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We have a new Personal View by Elisa Oreglia, the founding Producer/Editor of PaperTigers in 2002.  Elisa is currently a PhD student at the University of California Berkeley School of Information researching the circulation and use of mobile phones and computers in China, especially in the countryside.  You can read articles written by Elisa in PaperTigers’ early days here and here.

Elisa recently produced this reading list for the Ethnography Matters blog – plenty to get your teeth into there – and she still loves children’s books, especially ones about elephants.

“PaperTigers at 10″ by Elisa Oreglia

Happy Birthday, PaperTigers! And what a great age to be, ten years old. When I was ten years old, that was my golden age of reading: a treasure of picture books still behind me, to consult secretly from time to time, and a whole new world of books for young adults and grown-ups slowly opening up. Around that time, my grandmother gave me a book of legends, myths, and stories from around the world which, at least according to the family lore, shaped a lot of my future interests. At the time, legends and myths from other countries were about as far as multicultural literature had gone, and I drank it up. I read the book in one go, and kept going back to the different stories, especially the legend of the dragon boat festival from China… see where this is going?

I can’t say that I thought about these stories a lot or became obsessed by dragon boats in the following years, but when, years later, Peter Coughlan asked me if I’d be interested in working with him to create a website centered around children’s books and the Pacific Rim, the dragon boats came back to my mind. I wondered what had happened in the years since I stopped reading children’s books: were kids still reading myths and legends from around the world? Were there more books about faraway cultures now that the internet was seemingly shortening the distance between countries? What did children’s books look like in China and India and other Pacific Rim countries? How could I say no to such a tempting adventure?

Read the rest of the article…

Continuing our Water in Multicultural Children’s Literature theme, we have two new features on the PaperTigers website.

A River of Stories: Water-Themed Stories for Multicultural Readers, a Personal View by Alice Curry, in which she discusses the superb anthology A River of Stories: Tales and Poems from Across the Commonwealth, she compiled recently, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski and published by the Commonwealth Education Trust.  Here’s the opening to whet your appetite:

On the southern-most tip of Africa, the lonely Zulu goddess of rain, Mbaba Mwana Waresa, searches for love amongst mortal men, rainbows glistening in her wake. On the northern-most tip of Canada, the solitary Ice King guards his wintry lair yet dreams, secretly, of warmer climes. On the tropical shores of Australia, old man Mookari, god of the storm, rattles into town before stealing, quietly, away. In Nigeria, the impetuous water god, Olokun, paces the shining floors of his underwater palace, whilst in Ghana, the goddess Mawu transforms herself into a waterfall to nourish the parched and thirsty earth.

Water gods and goddesses, spirits and deities have fuelled our imaginations and nourished our beliefs since the beginning of time. Not only is water a vital physical presence in our lives, but also a powerfully imaginative and symbolic source of inspiration for writers and storytellers everywhere. In our increasingly threatened world, in which climate-related natural disasters are a daily reality for much of the world’s population, water-themed stories are an important and relevant way of encouraging sustainable, respectful and empathic attitudes towards the environment. It is currently estimated that half of the world’s population will be living under severe water stress by 2030; for today’s children, the conservation of a healthy natural environment has become a development issue of the highest priority.

Now head on over and read the rest of the article…

View work by acclaimed artist Pulak Biswas in our Gallery, including illustrations from his most recent book The Flute written by Rachna Gilmore (Tradewind Books, 2011)…

Last week was Anti-Bullying Week in Canada and in the UK, where there is currently a move to make the focus on this important issue last for the whole of November.   But of course, the issues highlighted don’t disappear when you’re not looking at them – in fact, bullies are usually very clever at keeping their actions hidden.  The message still needs to be got across at all times that bullying is not acceptable.  We adults have a responibility for teaching respect for others and ourselves, both through formal education and in the example we set in our own behavior.

I have recently been reading two books in which young people tell of their experiences of bullying in their own words, accompanied with photographs and names in most cases.

