From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 17:00:38 -0600

Thanks, GraceAnn DeCandido, for your comments about "Vendela in Venice" and "The Collector of Moments," two quite dissimilar books in just about every respect but yet you found a way to link your comments about them. Thanks, too, to Annette Felix, for sharing your responses to reading "Baboon King," and "Asphalt Angels" and "The Collector of Moments."

Who else has read "Asphalt Angels" ? It's emotionally tough to read and most memorable, but yet such an important book. I was reminded of the film "Central Station" as I read it.

While we're still open for other remarks about the translated books brought to visibility through the Mildred Batchelder Award process this year, let's expand our discussion to include information about resources concerning this distinctive type of publishing for young readers. Several resouces about Translated Children's Books come to my mind. I'm sure some of you will add others:

1) "Foreign Goods: What Happens in Translation?" by Michael Patrick Hearn in "Riverbank Review" (Spring, 2000: 4-7). Information about the elegant and always lively quarterly journal "Riverbank Review" can be found on that website (www.riverbankreview.com) and inquiries can be made by e-mail (riverbank at stthomas.edu) Hearn's provocative article takes a few publishers to task for "burying" translation & translator information, or for employing translators with unspectacular credentials, and/or for "Americanizing" texts from other nations and languages. The editors and publishers in the CCBC-Net community most certainly will want to find that article. We invite you to respond to Mr. Hearn through CCBC-Net - and in other ways, too, of course.

2) The Newsletter of the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) has a regular column about new translated childen's books written by Maureen White. It's a very good way to stay current. To inquire about joining USBBY in order to receive this newsletter at least twice a year, contact the USBBY office c/o Ms. Alida Cutts
(acutts at ira.org).

3) "Children's Books from Other Countries" edited by Carl M. Tomlinson (Scarecrow Press, 1998) offers citations and brief descriptions of 724 children's books first published in a nation other than the U.S.A. between 1950 & 1996. Each citation includes a suggested age range, nation of origin and a plot summary. An introductory essay offers an overview of international children's literature and suggestions on sharing books with international origins with children. Publisher winners of the Mildred Batchelder Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal are listed in the appendix. Index access to information is by author/title, nation of origin, and subject. Look in your library for this reference book, phone the publisher (1?0F2d20), or visit the Scarecrow Press website
(http://www.scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/MultiBook.shtml). A second edition to be edited by Susan Stan is in the works.

4) The publication "CCBC Choices 2000" contains an essay on observations about publishing during 1999 and, as usual each year, there is a brief commentary about the general status of new translated children's and young adult books. See the CCBC website for information
(http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/public2.htm#choices)

Perhaps some of you who write for or edit the above publications or others with articles or information related to this subject will contribute some comments about Translated Children's Books in general, or about your publication or article, or about one of the Batchelder Books of the Year 2000. Please do...

Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/) A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison
Received on Fri 24 Mar 2000 05:00:38 PM CST