Dashdondog Jamba: Mongolia Author

Dashdondog Jamba was born in 1941. At age seventeen, he achieved fame as a children's writer and has published more than seventy books for young children of which twenty-four have been published abroad. He has translated more than fifty books by foreign writers starting with the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. He has dedicated forty years of his life to providing the children of Mongolia with opportunities to experience high quality literature. For the past twenty years he has served as an editor-in chief of children's newspapers and magazines in Mongolia.

Over the course of his lifetime he has witnessed dramatic changes in Mongolian life. In 1990 Mongolia underwent a change in government from one-party rule to a democracy. These changes brought about reforms in all spheres of life. Previously, books for children were very limited and laden with propaganda. Jamba has made it his mission to provide Mongolian children with books that provide a history of their culture as well as philosophical lessons about life.

Dashdondog Jamba founded a Mobile Library in which he traveled around Mongolia with books of his own. He himself paid for these books to be published for the purpose of providing exposure to many genres of literature. The Children's Mobile Library won the IBBY Asahi Reading Promotion Award in 2006. Due to the fact that there were limited copies of books, he would spend several days in one location so that the short books could be read by many children before he moved on to the next location.

Several of Jamba's books have received The Best Book of Mongolia Award, including Tales on Horseback. This book includes nine tales which are short but infused with philosophical insights. These stories take place in different parts of Mongolia and they utilize heroic characters in a fantasy genre to explore the themes of life. Under the former political regime children's literature was primarily realistic, so Jamba has helped to develop children's imaginations through broadening children's exposure to various genres full of rich vocabulary. Some parents have criticized the rich vocabulary, although Bulgan Batchuluun, a Mongolian Language and Literature Lecturer, asserts that a child's thinking is as spacious as his/her vocabulary. Tales on Horseback was selected as the best book of 1999 by the Ministry of Education and Culture.