The first, We Want You to Know: Kids Talk About Bullying is by Deborah Ellis (Coteau Books, 2010), who is well-known for drawing attention to the plight of children around the world caught up in mess caused by adults, both in her fiction (The Breadwinner Trilogy, set in Afghanistan; and the Cocalero novels, set in Bolivia), and in her non-fiction (Off To War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children; Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees).  We Want You to Know brings together the stories of young people aged 9-19 who have been bullied, who have bullied others, and who “have found strength within themselves to rise above their situations and to endure.”  They are all from Ellis’ “little corner of Southern Ontario” in Canada, following her involvement in a local Name It 2 Change It Community Campaign Against Bullying (and, indeed, royalties from the sale of this book go to the organization).  At the same time, interspersed with the longer accounts from the Canadian children are shorter highlighted statements from children across the world – Angola, Japan, Madagascar, South Korea, Uganda, the US.  Yes, bullying happens everywhere.

The book is divided into five main sections, You’re Not Good Enough, You’re Too Different, You’re It—Just Because, We Want to Crush You, and Redemption.  Each account has a couple of follow-up questions, asking “What Do You Think?”, and then there are discussion questions at the end of the sections.

The other book is Bullying and Me: Schoolyard Stories by Ouisie Shapiro with photographs by Steven Vote (Albert Whitman, 2010).  Again, it features first-hand accounts of young people who the introduction reminds us, “had a hard time reliving their experiences”, while recognising the importance of not remaining silent, to remind others who are bullied that “you’re not alone.  And it’s not your fault.”  Each account is followed by useful summarising statements from Dr Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist specializing in adolescent bullying.

Both these titles are aimed at young readers – but make no mistake, they are hard-hitting books that deliver a punc

Abigail Sawyer regularly reviews books for us here at PaperTigers, and she’s also, in her own words, “a lifelong library lover and an advocate for access to books for all”, so who better to write an article for us about “unconventional libraries” and the children’s books they have inspired. Abigail lives in San Francisco, California, USA, where her two children attend a language-immersion elementary school and are becoming bilingual in English and Mandarin: an experience that has informed her work on the blog for the film Speaking in Tongues. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I have.

On Traveling Libraries and Heroic ‘Book People’: Inspiring children’s books about getting books to people in remote places and difficult circumstances

My sons and I paid our first-ever visit to a bookmobile over the summer.  For us it was a novelty.  We have shelves of books at home and live just 3 blocks from our local branch library, but the brightly colored bus had pulled up right near the playground we were visiting in another San Francisco neighborhood (whose branch library was under renovation), and it was simply too irresistible.  Inside, this library on wheels was cozy, comfortable, and loaded with more books than I would have thought possible.  I urged my boys to practice restraint and choose only one book each rather than compete to reach the limit of how many books one can take out of the San Francisco Public Library system (the answer is 50; we’ve done it at least once).

The bookmobiles provide a great service even in our densely populated city where branch libraries abound.  There are other mobile libraries, however, that take books to children who may live miles from even the nearest modern road; to children who live on remote islands, in the sparsely populated and frigid north, in temporary settlements in vast deserts, and in refugee camps.  The heroic individuals who manage these libraries on boats, burros, vans, and camels provide children and the others they serve with a window on the world and a path into their own imaginations that would otherwise be impossible.

Shortly after my own bookmobile experience, Jeanette Winter‘s Biblioburro (Beach Lane Books, 2010), a tribute to Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano, who delivers books to remote hillside villages across rural Colombia, arrived in my mailbox to be reviewed for Paper Tigers.  I loved this book, as I do most of Winter’s work, for its bright pictures and simple, straightforward storytelling. Another picture book, Waiting for the Bibiloburro by Monica Brown (Tricycle Press, 2011), tells the story of Soriano’s famous project from the perspective of one of the children it

If you have already read today’s earlier post, received our latest newsletter or taken a look at the latest issue on the PaperTigers website, you will know that there are exciting developments in the offing for PaperTigers, especially as regards our Outreach Programe - developments which will affect both the PaperTigers website and the blog; and you will have realised that for all of us who are involved in PaperTigers, there is also a thread of sadness running through the anticipation of what is to come, for we will very sadly be losing Aline Pereira as a member of our team. Here on the blog, we will certainly be celebrating all that Aline has achieved, before her departure for pastures new in January; in the meantime, here is her final editorial taken from the main PaperTigers website, in which she talks about “Changes Afoot in 2011″:

Who says a Tiger can’t change (or at least rearrange) its stripes?

Led by the desire to expand its outreach program and faced with financial constraints, PaperTigers is in the process of doing just that: reconfiguring its stripes. Some difficult decisions were made that will affect the way things work in the new year.

