From: Vardell, Sylvia <SVardell>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:15:18 -0600

Thanks for raising this question, Annette. I'd love to hear what others are doing here.

As a long time member of USBBY (the United States Board on Books for Young People), I'm always on the lookout for great books for young people that hail from other countries. Even in our global world, it can be hard to identify, locate, and acquire them-- thus the Batchelder Award is tremendously helpful. In addition, the USBBY offers an annual prize of $1000 (the Bridge to Understanding award) for projects that promote international literature with children. Sadly, many years, we have no nominations. (For more info: http://usbby.org/projects_and_awards.htm)

Now, I'm editor (along with Cathy Kurkjian) of BOOKBIRD, the journal of international children's literature and I'm beating the bushes for articles about international books for kids. We'd love to see an article about the Batchelder and current trends, for example.

But still I find that there is a real lack of awareness in the US about the many great books for kids published in other countries. We have such an embarrassment of riches here, that perhaps we don't always look elsewhere. And our focus is often on embracing the many cultures within our own borders, which is also an essential component, of course.

With the popularity of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and other aspects of popular culture that hail from other countries (manga, Hello Kitty, etc), I hope our appetite for global books will increase. Having Batchelder Award books at our disposal is certainly one excellent resource for making those connections.


Sylvia M. Vardell, Ph.D. Professor Texas Woman's University School of Library & Information Studies P O Box 425438 Denton TX 76204-5438 940-898-2616 svardell at twu.edu http://poetryforchildren.blogspot.com/ Co-Editor, BOOKBIRD, the journal of international children's literature (http://www.ibby.org)

Author of: POETRY ALOUD HERE! SHARING POETRY WITH CHILDREN IN THE LIBRARY (ALA, 2006) POETRY PEOPLE; A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CHILDREN'S POETS (Libraries Unlimited, 2007) CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN ACTION; A LIBRARIAN'S GUIDE (Libraries Unlimited, 2008) BOOK LINKS columnist: Everyday Poetry




-----Original Message----- From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu on behalf of ayg at comcast.net Sent: Tue 2/24/2009 10:14 AM To: Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: [CCBC-Net] Promoting the Batchelder
 

Before we leave our Batchelder discussion, I wanted to raise the question of how to better promote this wonderful award. I am the current chair, and my committee is going to try very hard this year to raise the profile of the Batchelder. Since holding mock awards is common for the Newbery and Caldecott and some of the other bigger awards, and we have not heard of anyone holding a mock Batchelder, that is what we would like to encourage. What do you think of this idea? Is it something you might do yourself, or encourage others to try? Do you have other suggestions?

I am attaching the very rough one-page set of guidelines we have developed so far. They are meant to be as flexible and simple as possible. I would appreciate any comments about the guidelines off-list.

Thanks very much!

Best, Annette

Annette Goldsmith, Ph.D. College of Information Louis Shores Building 142 Collegiate Loop Florida State University P.O. Box 3062100 Tallahassee, FL 32306-2100

Chair, 2010 Mildred L. Batchelder Committee




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Received on Tue 24 Feb 2009 11:15:18 AM CST