Abstracts of Papers: Presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of The Children's Literature Association

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of The Children's Uterature Association Cross-Cultural Perspectives ki the Translation of Children's Books: Erich Kâstner's EmH und die Detektive This paper compares the English and French translations of Erich Kâstner's EmH und de Detektive. A translator of children's Hterature often makes a choice between the importance of the cultural setting and the author's moral or lesson. If a foreign setting makes a work inaccessible to chHdren, who often prefer to reed only about their own culture, it may be changed to help assure popularity or financial success. However, if tterature serves to present chHdren with their first cross-cultural experiences, a translator should work to preserve the forekjnness of a work. These two translations of EmH lustrate both perspectives. The elements discussed are place and proper names, idom and metaphor, wordplay, and nicknames and derogatory expressions. The English and French versions are compared with the original as we* as with each other. Catherine C. Baumann University of Minnesota The Heart of the Wolf and the Disorder of CMHzation Scott O'DeH's Island of the Blue Dolphins. Jean Craighead George's JuHe of the Wolves and Whitley Strieber's Wolf of Shadows are three novels for young readers that chaHenge Western cultural traditions' paradigm of civHization vs. wilderness, a paradigm that projects the wflctarness as chaotic and moraly debased and thereby Justifies civilization's exploitation of the natural wHd. Through their various narrative modes-ranging from the hope for social Integration ki comedy, to personal isolation ki tragedy, to the bondage of a nuclear winter in kony-afi three authors show the destructive consequences as the male power structure operates through the paradgm. They contrast that negative Impact with perceptions of native peoples, Eskimo and native Americans, who are and were defeated by crvizatkxi. However, a new alternative emerges ki the three novels through the perceptions and actions of the female protagonists. Through their relation with natural and Hvkig things, the reader dscovers an inversion of the tradtional paradgm: the wolf has the heart that cMHzation tacks. Hamide Bosmajian Seattle University Ten Years of Israel ChHdren's Literature: The Ben YHzchak Awards The Israel equivalent of the CaJdecott medal is the Ben YHzchak prize for distinguished lustration of chHdren's books, awarded every two years ki cooperation with the youth wing of the Israel Museum ki Jerusalem. This paper focuses on some of the winners of the award ki order to trace themes ki Israel chHdren's books over a ten-year period. How has the image of hknseif and his place ki society with which the chHd is confronted changed as society itself has changed? By means of what images are the famfiy, the Idbbutz, the city, Immigrants, reRgion, Arabs, America and the wider world "out there" represented? How do these books negotiate opposing knpulses-on the one hand towards nostalgia for a simpler We, represented at times by the famly, at others by tradtional reRgkxi and at stiR others by the Idbbutz (with Ks rejection of the tradtional femfiy structure, refigJon and unban culture ki favor of the ideal of physical labor and the cohesive power of the group)-and on the other towards a complex confrontation with modem We expressing Kseif through the wish to explore the interior We and the world beyond 111 Israel's borders? It wl be the suggestion of this paper that ki formulating their selections, the Judges have chosen books which offer chloren not only a high quality of lustration and a variety of theme, story and perspective which permits the chHd to experience some of the tensions of Israel society, but also, ki some measure, a way to come to terms with the choices and possiblrues fostering individuation and social development which are generated by and available to the Inhabitants of any truly open society. Ruth Gonen Israel Museum, Jerusalem Lynne Rosenthal Mercy CoHege Pura Bebra moved from Spanish language-dominant Puerto Rico (whose people have had U.S. citizenship since 1917) to Englsh tanguage-domkiant mainland U.SA ki 1920. Noting the dearth of Puerto Ricen fofidore ki children's Hterature, she...