First, the not so good news…

Come February, sadly, I will be leaving PaperTigers. As a result of the economy downturn that is affecting so many in the United States and of a decision to redirect part of PaperTigers’ funds to the development of an additional outreach reality (as explained below), my Managing Editor role will cease to exist. Marjorie Coughlan, who has been PaperTigers Associate Editor on a part-time basis since 2005, and my partner in crime and good friend, will become PaperTigers only editor.

Since this is my last editorial, I’d like to take this opportunity to say goodbye and to express my gratitude to all the readers, friends, colleagues and contributors for their support, friendship, work and always helpful feedback these past six years. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to have worked/crossed paths with each one of you. Please stay in touch.

On a more positive note, let me be the one to tell you what other changes are afoot for PaperTigers in 2011. I won’t be in the picture after February (except for maybe the occasional article or book review), but the projects I’ve helped grow and, in some cases, establish, will continue to exist–even if in a slightly modified format.

As you know, over the last few years, in addition to offering rich and varied content on the website, we have also been developing our blog and outreach program. In an attempt to present these three realities more clearly, starting in mid-January, those going to papertigers.org will find a new landing page, where they can choose which of the three aspects of PaperTigers they want to read about/explore, i.e. the site, the blog or the outreach program.

On the site itself, topics will no longer be treated through bimonthly issues, as they have been until now. Themes and geographical areas will continue to be covered, but in a more flexible way that is not confined to a bimonthly rhythm. We believe that this will allow the website and blog to be integrated more fully.

We have intensified our outreach program in the course of the last twelve months. Through the Spirit of PaperTigers book donation project we have sent sets of books to schools in many parts of the world. This project will continue to exist, but in a simplified way that takes into account the

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This month, on the PaperTigers website, we are highlighting a sample of the many and rich features from our previous issues and talking about some changes afoot in 2011.

In her last editorial, Aline Pereira explains what these changes are and how they relate to the fact that, come February, sadly and unfortunately, she will no longer be PaperTigers’ Managing Editor.

Aline’s presence at the helm of PaperTigers over the last six years has been critical; her contribution has been both extensive and immensely valuable for the site and for the blog – and she has also played an important role in helping us move towards a fuller outreach program. To say that she will be missed and that her absence will be a big loss for PaperTigers is an understatement. We are truly grateful to her for all she has done and wish her the very best in her future endeavors.

We hope 2011 will be a year of learning and growth for all of us, and as we prepare to ring in the new year and say farewell to Aline, we offer you these great features from the treasure-trove that is PaperTigers. May they warm your hearts and minds and keep you coming back for more.

This year the Hindu festival of Diwali is from Nov. 5-9.   Today marks its beginning.  I first heard about the festival from watching a National Film Board film called Lights for Gita in their Talespinners Collection (a series of short films for 5-9 year olds.)  In this story, eight year old Gita, who lives in Montreal is excited about celebrating Diwali in her new country, but something unexpected happens — an ice storm knocks out power in the city.  What will Gita do?  Will this holiday celebrated with lights now be ruined for  her?  Check out the DVD by ordering it, or finding it at your local library!

PaperTigers with its focus on India this issue has a number of book suggestions about Diwali given in a revisited Personal Views article by Chad Stephenson.  Pooja Makhijani also refers to Diwali in her Personal Views article entitled “A String of Bright Lights.”  She mentions her Diwali book picks in a post she did for the children’s lit blog Chicken Spaghetti awhile back.  In her post, she mentions how in northern India, Diwali is a celebration of the homecoming of Ram whose story can be found in her suggested picture book title Rama and the Demon King: An Ancient Tale from India by Jessica Souhami.  I found Souhami’s book at my local library; it was a bilingual one in Somali and English!   The story of Rama is found in the Hindu text The Ramayana which is a 24, 000 couplet poem written in Sanskrit by Valmiki around 300 B.C.   My daughter’s view of this ancient story of Rama was rather quaint; she said she liked stories where the good guy (Rama) and a bad guy (Ravanna) fight it out over a woman (Sita)  — although in this case, the bad guy is terrifying ten-headed demon!

Hope you have a happy Diwali this year!  Poetry Friday is hosted by JoAnn at Teaching Authors.

