and the fulfillment of a quest. At almost 300 pages, it is longer than many pieces of fiction for children, and it contains an impressive body of information within its compelling story. Anyone who reads it will be given a sense of place that only someone who has lived in that part of Africa could provide.

It could be a problematic choice to read aloud to a classroom of boys and girls. Although Nhamo’s adventures, and her adventuresome spirit, will appeal to both genders, the author’s frankness when writing about menstruation and other physical functions could be difficult in a mixed-gender classroom if read aloud. It is, however, a dazzling choice for a parent-child book group, or to give to a reluctant reader, or to enjoy as a solitary pleasure when in need of something absorbing and magical to read.

In case you didn’t catch it in January, check out here what the PaperTigers reading Challenge 2008 entails: there’s still plenty of time to join in!

We are running three in parallel in our household as my boys decided they wanted to complete it on their own, as well as do one as a bed-time readaloud… so here are our comments about Book Number One!

Back in October, I wrote a post about I Am Jack by Susanne Gervay - the time to read it came at the end of January when Big Brother had a few issues with bullying (now, I’m glad to say, resolved). As usual, I turned to stories as a springboard for discussion and we read it all together as our first Reading Challenge readaloud. Big Brother’s situation had been squashed very early on and certainly never got anywhere near what poor Jack has to endure but reading the book opened up comparisons and empathy. It brought home the importance of talking - and being available to listen. A couple of bedtimes were prolonged to read an extra chapter; and we had a very late night as we arrived at the end – we couldn’t possibly have left it hanging. Once again, I really recommend this book…

Meanwhile, Big Brother* (aged 9) chose Mga Kuwentong Bayan: Folk Stories from The Philippines edited by Alice Lucas and illustrated by Carl Angel. It is published by Many Cultures Publishing, a division of the nonprofit San Francisco Study Center. The book contains three stories: A Creation Story, The Monkey and the Turtle and Aponitolou and the Star Maiden. Here’s what Big Brother has to say about it:

I thought it was brilliant – especially the story where all the stars came onto the ground. It was about a star woman and a human man who fell in love with each other and the husband already had a wife on earth so he had to spend half a year in the sky and half a year down on the ground. I thought it was quite fun to have a different kind of book to read, with almost black and white pictures. I tried reading the Tagalog version but I didn’t get very far!

Little Brother (aged 6) had chosen The Birdman by Veronika Martenova Charles and illustrated by Annouchka Gravel Galouchko and Stéphan Daigle. It is the poignant true story of a Calcutta tailor who buys and sets free the sickly birds that are left at the end of a day’s trading at the market. You can read PaperTigers’ review of the book here, and here are Little Brother’s comments:

I really liked the pictures because they looked very artistic with lots of bright colours and dots on them. I really liked Noor Nobi’s idea of making a flock of poor birds. He set them free and they didn’t go far away because they loved him. I liked that it was a true story because something like that is very good and kind.

We will keep you posted on Number 2 of our Reading Challenge selections. In the meantime, do let us know how you’re getting on, if you’re already on board; or let us know your book choices, if you’re just starting.

* I have Here and There Japan to thank for helping me finally to come up with what to call my children in my blog postings: other possibilities had been commented upon and others were too much of a mouthful… I think this now works?!? So thank you, Annie!

Posting a blog entry is like going to a party–you never know who you are going to meet or what kind of interesting conversations will come up. (And of course there’s always the dreadful possibility that you will be a wallflower and nobody will respond to you at all.)

The Tiger’s Bookshelf has been lucky. During the past two months there have been a number of rich, varied, and thoughtful responses to some of the blog entries that blend into a longer, continuing conversation.

Corinne and Michael Miller both pointed out that if you want your children to read, read to them and let them catch you reading, since they will model your behavior. Corinne also mentions the importance of making television and computers a secondary source of entertainment, with books being a family’s primary pastime and the library being a primary destination.

Sally Ito observed that a family can become its own book group, by “sharing the page.” Although all of different ages and with different tastes, her family is drawn together by the books they read aloud, and those shared books lead to the broadening of individual tastes–reading fairy tales to her daughter, Sally said, prompted her to pick up Italo Calvino.

