From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:52:35 -0600

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BATCHELDER QUESTION: Earlier today Brenda Bowen asked: "Can the Batchelder committee not consider picture books? There are some extraordinary translations of picture books (poetry especially) published in the US. Do the Batchelder rules specifically preclude texts that are short? I've quoted from Ginny's recent posting, below. [Ginny states: "For example, the Batchelder Committee has the flexibility to decide not to name an award winning publisher/book in any given year. Why? Because regrettably - there are so few books of substantial length published and eligible for this significant award each year..."]

Brenda, there are others in the CCBC-Net community with a current copy of the Batchelder Award Manual at hand. I hope one or more of them will respond to your question. For example, John Peters was a member of the 2002 Batchelder Award Committee. I remember that John asked everyone at least twice during the past year for suggestions of eligible books as he diligently sought to identify all possible considerations. Perhaps John or someone else is sending a reply to all of us right now. I hope so.

I've always understood that the Mildred Batchelder Award is intended to provide U.S. children with access to English language translations of outstanding books of substantial length first published in another nation in a language other than English. At the same time, the Batchelder Award is intended to formally acknowledge the U.S. publishers who assume the financial risk of publishing an author with no U.S. visibility (read: not a "name brand author"), or a book with an "unfamiliar" voice (my word: "unfamiliar").

The "substantial" requirement refers to the eligibility rule stating that picture books and folktales aren't eligible. They're too easy to evaluate initially even without translation, and they don't require as much an investment of time and money as longer books. But we each can become confused about that whenever we look at ALA/ALSC Batchelder website information. There we notice that several former Batchelder Award Committees have honored both types of translated books. http://www.ala.org/alsc/batch.html I'm personally always so glad to see that in 1983 the Mildred Batchelder Award was won by Lothrop, Lee
& Shepard for publishing the highly visual book "Hiroshima No Pika" written and illustrated with paintings by Toshi Maruki, a startling book translated from the Japanese during the early 1980s through the auspices of the Kurita?ndo Literary Agency. Dorothy Briley edited this book. There's a time and place to bend the rules.

As I understand it, the intention of that eligibility rule is to encourage investigation into longer works in languages other than English and to further encourage a publisher to arrange for a work never before translated into English to investigated. Usually this requires someone fluent in a particular language and who ALSO knows something about evaluating children's books (other than having once been a child her/himself) and and who has a reliable knowledge of children's reading inclinations in the U.S. This hypothetical person who according to reports is in short supply will read and recommend a foreign language book to a U.S. publisher. The U.S. publisher then must engage a translator who can expertly translate not only the language but who knows also U.S. children's culture, as well as that of the original country. In other words, it's easy (also read: less expensive, less time-consuming, less risky) to find a reader, a critic, and/or a translator of a 32-page picture book or folktale adaptation. It's difficult to locate someone, or more than one person, to assist in the speculation regarding a longer work in another language. I've also been told that the longer books are very time-consuming in that they often aren't ready for publication during the "budget year" in which they've been scheduled for publication. Not ready? Courage. Perhaps it's safer not to try and publish them at all?

Brenda raises an important question for more than one reason. The translation of poetry is yet an entirely different matter, one requiring special skills and insights, in addition to those mentioned above. Perhaps U.S. children may have missed having a short book of poetry brought to their attention because it wasn't formally acknowledged by the Batchelder Award process this year. By the way, Brenda, which book is it? Perhaps the book you have in mind was - in fact - evaluated and studied by the award committee, but not selected for an entirely different reason. We don't know, and we can't find out, either.

One of the publishers at the ALA conference said to someone else that there are plenty of terrific foreign language books "out there" waiting to be translated, but so very few U.S. children's book editors are interested in publishing translated books. Hmm... I have truly forgotten who related that to me and who was being quoted. It doesn't matter.

It's interesting to look closely at the Batchelder winners throughout the early years, and to notice that many were edited by the same few editors who had moved from one publishing house to another. The editorial leadership of Ann Durrell (retired from publishing, perhaps I spelled her names incorrectly, apologies, if so) and the late Dorothy Briley is missed for many reasons, this being only one of them. Maybe there are more editors interested in this type of publishing today. Perhaps the publishing committees of their current houses don't agree to it? (Sounds as if a Hogworts sorting hat might be needed here.)

We're repeatedly told that Batchelder winners and honor books don't make money for their publishers, don't even break even for their publishers. I've wondered what has happened to the handsome Batchelder Award seal sold by ALSC or ALA Graphics for a few years. Everyone says that seals make a difference in bookstores, and they can make a difference with some kids, too. But if the winning publishers don't purchase the award seals available for any award and then pay for warehouse workers to "sticker the stock" currently in their warehouses
- probably a very small printing in terms of numbers if it's a translated book - then sales figures will be even lower than they otherwise might be. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Translated books, even the Batchelder books, "don't sell." Message: buy seals!

It's wonderful when a Batchelder winner becomes available in paperback. This happens rarely. We were so pleased to see the attractive paperback edition (Yearling?) of Farrar's 1997 Batchelder Award winning novel "The Friends" written by Kazumi Yumoto & translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano.

We know that it's risky to publish a new writer or even an established writer from Canada or England or Australia or New Zealand
- even a new writer from the U.S. I guess that's another reason why any book award news compels such interest. My virtual hat is off again, and this time to "USA Today" for publishing on 1/22/02 a complete list of all of the awards announced at the ALSC press conference on Monday, and for including all publishing information for each book and video, etc., down to the foreign language titles of the Batchelder books! What are those foreigh language titles? You can get this info from the ALSC press release http://www.ala.org/news/v8n2/awardsrelease.html , but here it is, as well. The Cricket Books winner "How I Became an American" has the German title "Das Paradies Liegt in Amerika," and Viking's "A Book of Coupons" is "Joker" in French. Congratulations for those two publishers and to their editors. (If we don't find out sooner, we'll know who these two editors are by March 21 when we begin our Batchelder books discussion on CCBC-Net.)

Please - everyone who knows more than I do, and I'm certain you're
"out there" - do jump in to correct and/or add to what I've written here about the Batchelder Award.

If you plan to respond to anything I've written - and I hope lots of you "out there" will want to respond with questions or comments please don't repeat this lengthy message along with your new one. It's not fair to those who with the CCBC-Net Digest (see, everything's connected after all!), and it's unfair to those who don't have the CCBC-Net Digest, as well. Paste what you need to quote, or don't quote anything at all. But try not to hit the reply button. Begin a new message.

Now I'm joining Robin in stepping away from the mike, at least for a while...

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at 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 Wed 23 Jan 2002 03:52:35 PM CST