In Malathi Michelle Iyengar’s picture book Romina’s Rangoli, Romina, a half-Indian and half-Mexican girl born in the United States, is struggling with a school assignment that requires students to “create something that represents your ancestors, your family, and where you come from. Something that represents your heritage.” She can’t seem to come up with a project that will blend her two cultures – that is, until Mr. Gonzalez, her Mexican neighbor, compares her rangoli patterns, drawn with colorful chalk on the sidewalk, and traditionally used in India to decorate houses, the entrance of temples and courtyards, to the symmetrical patterns of papel picado (cut-paper art), a Mexican folk art tradition.

To the teacher and students’ surprise, since they were expecting to see something hanging on the wall, Romina displays her project on the classroom floor, rangoli-style. She explains: “You, see, in India this design would be made of different colored flower petals, or dyed rice-flour, or colored chalk. But mine is made of cut paper, papel picado. My project is both Indian and Mexican, combined. Just like me!” (read the complete review here).

In her personal view article for PaperTigers, titled Hybridity in Literature and Life, the author writes:

When writing Romina’s Rangoli, I struggled with wanting to make the story simple enough to engage and entertain very small children, while at the same time trying NOT to promote the kind of simplistic thinking that reduces “culture” to food and holidays – i.e., Romina is Indian and Mexican, so that means she makes rangoli designs and papel picado. I have often wondered whether Romina’s craft project isn’t too pat, too simple of an ending. But in a society that still tells us, most of the time, to “Check only one box,” the very fact that we multi-ethnic folks actually exist is news to many children. Hopefully, as children get older, they will begin to explore with intellectual rigor the subtle complexities of what culture means in people’s lives, and how various cultural influences converge in family life.

In the new issue of PaperTigers, poet Debjani Chatterjee gives a list of poetry books in the Personal Views section entitled Borderless World: Multicultural Poetry for Children and Young Adults.    I found one of her suggestions at my local library.  It was Around the World in Eighty Poems selected by James Berry and illustrated by Katherine Lucas (Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001.)  This wonderful book  contains 80 poems of differing forms and origins.  A map at the beginning of the book shows where all the poems come from, and the poems are organized in the following index by their culture of origin.

My daughter and I have been reading this book together.  Since poetry is a short form, I like to have my daughter read the poems to me.  She sometimes takes issues with the metaphors;  often she is quite literal in her interpretations, and yet other times she enjoys the sounds of the poem or the subject (of course, she picked a poem “All the Dogs” to read as dogs are her current obsession!)  I liked the way we browsed through the book together, looking at the illustrations and titles to figure out which poem we wanted to ‘encounter.’  Poetry books are special that way; they are not necessarily meant to be read in a linear fashion.  A poet I once read, talked about poems in a book being like pictures in a gallery — the poems are self-contained units of art meant to be appreciated in a singular way as one would gaze on a painting.  Around the World in Eighty Poems is the kind of collection one can browse through and select accordingly.  Katherine Lucas’ illustrations in soft dreamy pastels supplement the poems beautifully.

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Liz at Liz in Ink.

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.

As we come to the end of our two-month focus on Refugee Children, there’s just time to remind ourselves of the important role books have in helping children to gain insight into traumatic events around the world, and to develop their own emotional response to them. We are fortunate to have so many gifted writers who are now writing such stories for children and young people of all ages (and publishers who are making these stories available). One of these writers is undoubtedly Pegi Deitz Shea, who has written about this far more eloquently than I ever could in her recent Personal View for PaperTigers: Reading About and Reaching Out to Refugees. Here’s an extract to ponder:

During the Vietnam War, I wished I had books about refugees, because the TV news overwhelmed me. As a child, I couldn’t process those images: Why are the children running? Did we hurt them? I thought we were supposed to be helping them? Will the children be okay? Today, the same need is exponentially true for youngsters. They are so barraged with audio-visual stimuli that it takes literature for them to slow down, absorb, share and process what’s going on in the world. And it takes teachers and parents to initiate that process.

Violence has become casual, entertaining, ubiquitous in the U.S. In Abe in Arms, my first novel for teens, Abe comes to America as an adopted Liberian war refugee. He receives initial therapy to help him deal with the loss of his family. But the deeper he gets into the American teen culture – sexual pressure, competitive sports, violent entertainment, substance abuse – the more absurd and worthless life becomes to him. These so-called “normal” teen experiences awaken in Abe untold traumas of sexual abuse and drunken days of slaughter. He becomes dangerous to himself and to others.