Alison and Corinne both brought up the importance of a teacher reading aloud to a class, which is another form of book group, and one that brings together children of different reading abilities and different interests, uniting them in the excitement of a good story.

Holly decried the fact that books are so easily pigeon-holed into age categories, while so many books found in children’s sections of libraries and bookstores are ones that adults enjoy too. She applauded the idea of moms and daughters sharing books, which is an idea further discussed by Aline, who loves reading to her daughter and asked when is a good time to begin being part of a book group? Is five too young?

What do you think? Can a five-year-old be part of a book group? Can television and computer time become secondary to reading? Can adults and children, whether they are related by family ties or by reading tastes, discuss books together in a group, on equal terms as readers of the same book? And how has the reading that you have done with your children affected your own reading choices?

Let’s talk.

A recent NEA study has confirmed what many teachers, librarians, and booksellers have realized for a long time. Reading for fun is a declining pleasure, reading scores are plummeting in the classroom, and many adults suffer from low basic reading skills.

This discovery has begun a spirited discussion over how a child becomes addicted to the printed word and grows into becoming a lifelong reader. National Book Award winner, Sherman Alexie, who grew up on a Native American reservation, says that the book that made him love reading was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

“It was the first time that I looked at a book and saw a brown, black, beige character, a character who resembled me physically and spiritually, in all his gorgeous loneliness and splendid isolation. The younger you are when you do that, the more likely you’re going to be a serious reader.”

As readers, whether we’re children or adults or somewhere in between, we are drowning in print. Bookstores and libraries teem with books, many of which are simply not very good. Our choices are overwhelming and, as we choose how to spend our limited amounts of time and money, our risks are great. Who can blame those who look at all of the possibilities, sample one or two unsatisfying selections, give up, and turn to other diversions?

“What I find with readers today is that they don’t go off on their own to another book. They wait for the next recommendation,” remarked Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. For those who love nothing better than finding something new to read and taking a chance on it, his observation is dispiriting.

How do people become passionate and fearless readers, who happily move on to the next book, whether it has received the blessings of Oprah or the Newbery Medal or not? What is the book that made you a person for whom books are as essential as oxygen? What is your earliest “book memory?” How do you encourage the children you know and love to know and love books?

This is a conversation that needs as many participants and perspectives as possible, and we’re eager to hear what you have to say. Let’s talk.

Thursday 21st February is International Mother Language Day:

Linguistic and cultural diversity represent universal values that strengthen the unity and cohesion of societies. The recognition of the importance of linguistic diversity led to UNESCO ’s decision to celebrate International Mother Language Day.

The day has particular significance in Bangladesh, which is the setting for Mitali Perkins’ Rickshaw Girl. Naima, the book’s main character, has won International Mother Language Day competitions for her beautiful alpana patterns (you can see pictures here of young artists at work from February last year, when Mitali and her mother, herself an award-winning alpana painter, passed on their expertise as part of PT’s outreach programme). Rickshaw Girl is aimed at the 7-12 age-range and would make a great readaloud, especially for a mother and daughter to share. As well as overturning gender stereotyping through Naima, it highlights the positive results of microfinancing in Bangladesh, particularly for women.

And, since one of the anxieties of displacement is often the striving to balance acquiring a new language with not losing your own, this is a good time to point you in the direction of Mitali’s own favorite readaloud for 2007, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate:

“a lyrical novel told in the voice of brave, honest Kek, a refugee from a country in Africa starting a new life without his mother, father, and brother in wintry Minnesota.”

I haven’t read it yet, but it is on my to-read list…

For reading to younger children, I recommend the bilingual I Am René, the Boy/ Soy René, el Niño by René Colato Laínez and illustrated by Fabiola Graullera Ramírez. In this delightful story, René researches his name and its cultural connotations in different languages – triggered by the arrival of a girl in his class called Renée: different spelling but horror of horrors, the same pronunciation!

If you are taking part in any activities for International Mother Language Day, do tell us about them – we’d love to hear from you.

While reading A Girl Named Disaster, I found there were questions that I wanted to discuss with other readers and I hope some of you feel the same way. Your questions will probably be different from mine, and I’m eager to know what they are.

