Elephant Rag

Artists Tap into Their Memories

2012-01-14T00:48:00.000-05:00

This week I visited Johanna Young's class in Concord. Her 35 adult students are from Bhutan. We came to get their help with spot illustrations to complete a bilingual Nepali English folktale. Ambika Sharma, our interpreter, read the story in Nepali and from the story we created a list of words - parts of the natural world that tell the story in symbols.
In the story a young mother sings a lullaby as she returns to her crying baby. She passes a cow in the barn on her way and sings "Don't cry, don't cry, Mali cow, I've come to feed my baby." Kapil Dhungel, who helped to translate the story, explained that a mali cow is a type of cow with black and white markings. Here a student creates a mali cow and we'll use his drawing in the book.

Susan Gaylord, our designer, is designing the layout of the book for a second time, combining Dal Rai's water color scenes with spot illustrations. The student's drawings were very detailed, portraying a pumpkin with a web of vines as well as its roots. I think that these new Americans who grew up on farms in Bhutan know every aspect of trees, fruits, and vegetable. We see they draw these details maybe from the memory in their fingers from when they worked the land. When Kapil and his wife were reading the story with me they laughed and laughed. "Terry, this is good," he said. "This is so enjoyable for my people."

"Once there was and was not." Lucine Kasbarian's tale from Armenia

2011-12-09T14:11:00.006-05:00

Ever since I read Lucine Kasbarian's folktale, The Greedy Sparrow, an Armenian Tale published this year by Marshall Cavendish, I've wanted to talk with her. I wanted to understand her process of retelling a tale and how this tale holds the traditions of the Armenian tales she grew up hearing. Then I heard that UNESCO named Yerevan, capital city of Armenia, as the World Book Capital for 2012. So I wrote her. Lucine and I are connected by publisher. I also have a book coming with Marshall Cavendish, a small press in the limelight today since its children's book list was acquired by a new Amazon imprint. One thing Lucine and I hear from publishers and editors at Cavendish and the new Amazon imprint is that they "believe in the craft of the book."

The Greedy Sparrow is, indeed, such a book of craft. It's a wry comeuppance tale of a sparrow who tries to manipulate a series of village folk and animals - and does pay. Lucine explained about The Greedy Sparrow, the Armenian folktale tradition, the city of Yerevan, and Armenia today.

"Armenian folk tales come from an ancient oral tradition, where values and truisms were shared around the hearth to entertain and educate. Our national epic, David of Sassoun, dates back to the 8th century. It narrates the legendary deeds of Armenian daredevils and gives voice to our nation’s deepest feelings and aspirations. Unlike better-known epics such as The Odyssey, Gilgamesh and Beowulf, David of Sassoun survived solely by word of mouth, transmitted from one generation to the next by poets and troubadours. This epic was first recorded on paper in 1873 by an Armenian bishop who had close contact with the peasantry in the remotest parts of mountainous Western Armenia. There, life had not changed for a thousand years, allowing traditions to remain relatively intact. The Bishop discovered and later cajoled Gurbo, a village bard from Moush, to recite the tale -- an undertaking that took several days to accomplish. Dear Gurbo, like those before him, had memorized an epic narrative that, when finally written with all its variants, was more than 2,500 pages long.

Folktales have a universal quality. They can touch everyone, regardless of age or social, educational, ethnic or economic status. They instill certain values and have withstood the test of time because of their simplicity, humor, wisdom, and understanding of human attributes. Armenian folk tales incorporate myths, legends, cautionary tales, absurd humor and proverbial wisdom, often full of magic, spirits, talking animals and a moral lesson, and show human virtues and shortcomings.

Armenian tales traditionally begin with “Once there was and was not,” meaning that they may have been real or imagined, and end with a variety of sayings. One is “Three apples fell from heaven: one for the teller of the tale, one for the listener of the tale, and one for the child who will one day retell the tale.” So here, we have stories organically containing instructions advising listeners to pass along the tale when they grow older. I followed that dictum, translating The Sparrow’s Tale into the English from the regional Armenian dialect of Dikranagerd (today’s Diyarbakr, Turkey). It is in that dialect that my father relayed the story to me when I was a child. He himself learned to recite the tale from his grandmother, a celebrated storyteller in the Old Country, who would sing and dance as she narrated. When The Sparrow’s Tale was told in the Dikranagerd dialect -- which is an earthy, colorful, humorous language -- the wry humor really shone through. And while I did try to recreate the absurd spirit of the tale in English, hints and shades were unavoidably lost in translation.

In sharing "The Sparrow’s Tale" with me, my father preserved something very precious: a part of our national inheritance. Our genocide survivor ancestors did not pass down family heirlooms such as rare carpets or jewelry. When Armenians were massacred or sent on death marches, tangible valuables were left behind, stolen or destroyed and their civilization was wiped out. But what some survivors held in their memories -- such as songs, dances, and the stories told by their people, what UNESCO calls “intangible cultural heritage” -- endured. Heirlooms of this sort are priceless, especially when we are talking about endangered cultures.

I think this tale -- retold as The Greedy Sparrow (a picture book for Marshall Cavendish) -- resonates with all ages, not only because the message conveys that manipulation is ultimately not rewarded, but because it also showcases native Armenians practicing traditional folkways. Even as my family today lives far from Armenia, those folkways have tremendous meaning for us. In fact, the bride’s attire in The Greedy Sparrow bears a strong resemblance to my own folkloric wedding gown. To repeat an Armenian proverb of exile, “Even in a golden cage, the nightingale longs for his native land.”