Without literature like this – and trusted adults to share it with – how can kids growing up far from disaster zones become aware of the life-and-death situations their counterparts face around the world? It is not only war, but also shattered economies and natural disasters that create refugees. But to kids tuned into the latest celebrity debacle, the earthquake in Haiti is old news, Hurricane Katrina is ancient news and the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean is etched on stone tablets. At the time of those tragedies, many schools generously and immediately responded to the call for aid. But the consequences of these events last a long time. Without books that last, how can we expect memories to last? How can we expect children to develop a lasting commitment to caring?

Recent floods in Pakistan have immobilized the country and have put many lives at peril and risk.  Of course, among the many affected are children.  Response to the disaster has been slow but there are places where one can donate specifically to help children such as UNICEF, World Vision,  Save the Children in addition to the Red Cross.   PaperTigers has covered a number of books about Pakistani children in distress, particularly those in refugee camps on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and those working as child laborers.  The plight of children in distress and the way their stories can be told in books is the focus of Pegi Shea’s Personal Views piece in this month’s PaperTigers issue which is about refugees.

In his Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, How Children Play Around the World, author Tom O’Leary describes how he recently learnt some important lessons from his daughters…

Tom is the author of RetroActive: Skip, Hop and You Don’t Stop: Games We Played (BookSurge Publishing, 2009) and also has a great blog – Games We Played – so, I have to say, it was kind of reassuring, as a parent, to read his article – but also inspiring. I really urge you to read it all the way through – it did make me chuckle; and I’m going to quote the inspiring bit here:

The participation in natural, unstructured and creative childhood play teaches our children more than any coach ever could:

In play, children learn how to resolve conflict through compromise
The simplicity of “do-over” as a method of balancing two opposing opinions during play could be a lesson for many corporate and political quarrels.

In play, children learn how to be fair
The process of selecting “It” is based on pure objectivity.

In play, children learn how to be tolerant
They learn that no player is too small, too slow or too awkward to be included in the game.

In play, children learn to adapt
Rules are introduced or adpated as needed to ensure an even playing field, or to increase the challenge for skilled players.

In play, children learn teamwork
Making a human chain in jail to give our remaining teammates a better chance to free us demonstrates our unity.

In play, children learn to trust
There is no greater ally than your playing partner.

In play, children learn to take chances
Is it possible to make it to the other side if I run now?

In play, children learn to laugh and not take themselves too seriously
It’s just a game, after all.

And in the perfect imperfection of unstructured, creative play, children are reminded of the most important thing: that they are children and that play is fun, just like it should be.

How about that as something to print out and stick on the fridge? It is so great to be reminded of this, and particularly timely for me now, as soon my two will be winding down for their school holidays. Here’s hoping it will be one they look back on as an endless summer spent playing out of doors…

Thank you, Tom, for your great Personal View.

In our current issue of PaperTigers, which focuses on Canadian Aboriginal Children’s Literature, we feature the reprint of an article by Nadine C. Fabbi, Associate Director of the Canadian Studies Center in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, in which she has put together a set of picture books to introduce children to Inuit culture and Northern/Nunavut history:

Elementary school teachers and librarians can successfully introduce children to Inuit culture and Northern/Nunavut history by having them read the ten selected books in this article and then enhancing these stories with additional curriculum and lesson plans. Children’s literature from the North is relatively recent with all but one of the suggested books being published in the 1990s or since 2000. All of the books are excellent in terms of quality (several are awards winners) and engaging for the young reader with beautiful illustrations. Each book also serves as an introduction to Inuit mythology, the history of the Northwest Passage and missionary schools, the importance of the inukshuk, and the vital place of the polar bear in Inuit culture. The entire “selection” makes for an excellent library of the Canadian North for children.