Nhamo is a storyteller and this book is punctuated with the folktales that she has learned and loves. Do these stories strengthen or weaken Nhamo’s own story?

Who is Long Teats and what does she mean to Nhamo?

Is Nhamo’s relationship to the baboons, especially Rumpy, disappointing? Would a different relationship be more appealing?

Nancy Farmer is noted for the length of her novels. Is this particular book well-served by its length or could it be more effective if it were shorter?

A Girl Named Disaster has three distinct segments of Nhamo’s story and some readers are disappointed with the third segment. Is the ending strong enough to provide a satisfying completion to the novel?

Let’s talk!

Good literature promotes literacy. Reading to children promotes literacy. Promoting a love of books through the example of reading promotes literacy. And sharing a story together, at the end of the day especially, offers a moment of harmony and oasis in family life, which sometimes has to be safe-guarded from the encroachment of action-packed schedules. So all in all, a bedtime story is a win-win scenario, whichever way you look at it!

It can, however, be a daunting prospect for some parents, so today on Books at Bedtime I’d like to focus on two resources which offer parents some tools to help make storytelling a joy for all concerned.

The first is the Storytelling Bibliographies page on The Center for Children’s Books’ website. These booklists encompass stories from all over the world which make great readalouds, arranged by themes such as Phases of the Moon, Tales about Fools, Latino Folktales, Native American Tales… The links to Storytelling Websites offer rich scope and I especially like thie process advocated here for using a book as a springboard for someone to tell a story; and for listeners then to extend that storytelling experience. Such activities will lead children to love books and to love words themselves… the next generation of storytellers and writers?

And the other resource is Australian writer Mem Fox reading extracts from her book Reading Magic – her web-page And Do It Like This offers a step-by-step guide to reading stories aloud to children. She also has her 10 Read Aloud Commandments – here’s number 10 :

Please read aloud every day, mums and dads, because you just love being with your child, not because it’s the right thing to do.

And you can hear her putting all these hints and pieces of advice into action herself, reading three of her stories, including her avowed favorite Koala Lou: and she reads them beautifully.

Alone on an island with a damaged boat, a rapidly dwindling supply of food, and with nothing to save her from death but her own wits, eleven-year-old Nhamo has never in her life been alone before.

She is a girl who grew up in a Mozambique village, who has always been surrounded by members of her tribe. She has never known her parents–her mother died when Nhamo was small, her father disappeared after committing an act of violence long before she could remember, and her grandmother is the only one who loves her.

When the village decides that Nhamo must become one of the wives of a middle-aged man to satisfy her father’s blood-debt that has cast a blight upon the community, her grandmother hatches an escape plan. Giving her granddaughter the gold that she has saved throughout her life, she sends the girl off with a supply of food in a stolen boat.

Nhamo knows she must follow the river that leads to Zambia and her father’s family, but her boat drifts off-course and she is lost in a gigantic lake, with no land in sight but small islands. Can she survive on her own and eventually find the family that she longs for.

This novel is the story of a quest that intertwines physical and spiritual adventure, written by a woman who lived for years in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It provides much to talk about–come to the Tiger’s Bookshelf next week for a few questions and the beginning of our first book group discussion.

It’s been a while since we read any fairy tales but our local library has recently added a goodly number of fairy tale books to its collection so we thought we’d delve in. We came home with an armful… some of them are traditional, others are modern (re)tellings or parodies.

I knew that Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The Frog Prince Continued would both go down well – they are funny and wittily illustrated (by Lane Smith and Steve Johnson respectively); and both depend on the kind of superior knowledge that children delight in - all the stories would be somewhat lost in the telling if you didn’t already know the originals.

The Lost Happy Endings by Carol Anne Duffy and illustrated by Jane Ray was visually irresistible. Duffy’s rich eloquence also lives up to all expectations: but a word of caution. Although this is a new story, she takes the fairy tale genre back to its grass-roots level. No wishy-washiness here. The retribution meted out to the thieving witch is absolute. It is more suitable for slightly older children: and should be cherished for that, for it sometimes seems that the older children get, the harder it is to find beautifully illustrated picture books for them. Certainly both my children relished both the pictures and the wonderful, descriptive language and each bore the book off to read independently after I’d read it to them.

