Editorial

Dear Bookbird Readers,

I write this editorial from the thick of an Albertan winter; we’ve been blessed with record amounts of snow for months now, and the bucolic little city in which I live looks like an especially pretty Christmas card. And though I’m preparing Bookbird’s Spring issue for 2013, it is Christmas season and the contents of this issue have me wishing I could make all of the wonderful books discussed in this issue accessible to my granddaughter, pictured above. As is usual for Bookbird. Scholars, teachers, librarians, parents, and others concerned with books for children from around the world successfully bring their discussions in English to Bookbird readers. However, we are nowhere near widely spread translation of these texts into other languages to make them accessible to the world’s children. I am reminded of two keynote addresses at the recent IBBY Congress in London (August 2012), in which Patsy Aldana made the compelling argument that we must give every child a voice by publishing in the dominant languages children’s books from all minority cultures, and Emer O’Sullivan emphasized the importance of translating the best of children’s literature from around the world into as many languages as possible.

Throughout the issue you will find postcards on appealing new children’s books written in Spanish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Persian, and you will read scholarly articles and columns that will make you hunger to read the texts they discuss, texts written in Estonian, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese. I am saddened that my granddaughter will neither be entertained by these books nor taught by them. The articles in this issue delineate how texts for children reflect but also work to reshape the worldview of their readers. Guri Fjeldberg points out in her fine study that a number of international picture books rewrite the role of maternal aggression to free mothers, and perhaps their daughters too, from unrealistic expectations and conformist social pressures. Oksana Luschevska considers how Liudmila Ulitskaia uses a child’s sense of wonder in her series of stories, Childhood-49, to depict the complex life of Russian post-war society with all its bitterness and hardship. Lijun Bi examines the first major work of modern Chinese children’s literature, Ye Shengtao’s Daocao ren [Scarecrow] as a crucial part of the effort of Chinese intellectuals to rejuvenate the nation by connecting social realism to patriotism. Juli-Anna Aerila and Lydia Kokkola examine an emerging body of multicultural Finnish literature for children; they trace the presentation of traditional minority groups alongside recently arrived groups of immigrants, as they consider how these books might serve to promote pluralism. In the only article focused on English-language books for children, Victoria Flanagan draws on theories of whiteness to examine two recent Australian picture books that explore the relationship between white and non-white identities.

The columns, Children & Their Books and Letters, also engage with a wide range of international books. In “Pre-schoolers Recommending Books,” Raquel Cuperman shares her experiences with daily book discussions in her kindergarten classes. As a children’s librarian in Bogotá, Colombia, Cuperman became interested in children’s ability to build literary understanding through regular, casual “book-talks,” and her daily discussion exercises encourage young students to continue reading at home. Virginia Lowe’s “The Books We’ve Had Forever”: The Parent-Observer Diary complements her column in Bookbird’s recent special issue on literature from the Commonwealth. Lowe’s column continues her discussion of her children’s experiences with American and British literature, and how the beloved books of their childhood helped shape their own Australian national identity. Tamara Smith then details the relationship between the picture book, the adult reader, and the child listener—what she calls the “Vibrant Triangle.” Penni Cotton provides the final Children & Their Books column with “Picture Books across Cultures: A Leap into the Unknown?” Cotton outlines strategies and techniques used by organizations aimed at making international literature available to children worldwide. In the two Letters, Zlata Philips’s explores the influential yet mysterious career...