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Batchelder/"faux foreign?"
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From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 13:25:17 -0600
Barbara Tobin correctly wrote about Susie Morgenstern's personal history, i.e., that she's American-born.
Since reading your message, Barbara, I've located a message Susie Morgenstern wrote to the CCBC-Net community almost exactly two years ago, and I've asked her permission to send it to everyone again. If that doesn't become, you can visit the CCBC-Net archives to read it. Meanwhile, the gist of that message and of others she's exchanged with me point out that Susie Morgenstern couldn't possibly write a book "for" U.S. children. Why? As Barbara indicated, Susie is steeped in life with French children through visits to French schools, libraries and bookstores and constant experiences with the children in her family circle and her circle of friends. Susie Morgenstern's U.S. editor Jill Davis could elaborate on that to a greater extent.
That doesn't address Barbara's question of how "foreign" Susie Morgenstern's books might seem to American children. Her books do seem
"French" to the French, however, because they've received enormous popular attention as well as formal acclaim in France. In previous years Susie has been nominated by the French section of IBBY for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Among many other French honors, she's been a recipient of the presitigious Prix Totem Award, and she's the author of dozens of books published in that nation, most of which I've been told are considered "too French" or possibly "too foreign" for publication in the U.S.
Go figure. Do we really have a literary Tower of Babel within an increasingly global environment where entertainment products of many kinds transcend borders?
Best, Ginny
FROM BARBARA TOBIN'S MESSAGE (3/27)
"...Robin talks about the success she has had with reading Susie Morgenstern's translated books to children. I have also enjoyed her somewhat quirky titles, but I am somewhat bemused by the fact that Susie is actually an American born and raised in New Jersey, who has lived in France for the last 30 years or so (I hope I have the details correct). I find it curious that we get to read her books in translation form back here in the U. S. I wonder at just how "foreign" this writing appears to American readers?? I wonder if Susie 'thinks' in French, and how much she draws on her American childhood or observing children growing up in France? My point is that I don't find her books particularly 'foreign', except in surface level ways, like having French character and place names and a few French words. Perhaps that is why her books are more popular in the U. S. (apart from their shorter, lighter, funnier style) than the longer translated books that we have seen lately that are definitely 'different' in sometimes intangible ways. Morgenstern's books seem 'foreign' only in a familiar way. The double translation hasn't really done much to let us dig into a culture, just smile at a what almost seems to me to be a 'faux foreign' book, a taste of the exotic without having to wrestle with the unexpected. I may have this all wrong, and be doing Ms. Morgenstern and her publishers/translators a disservice. I would welcome counter views..."
Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu
Received on Sat 27 Mar 2004 01:25:17 PM CST
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 13:25:17 -0600
Barbara Tobin correctly wrote about Susie Morgenstern's personal history, i.e., that she's American-born.
Since reading your message, Barbara, I've located a message Susie Morgenstern wrote to the CCBC-Net community almost exactly two years ago, and I've asked her permission to send it to everyone again. If that doesn't become, you can visit the CCBC-Net archives to read it. Meanwhile, the gist of that message and of others she's exchanged with me point out that Susie Morgenstern couldn't possibly write a book "for" U.S. children. Why? As Barbara indicated, Susie is steeped in life with French children through visits to French schools, libraries and bookstores and constant experiences with the children in her family circle and her circle of friends. Susie Morgenstern's U.S. editor Jill Davis could elaborate on that to a greater extent.
That doesn't address Barbara's question of how "foreign" Susie Morgenstern's books might seem to American children. Her books do seem
"French" to the French, however, because they've received enormous popular attention as well as formal acclaim in France. In previous years Susie has been nominated by the French section of IBBY for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Among many other French honors, she's been a recipient of the presitigious Prix Totem Award, and she's the author of dozens of books published in that nation, most of which I've been told are considered "too French" or possibly "too foreign" for publication in the U.S.
Go figure. Do we really have a literary Tower of Babel within an increasingly global environment where entertainment products of many kinds transcend borders?
Best, Ginny
FROM BARBARA TOBIN'S MESSAGE (3/27)
"...Robin talks about the success she has had with reading Susie Morgenstern's translated books to children. I have also enjoyed her somewhat quirky titles, but I am somewhat bemused by the fact that Susie is actually an American born and raised in New Jersey, who has lived in France for the last 30 years or so (I hope I have the details correct). I find it curious that we get to read her books in translation form back here in the U. S. I wonder at just how "foreign" this writing appears to American readers?? I wonder if Susie 'thinks' in French, and how much she draws on her American childhood or observing children growing up in France? My point is that I don't find her books particularly 'foreign', except in surface level ways, like having French character and place names and a few French words. Perhaps that is why her books are more popular in the U. S. (apart from their shorter, lighter, funnier style) than the longer translated books that we have seen lately that are definitely 'different' in sometimes intangible ways. Morgenstern's books seem 'foreign' only in a familiar way. The double translation hasn't really done much to let us dig into a culture, just smile at a what almost seems to me to be a 'faux foreign' book, a taste of the exotic without having to wrestle with the unexpected. I may have this all wrong, and be doing Ms. Morgenstern and her publishers/translators a disservice. I would welcome counter views..."
Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu
Received on Sat 27 Mar 2004 01:25:17 PM CST
