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From: K.T. Horning <khorning>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 08:45:31 -0600 (CST)
It has been exactly one month since the ALA Awards were announced and before we move on to another topic, I'd like write a little bit about this year's winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award.
The Batchelder Award is given by the ALA's Association of Library Services to Children. It goes to the publisher of the most outstanding translated children's book published in the U.S. in the previous year. The purpose of the award is to encourage U.S. publishers to seek out books first published in other langauages in other countries; to acquire the rights to publish them; and to arrange to have them translated into English. They do this at enormous financial risk, since books published in translation in the U.S. rarely earn back the money that was invested in them. For this reason, there are very few books eligible for the Batchelder Award each year -- to say that you could count them on the fingers of both hands would not be an exaggeration.
Books under consideration by the Batchelder Award Committee cannot be folktales; must have a substantial text (i.e. not picture books); and must give children in the U.S. a sense of life in another country.
This year I had the honor of chairing the Batchelder Award Committee which consists of five members appointed by the ALSC president. Throughout the year, we kept track of eligible (and ineligible!) books, read them, discussed them locally, reread them, and finally in February we met to discuss the five eligible books. In spite of the small number of books, we were pleased with the quality and variety of titles we had to choose from.
The book we chose was "The Friends" written by Kazumi Yumoto and translated by Cathy Hirano. It was published in the U.S. by Farrar Straus Giroux who will accept the award during a short ceremony at the ALA Annual Conference in July. "The Friends" is set in contemporary Japan and deals with three sixth-grade boys who become rather obsessed with finding out more about what happens when someone dies. They decide that they can only learn what they want to know by watching someone die. They choose an elderly man in their neighborhood whom they think is close to death and they wait and watch. And they wait. And watch. And wait. But instead of dying, the old man seems to be coming to life under their watchful eyes. They notice that he has begun to take better care of himself. He's cleaned up his yard. He's started hanging his laundry out on the line. He's fixing up his ramshackle house. And he's watching them back. The three friends become four friends and the boys begin to undergo some changes themselves. As the narrator Kiyama notes, "Sometimes you try harder when you know someone is watching you."
Our committee appreciated many things about "The Friends." The child-like voice of the narrator moves the story along quickly with touches of humor and insight. The characterizations of three distinctive sixth-grade boys and the complex old man were very well done, and each of the characters showed realistic growth and change over the course of the book. The theme of death was explored on many levels, from the most obvious stemming from the boys' curiosity to more subtle suggestions, such as the "death of childhood." English-speaking children who read this book will get a strong sense of what life is like for some of their counterparts growing up in Japan, where the biggest difference shown here is the fact that these sixth graders are preparing for an exam which will detemine the direction they will take in their adult life. The boys regularly attend cram school and casually discuss their fate as a fact of life.
If you have not yet read "The Friends" I encourage you to seek it out and share it with children. If you have read it, we welcome your comments here on CCBC-Net. Or if you have any general questions about the Batchelder Award or translated books, please feel free to ask them.
Kathleen Horning Cooperative Children's Book Center UW-Madison School of Education
Received on Mon 17 Mar 1997 08:45:31 AM CST
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 08:45:31 -0600 (CST)
It has been exactly one month since the ALA Awards were announced and before we move on to another topic, I'd like write a little bit about this year's winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award.
The Batchelder Award is given by the ALA's Association of Library Services to Children. It goes to the publisher of the most outstanding translated children's book published in the U.S. in the previous year. The purpose of the award is to encourage U.S. publishers to seek out books first published in other langauages in other countries; to acquire the rights to publish them; and to arrange to have them translated into English. They do this at enormous financial risk, since books published in translation in the U.S. rarely earn back the money that was invested in them. For this reason, there are very few books eligible for the Batchelder Award each year -- to say that you could count them on the fingers of both hands would not be an exaggeration.
Books under consideration by the Batchelder Award Committee cannot be folktales; must have a substantial text (i.e. not picture books); and must give children in the U.S. a sense of life in another country.
This year I had the honor of chairing the Batchelder Award Committee which consists of five members appointed by the ALSC president. Throughout the year, we kept track of eligible (and ineligible!) books, read them, discussed them locally, reread them, and finally in February we met to discuss the five eligible books. In spite of the small number of books, we were pleased with the quality and variety of titles we had to choose from.
The book we chose was "The Friends" written by Kazumi Yumoto and translated by Cathy Hirano. It was published in the U.S. by Farrar Straus Giroux who will accept the award during a short ceremony at the ALA Annual Conference in July. "The Friends" is set in contemporary Japan and deals with three sixth-grade boys who become rather obsessed with finding out more about what happens when someone dies. They decide that they can only learn what they want to know by watching someone die. They choose an elderly man in their neighborhood whom they think is close to death and they wait and watch. And they wait. And watch. And wait. But instead of dying, the old man seems to be coming to life under their watchful eyes. They notice that he has begun to take better care of himself. He's cleaned up his yard. He's started hanging his laundry out on the line. He's fixing up his ramshackle house. And he's watching them back. The three friends become four friends and the boys begin to undergo some changes themselves. As the narrator Kiyama notes, "Sometimes you try harder when you know someone is watching you."
Our committee appreciated many things about "The Friends." The child-like voice of the narrator moves the story along quickly with touches of humor and insight. The characterizations of three distinctive sixth-grade boys and the complex old man were very well done, and each of the characters showed realistic growth and change over the course of the book. The theme of death was explored on many levels, from the most obvious stemming from the boys' curiosity to more subtle suggestions, such as the "death of childhood." English-speaking children who read this book will get a strong sense of what life is like for some of their counterparts growing up in Japan, where the biggest difference shown here is the fact that these sixth graders are preparing for an exam which will detemine the direction they will take in their adult life. The boys regularly attend cram school and casually discuss their fate as a fact of life.
If you have not yet read "The Friends" I encourage you to seek it out and share it with children. If you have read it, we welcome your comments here on CCBC-Net. Or if you have any general questions about the Batchelder Award or translated books, please feel free to ask them.
Kathleen Horning Cooperative Children's Book Center UW-Madison School of Education
Received on Mon 17 Mar 1997 08:45:31 AM CST
