Editorial

Once a year, or so, my work takes me from Malmö (Sweden) to Macau (China). I was there again in May 2015. Sitting outside a café, I was waiting for some friends and taking in the sights. For a visitor like myself, Macau can be a bit overwhelming with its gigantic, outlandish casinos and soaring apartment blocks. Sometimes the sheer size of things can be off-putting and alienating. I have felt that sometimes. But that day, and that moment outside the café, was fine. A thunderstorm had just cleared the air, and straining my neck, I could get a glimpse of sky between the apartment blocks rising forty to fifty stories high on both sides of the street. It was a bit like sitting at the bottom of a narrow canyon.

And it was getting better. Letting my gaze drop from the dizzying heights, I noticed a bus parked a few meters away and saw some children approaching it. It was the Biblioteca Itinerante library bus opening for business, displaying some of its titles to the pedestrians. A girl stopped to browse, and she was soon engrossed in what she was reading.

A girl and a bus full of books—it was all it took to shrink the city to human proportions. And also to put things into perspective. For the big things that surround us tend to block our vision, cut out what is really important. All the big houses, big money, big projects, and big people get in the way. Not even booklovers are immune to grandeur. Hence, national literacy projects, international bestsellers, famous authors, fine awards, and the grand libraries. All of this can get in the way of what is happening at street level and eye level.

A Macau librarian would no doubt say to me “you know nothing, Bjorn Sundmark”—and be right. I do know very little about children’s reading in that city (maybe this editorial can encourage someone from Macau to write for Bookbird?). Still, what I have seen has given me cause to think. For in that city of excess and extravagance (in some respects), libraries hold a special place. I am thinking of the small, temple-like libraries of Coloane and Taipa, dating from the Portuguese colonial period; I am thinking of the octagonal Chinese Pavilion library on Praía Grande and the similar, but more modern, library pavilion in Praça de Ponte de Horta; and finally, again, I am thinking of the Biblioteca Itinerante I saw near Taipa Square and the girl so intent on borrowing books.

What these libraries have in common is that they are small, beautiful, and inviting. They are not Monuments “To the Book”—they are simply there, unassuming, on the street corner for everyone. To me, it looks like a good strategy. Libraries and bookshops (or even book fairs) could never compete with big commerce and casinos anyway. Casinos like The Grand Lisboa, The City of Dreams, The Venetian, and many more are built to boggle the mind and charm the eye. They are in a different league and have a different purpose. Instead, the libraries of Macau have insinuated themselves, taken hold of small places, and thereby (I would like to believe), taken hold of the hearts and minds of its citizens.

For a city, and for a people, nothing could be more important.

In a sense, a publication like Bookbird is an itinerant library of sorts, too. It does not usually come in a book bus, but hard copies cross airways and oceans to reach all four corners of the world. And in electronic form, it can insinuate itself wherever its readers are located. In fact, Bookbird is a bit like the flying boat-man on Pawel Pawlak’s cover illustration to this issue (from his wordless nonsense picture book Czarostatki i parodzieje), who sees the wonders of the world but also brings wonders to the world.

Pawlak’s illustration also signals the theme of this issue—nonsense.

Why nonsense? Well, perhaps it is the same kind of...