There were several anthologies of traditional fairy tales to choose from and I have to admit I was slightly dubious as to how my boys would take to several nights in a row of traditional “happy-ever-after” tales: they assure me every time romance is mentioned that all that stuff is yeuch… But of course, I had fallen into the trap of equating fairy-tale with romantic and there is so much more to the traditional stories than that. Anthea Bell’s name is a talisman for me so her translation of Henriette Sauvant’s selection of Rapunzel and other Magic Fairy Tales was the obvious choice (helped by the surreal cover illustration)– and has been bourne out. We have so far enjoyed stories we know well, as well as come across some new to us all.

All of us talk to our babies, from the first minute that we are together, even though those sounds are incomprehensible to an infant’s ear. Babies soon learn to associate those sounds with comfort, warmth and attention, and begin to respond with amazing speed. Reading to a baby does exactly the same thing, and babies whose parents read to them rapidly associate books with love and closeness. They become bibliophiles long before they can walk, with favorite books firmly established by the time they celebrate their first birthdays.

Parents can find this to be a mixed blessing. My mother, who is well over eighty, can still recite every word of a Little Golden Book called The New Baby and I myself have Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are firmly implanted in my memory. After being handed the same book for thirty nights in a row, even the most literate parent begins to dread the request, “Read this story, please.”

This is where “Books at Bedtime” comes in. Marjorie Coughlan, associate editor of PaperTigers and a passionate advocate of reading aloud to children, has long been offering suggestions for bedtime audiences of all ages, and she’s looking for comments from you. Which books do your children love? Which ones make them look for something else to do instead? Is there a particular illustrator that they can’t get enough of? Does one of Marjorie’s recommendations remind you of another book on a similar subject? Join her in her book group for parents, teachers, and caregivers who share the pleasure of reading aloud to children, and who are looking for the very best books for any time of day—including, of course, bedtime.

I have to admit, I had never heard of sijo, a traditional Korean verse form, until we received a review copy of Linda Sue Park’s gorgeous little book Tap Dancing on the Roof. What a wonderful partnership the poems and Istvan Banyai’s adorably quirky illustrations make!

A sijo is typically divided into three lines of fourteen to sixteen syllables each – though apparently in English they are sometimes divided up into six lines. Unlike their sister genre, the haiku, they can be about anything and they usually have a twist/ joke at the end. It is amazing how much can be conveyed in those few, succinct sound bites! With poems like these, there’s no excuse for missing out on that bedtime story. A beginning, a middle and an end are conjured up in less than a minute.

I would love to quote some of these sijo here at length but obviously that is not possible for copyright reasons. I will content myself with this tantalising beginning of the last gem in the book entitled “Wish”:

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

Now you must all rush out and buy/ pester your libraries to get hold of a copy so you can find out the rest of it – and read the others - both for yourselves and with the young people in your lives.

I know I’m slightly behind the times on this – several blogs have already waved the flag, including A Year of Reading, PACL Kids and Three Silly Chicks – I do like their conclusion that

It’s the book equivalent of a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top.

Hmm. I’m sure there’s a sijo in there somewhere! Anyway, it’s definitely one of those books worth making a noise about – with or without the dancing shoes.

We are including Tap Dancing on the Roof in our choices for the PaperTigers Reading Challenge (have you made your mind up yet?). I can’t wait to see if my boys will start writing some sijo of their own. And if you do, please do add them on here so we can all read them.

Mentor Texts, Read Alouds and More is the gathering place for this week’s Poetry Friday… see you there!

Most of us know that bright children frequently read books written for adults, but it’s less commonly recognized that bright adults frequently read books written for children.  (Harry Potter, anyone?)  No matter how old or how young we are, what unites us as readers is that deep feeling of satisfaction that comes with turning the last page and thinking “Now that was a good book.”  

T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and  The Lord of the Rings  are only a few of the books that have been read by adults and children with equal delight, and have been claimed by both groups as favorites.  The element that these books all share are the magic created by a writer who placed highly original characters in a world that was constructed by considering the story, not the age of its readers, nor any underlying didacticism. 