You can read the whole article here. The set includes our current selection for The Tiger’s Bookshelf, Arctic Stories by Michael Kusugak and illustrated by Vladyana Langer Krykorka (Annick, 1998); and I was particularly struck by what Nadine writes about the importance of the polar bear in Inuit culture:

Another key part of Inuit life is the role of the polar bear both for survival and in terms of the special attributes given to the animal. Children love to learn about animals and the polar bear is one of the most interesting animals, since it is unique to Northern cultures, to study. Polar bears are the largest of all bears – males can weigh up to 1,600 pounds – but cubs only weigh 1 to 2 pounds or less than that of a human baby. Teaching about the polar bear is also a good way to introduce children to the effects of global warming. The polar bear is one of the most threatened of all species today due to the sensitive northern environment and the melting of the ice floes. Today’s polar bears are a full 15% lighter in weight than they were 20 years ago. There are two beautifully written books that give a wonderful sense of the importance of the polar bear to the Inuit people: The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale (Sandpiper, 1997) by Lydia Dabcovich and The Polar Bear’s Gift (Red Deer Press, 2000) by Jeanne Bushey.

In The Polar Bear Son an elderly Inuk woman finds and raises a polar bear cub who becomes a close companion. When the bear matures he hunts and brings her food but it doesn’t take long for the men of the village to take a hunter’s interest in the bear. To protect her “son,” the woman chases the bear away but every so often will stand on the edge of the village and clap for him to come back and visit her. This is an incredibly touching story, retold from a popular oral tale, and beautifully illustrated by the author. It tells of the sensitive relationship between animal

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In our current issue of PaperTigers, Katia Novet Saint-Lot, author of the very special picture-book Amadi’s Snowman, has shared with us her family’s celebration of an expat Christmas, in which she and her family draw in local traditions from the country they are living in at the time. The result is a wonderful evocation of peace and respect across faiths:

Last year, as we built our Nativity scene on the large bottom plank of our Rajasthani bookshelf, a little wooden Ganesh and a small brass Buddha found their way close to the empty spot waiting for Jesus to be born. I don’t remember how they got there, but there they sat, round and happy, amidst all the cotton wool meant to represent the snow. Both my children have grown up surrounded by images of Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles with his broken tusk, his pot belly, and his friend the mouse. They’ve seen his statues carried on auto-rickshaws and trucks all across the city, and they’ve seen them immersed in the lake. Similarly, we have several statues of Buddha in our home. When our little one was 17 months old, we visited Sri Lanka, and she saw so many Buddhas over there that the word became one of her favorites for a while. She would see the statue of a politician, or of any God from the Hindu pantheon, and cry enthusiastically: “Buddha!” So it was only natural that both Ganesh and Buddha should join us in awaiting the birth of Jesus. What is the spirit of Christmas, after all, if not a spirit of universal love? And shouldn’t love go hand in hand with inclusion, tolerance and respect?

When my husband lived in Mali, a predominantly Muslim country , he picked up the habit of saying “Insh’Allah” (God willing) whenever the outcome of a situation was uncertain. When I met him in New York, he was still saying it. He continued to do so while we lived in the predominantly Christian south-eastern part of Nigeria, and our coming to India has not changed his habit. Some people assume he’s Muslim (he was brought up Christian); others know that he’s not, and smile. One day, the Hindu driver who worked for my husband’s office blurted out “Insh’Allah” as the two of them discussed their concern about a particular situation. When my husband laughed, and called him on it, he just smiled.

You can read her whole Personal View, “A Wish for 2010″ here. Our thoughts are with Katia and her family at the moment as her husband is from Haiti. She is currently preparing a post for her blog “about Haiti, its beauty, and what the country and its people mean to me” – I’ll add a link when it goes live; in the meantime, read what she has to say about children’s books about Haiti, as well as Mitali Perkin’s post, which Katia refers to…

Award-winning poet Lara Saguisag introduces her Personal View, written for PaperTigers last year, with the rather unpromising line:

I must confess: as a child I didn’t like poetry very much.

That perception might have continued had she not been blown away by listening to poet Valerie Bloom - read Lara’s article, where she muses on this transformation and “The Many Possibilities of Children’s Poetry“.

I have yet to lay my hands on a copy of Lara’s Children of Two Seasons: Poems for Young People (Anvil, 2007) so instead, as we in the north of England move towards sharp, chilly mornings, I direct you to the poem “Frost” by Valerie Bloom - and make sure you listen to Valerie’s own exquisite reading of it too. It’s taken from Valerie’s The World is Sweet (Bloomsbury, 2001).

