Editorial

Dear Bookbird Readers,

This issue of Bookbird focuses in part on this year’s Hans Christian Andersen Awards, which were announced by IBBY at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in March and given out at the awards banquet at the IBBY Congress in México City in September. Roger Mello, the winner of the Illustrator Award, provided the original artwork that graces the cover of the issue (and the detail above). As Roger writes in the epigraph above, the Paxiuba tree so prominent in his painting is a symbol of change, as are the books being ferried by boats and insects to the depths of the Amazon jungle. I am deeply grateful to have this gorgeous painting on my last issue as editor of Bookbird.

In addition to the wonderful cover provided by Roger Mello, this issue has three fine articles on Mello’s illustrations. In the Hans Christian Andersen Award Winners section, Flávia Brocchetto Ramos and Marília Forgearini Nunes focus on Mello’s Cavalhadas de Pirenópolis to analyze narrative creation through the interaction of the verbal and visual components of the picturebook and to comment on the ways that Mello represents Brazilian culture. With a similar focus on the verbal visual, Graça Lima and Claudia Mendes discuss Mello’s experiences as a young boy in the Brazilian Cerrrado, linking them to the mixed methods that Mello employs to tell his stories, right from the first tactile experience the reader has with the material object of the picturebook. Junko Yokota and Reina Nakano then provide an overview of the Japanese fantasy worlds created by Nahoko Uehashi, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Author Award.

The section of peer-reviewed feature articles begins with María Gracia Pardo’s “Mello and His Precursors: Invisible Threads.” Like Lima and Mendes, Pardo examines a variety of Mello’s picturebooks, arguing that Mello’s work, largely influenced by the time and place in which he was born, both comments and criticizes the society in which he lives, even as it creates a space for us to hear voices that are typically silenced. In the second feature article, a team of researchers from the University of Saskatchewan, led by Jean Emmerson, offers a qualitative content analysis of Canadian and American picture books featuring characters with disabilities. Then, Bahar Eshraq examines how words specific to Persian culture are changed in translations of The Palm, a novel by Hooshang Moradi Kermani. The theme of translating books for children continues in the next article, in which Kasey Garrison and Sue Kimmel analyze the characteristics of translations that have won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award. Their study raises questions about the availability and diversity of translated books for children in the United States. Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer also offers a case study, focusing on important Dutch authors of children’s books to trace the development of the field in the Netherlands. In the final feature article, Catherine Posey discusses rebellion and spirituality in two popular books for adolescents, The Magician’s Elephant and The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

The next section features essays on the authors and illustrators who made this year’s Hans Christian Andersen Award Shortlist. As the scholars who contributed these pieces make clear, these ten artists and writers matter a great deal to the world of children’s books, and the overviews of their stellar careers and analyses of their work offer readers new ways to understand and enjoy their many texts and illustrations.

Three Children & Their Books columns follow the essays on the HCA shortlist. Terry Farish writes about storytelling to children across the globe, Tülin kozikoğlu discusses her work teaching creative writing skills to children in Turkey, and Lydia Kokkola examines Finnish children’s language and culture in Sweden. All three columns offer imaginative ways to engage children in the processes of reading, writing, and understanding their world.

The Letters columns come from the amazing organizations that won this year’s IBBY Asahi Reading Promotion Award. Established in 1986 and sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper company, the award is given biennially to two groups or...