The people we hope to have in our new book group are readers who can sink into a children’s book with pleasure and want to talk about it in a community of like-minded bibliophiles, whether they be eight or eighty, whether they live in Peoria or Phnom Penh.  Our goal is to host an ongoing conversation in which people from all over the world, adults and children, can unite over books that they all love and want to discuss online. 

The books that are featured will fall into the range of readers between the ages of eight and twelve and will be set in countries all around the world.  We hope  that the magic of literature will help to bring together the inhabitants of far-flung continents, in the same way that the book discussions will bring together people of different generations and different cultures. 

This is a book group that exists in whatever timeframe you choose—send your responses  while you’re still in your pajamas,  while you’re eating lunch, or when you should be doing your homework.  Send your comments and respond to other readers whenever you like—it’s that easy.  If you don’t like the book that’s been chosen, let us know.  If it reminds you of others that you’ve read, tell us.  If you don’t like the questions that have been posed about the book, write about the points that are meaningful to you.  Suggest titles for future discussion. Argue, discover a new point of view, chat about books—for many of us there’s nothing better than that.  Opening a book opens a new world to explore, and a good book makes that world a part of its reader forever.  Let’s discover new worlds together through the magic of books.   

PaperTigers’ Books at Bedtime section of our blog is now a part of the new, exciting Tiger’s Bookshelf, which was launched this week. We welcome Janet, our new blogger, who is encouraging young people to join our virtual book-club – see her introductory post for background and details. Books at Bedtime will continue to recommend books for reading aloud (not just at bedtime!) and to celebrate this new development, we are launching our PaperTigers’ Reading Challenge to carry us through to the end of the year.

So here’s the deal:

Choose one book from or about each one of the five geographical areas shown on the PaperTigers map and …

have them read aloud to you,
or read them aloud to your children/class/bookgroup,
or read them yourself

between now and 30th June.

The books can be picture-books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction… the choice is yours.

Let us know your list and then what you thought of them when you’ve completed the challenge.

You can find lots of ideas in the PaperTigers Reviews section and here are some links to other reading lists that might help you – or pop into your local library for some inspiration. Then, when you’ve made a note of the many books you’d like to choose, there’s always the sticking-a-pin-in method… and of course there’s no reason why you can’t start all over again with another five books when you’ve finished!

We’ve decided on three different challenges in our household: one family readaloud then each of the boys will choose their own reading list… Deciding on the logistics was the easy part; I’ll let you know soon which books we actually whittle our lists down to. And we look forward to hearing about your adventures on the PaperTigers Reading Challenge too!

Long ago, back in the Dark Ages of bookselling when life was more leisurely and bookstores had enough time to provide a plethora of programs for readers, I worked in a bookstore that had a monthly Story Hour for little children. It was successful and a good time was had by all, but then some of our audience outgrew the stories and asked for something more substantial than picture books.

That request grew into a read-aloud hour for school-age listeners, a club for young writers, and a  book group for young readers, ranging in age from eight to twelve years old. This cluster of programs became popular with our book store staff as well as with our young customers, and booksellers vied for the chance to facilitate these monthly meetings, with the book group becoming the most popular offering for both the presenters and the participants.

We were lucky. The members of our book group came to us as an off shoot of another well-established program. They were already devoted readers by the time we launched a book group, they were accustomed to coming to our events, and they felt comfortable in the store and with the staff. It was the ideal climate for a flourishing book group.

Ten years later, that climate has changed for everyone. Families maintain much more rigorous schedules than in the past, bookstores have been forced to become more competitive, and more and more children are abandoning the printed word. And yet book groups are more popular than ever in the adult reading world. Certainly they could be for children as well.

Do you belong to a book group? Do your children? Have you begun a book group for children? Do you wish you could but are unsure of how to go about it? Let us know. In addition to providing an online book group where children and adults can discuss books that they love, PaperTigers also would love to provide a spot where experienced book group participants give pointers to those who are beginning to explore the pleasures of reading and chatting with others of like mind.

How did your group begin? What do you read? How do you keep your discussions lively and your meetings well-attended? What advice do you have for people who are beginning their own groups? Please let us know and help us spread the joy of reading