Editorial

Illustration by Peter Sís.

Dear Bookbird Readers,

This issue of Bookbird is, in the main, devoted to celebrating IBBY’s 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award winning author, María Teresa Andruetto, and illustrator, Peter Sís (whose wonderful painting is featured on the front and back covers), along with the authors and illustrators who also, deservedly, made the shortlist. Often referred to as the Nobel Prize for children’s literature, the HCA Awards were adjudicated earlier this year, with the winners announced at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Along with its regular columns and scholarly articles, this issue contains feature articles on the HCA winners and shortlist. However, before introducing Bookbird’s readers to what the issue holds, I must pay tribute to two former HCA Award winners who have recently passed away. Our world is poorer for the loss of Maurice Sendak (10 June 1928–8 May 2012) and Margaret Mahy (21 March 1936–23 July 2012).

Since The Wonderful Farm in 1951, Maurice Sendak’s some ninety titles have sold over 50 million copies worldwide. Winner of the Hans Christian Anderson Award for illustration in 1970, United States-born Sendak was one of the most individual and successful illustrators of the last century. While much of his work was in illustrating other writers, he changed the face of children’s literature with Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and In the Night Kitchen (1970). After decades of meaningful contributions to children’s literature—he also designed and wrote for the opera and theater—it seems fitting that reviewers still found his work both brilliant and somewhat disturbing; even as his final picture book, Bumble-Ardy (2011) became a children’s favorite, it was described in Time as “mildly subversive.” Sendak must have been pleased.

Often described as one of New Zealand’s leading writers, Margaret Mahy contributed more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories to the field of children’s and young adult literature. While many of her plots and themes were rooted in fantasy and the supernatural, Mahy’s writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. Whether crafting a fantastic feminist coming-of-age in the YA novel The Changeover (1984) or reminding younger readers to get outside and have fun in the picture book The Moon & Farmer McPhee (2010, illustrated by David Elliot), Mahy kept her attention on her young readers and made a remarkable and lasting contribution to the field.

This issue of Bookbird opens with scholarly articles on the work of HCA Award winners: Constance Vidor discusses aspects of freedom in the illustrations of Peter Sís, and Beatriz Alcubierre Moya traces paths of flesh and memory in the novels of María Teresa Andruetto. These articles are followed by essays from other parts of the world. Heidi Hammond analyzes a study of the use of a graphic novel in teaching multimodal literacies in high schools; Meni Kanatsouli offers a close reading of games inside mainly Greek texts for children, and Kathy Short traces the connections between literatures of trauma and children’s use of these texts in claiming agency. Following these longer articles, this issue has short essays on the rest of the Hans Christian Andersen Award shortlist: illustrators Mohammed Ali Baniasadi, John Burningham, Roger Mello, and Javier Zabala; and authors Paul Fleischman, Bart Moeyaert, Jean-Claude Mourlevat, and Bianca Pitzorno.

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair is also the venue where the IBBY Asahi Award is presented. This year there were two winners: Abuelas Cuentacuentos—The Grandmothers Storytelling Programme, and SIPAR—Soutien à Initiative Privée pour l’Aide à la Reconstruction des pays du sud-est asiatique. This issue features a Children & Their Books column on each of these remarkable organizations. A Letter on the many children’s books by Chinese environmentalist Liu Xianping comes next, and it is followed by reviews of secondary literature. Throughout the issue, you will find a number of postcards on new books for children.

Finally, I want to express my deepest appreciation to Lydia Kokkola. We embarked on this...