I’m not sure where this week’s Poetry Friday round-up is taking place - when I found out, I’ll update the link…

Prompted by my reading of exiled Argentinian children’s writer, Jorge Lujàn’s essay in the recent issue of PaperTigers, I went to my library to take out his books.  I found three: Sky Blue Accident Accidente Celeste, Rooster Gallo and Colors ¡Colores! In reading them to my daughter, I was immediately enchanted. The stories were palpably poetic.  In Sky Blue Accident, for example, a boy crashes into the sky and puts the broken pieces into his pocket.  In Rooster, when the rooster opens its beak, the sun comes up, opens its hand and gives birth to the day.  In Colors, night has a black gown in which stars — the ‘eyes of the universe can shine more brightly.’  Some of you may recognize at once the magical realist quality of these stories for which Latin American writers are particularly renown.  Personifying colors and natural elements like the sky and the day without being stereotypical takes a special creative knack and Lujàn has that knack in spades, so to speak.  And of course, such creative and perceptive views of the world are an illustrator’s delight.  These books have different illustrators with their own unique style.  Sky Blue Accident and Colors are illustrated by Piet Grobler whose style is captivatingly quirky as in Sky Blue Accident or breezily ephemeral as in the watercolor swathes found in Colors.  Rooster is illustrated by Manuel Monroy.  The bird is painted a speckled blue; it’s body is a metaphor for the sky.  I liked how the speckles flew off as stars at one point in the book, and how the rooster eats a star with a star gleaming in its eye on the next page.

Lujàn’s books are bilingual in Spanish and English.  Although I’m not particularly familiar with Spanish, I enjoyed reading the Spanish text aloud to my daughter.  We learned Spanish words a la Lujàn in a totally new and delightful way!

With September now upon us, we are continuing our focus on Music in Children’s Literature with a new Book of the Month, over on the main PaperTigers website: A Song for Cambodia by Michelle Lord and illustrated by Shino Arihara (Lee & Low, 2006):

…the painful but inspiring true story of how music literally saved the life of Arn Chorn-Pond, founder of Cambodian Living Arts, a World Education project.

An orphan of the Khmer Rouge genocide in 1975, nine-year-old Arn was sent to a children’s work camp, where he was underfed and overworked, under the constantly watchful eye of armed and threatening soldiers. When volunteers were called for to play propaganda songs, Arn, who came from a family of musicians, raised his hand. He and five other children were chosen to learn the khim, a traditional Cambodian string instrument. Arn excelled… but once he had learned to play, his teacher and all but one of his fellow students were executed…

Read the complete review

Michelle has also contributed an insightful Personal View, Music as Inspiration and Survival: a Cambodian Journey - definitely worth reading!

Also new on the website, we are delighted to present an interview with husband-and-wife team Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, authors of the powerful and moving illustrated middle-reader, Little Leap Forward (Barefoot Books, 2008). In June I blogged about its powerful stage adaptation and in the interview Yue and Clare talk about it, as well as other aspects of the book.

Little Leap Forward is based on Yue’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution in China. His father, a professional erhu (two-string violin) player, died when Yue was very young; when Yue was seven, he began receiving flute lessons from one of his father’s friends, a musician who lived in the same small courtyard; then, at the age of seventeen, he joined an army music ensemble as a flutes soloist for the People’s Republic of China. With the help of one of his sisters, Yue left China in 1982 to take up a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He now plays all over the world - and by following some of the links in the interview side-bar, you can listen to some examples of his beautiful music…

For our new issue of PaperTigers, whose theme is Music in Children’s Books, Argentinian Mexican poet, Jorge Luján has written a very special Personal View, “Voices on the Air: Writing Poetry and Songs for Children“.

Here is an extract, in which he describes his relationship with poetry:

Poetry is a kind of vertigo for me. A challenge that frequently knocks me down, makes me feel trapped within my limits, and keeps me isolated from grace… but occasionally, drives me to horizons of astonishment, pleasure, and growth. I’m convinced that, if we are open to it, poetry can envelop us in a rare, subtle atmosphere. And poetry is not only to be found in poems, but is also present in the endless forms of nature or in the touching gestures, words and acts of people.

As a songwriter and a singer, I love the experience of the voice taking to the air like wings taking flight. Composing words and music together is a complex experience of joy and sorrow, but one which also implies building bridges between people.

I urge you to read the whole article. I found it very moving - and interesting too, for Jorge has introduced me to the work of some Latin American poets I’m slightly ashamed to admit I didn’t know…

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect… Head on over!