I’ve worked in Armenia many times over the years, during both the Cold War and independent eras, primarily assisting in the restoration of ancient monuments with a group called Terre et Culture. It would be an honor to visit Yerevan in connection with my new book and the programs being organized around the UNESCO World Book Capital celebration in 2012. And it would be gratifying to meet writers and illustrators and perhaps sow the seeds for future collaborations.

Beginning five years after an earthquake in 1988, Turkey imposed a blockade upon Armenia. Turkish officials say it was in response to Armenian occupation of Azeri land. In reality, the uprisings by indigenous Armenians came in response to Azeri pogroms and ethnic cleansing on native Armenian soil, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The result of this Armenian resistance was the creation of a de-facto independent republic comprised of historically Armenian territory that Josef Stalin had handed over to the Azeris in the 1920s.

What is life like with the Turkish blockade in effect? Armenians find creative solutions to everyday challenges, and embrace a lifestyle that would be characterized as “off-the-grid” by Western standards. Landlocked Armenia does trade with neighboring Georgia, Iran, and Russia, and so is not in isolation as a result of the blockade. Like the other former Soviet states, Armenia is dominated by oligarchs whose leadership is not dependent upon the will of the people. Many native Armenians are actually grateful for the blockade, which prevents what they believe otherwise could be invasion or infiltration by an unrepentant genocidal Turkey seeking eastward expansion." Lucine Kasbarian

Offering Children the World in Picture Books

2011-11-03T23:03:00.001-05:00

Picture books to teach about who we are? Yes! Ambika Sharma from Bhutan and I talked to teachers at the NH Arts in Education Conference about two books, one set in the American south, the other a folktale from Nepal.

Georgia Music by Helen Griffith, illus. by James Stevenson

They both tell stories about a child and an elder and led to a discussion about family customs and growing old in different cultures. We looked at picture books that support teaching history, social studies, and math. Tom Newkirk who directs the NH Literacy Institutes at the University of New Hampshire mentioned in a talk that teachers struggle to have time to teach social studies. Through children's literature, students can have both: reading and social studies. I love what a New York Times reviewer wrote in a review of Georgia Music. "One way or another, the object for every artist - and certainly the children's book artist - is to make simple and luminous that in our lives which is profound and elusive."

I Doko by Ed Young

"This I think is quite hard."

2011-10-07T21:59:00.002-05:00

Birkha Rai

Book designer, Susan Gaylord, and I go to the home of Dal Rai, the illustrator of the Nepali-English folktale we are producing. It is October 7, the day of a Hindu festival. Dal's neighbor tells us that the festival is about cooking and eating and all your family comes together. In our few hours of work on the folktale, Dal's wife, Birkha, cooks and we eat delicious, very spicy noodles. We are sorting out the illustrations for a scene in our folktale-in-progress, The Story of a Pumpkin. In the scene is a palace kitchen and we spend a long time imagining the cooking tools Dal might illustrate that would be on wooden shelves. Then Birkha and the storyteller, Hari, fetch a long wooden utensil they use to chop up lentils - the one you can see here in the photo in Birkha's hands. Here's a site I found, Nepali Cooking with recipes and even the names in Nepali of some of the cooking utensils that Dal will illustrate. Some of the missing parts of the story come together this night. Dal asks Hari for details in the story. We all imagine how the king's daughters will stand when they are all laughing at the pumpkin. Dal demonstrates with his face bent into his hand. When it comes to the wedding scene, which - not to spoil the story for you - in one in which the king's youngest daughter takes the pumpkin for her husband, Dal says, "This I think is quite hard." Susan asks, "Does the pumpkin wear anything?" Yes, says Hari, who first told this story. He is wearing a wedding garland. And the bride? Birkha shows the veil the bride will wear that partially covers her face. We all laugh at this image of the bride and the pumpkin that is taking shape. Susan and I have brought a real giant pumpkin to Dal and his family on this October night and the pumpkin brings us good luck and a good grasp of this story. We have a sense that this book is coming together in just the right way.

Yellow Garlands and Preeti Files

2011-09-16T22:56:00.001-05:00

Selling Fruit and Garlands for the Diwali Festival by John Pavelka/Creative Commons

Narad Adhikari listened to the storyteller Hari Tiwari on tape as she told "The Story of a Pumpkin," the story we selected in our Bhutanese Nepali folktale project. He read the tale interpreted into English by Nilhari Bandari which I had transcribed. Then he composed the story in Nepali script. So now we have the text of our bilingual folktale.

In addition to that, Narad gave us two gifts. The first was pretty simple. He give us a preeti font file so we could view the Nepali script. Still trying to figure the preeti file out on my MAC, but I will. Here's the big thing he gave us. He added these lines to the end of the story, saying that in Bhutan parents often end a story this way, even singing it to coax a child into sleep. They close the story by singing, "And If you listen to a story you will get a golden garland." I googled garlands in Nepal and found the photo above. Garlands of marigolds are a traditional part of Nepali festivals. Thank you, Narad.

The Next Life of a Wedding Sari

2011-08-18T17:09:00.002-05:00

Storyteller Hari Tiwari and Ambika talk about the design in
Ambika's sari

Hoo - ray to artist Susan Gaylord who's joined Dal Rai, Hari and Ambika Sharma, and me and many others in the NH Humanities Council Bhutanese Nepali Book Project. Susan is now the book designer. She created a book dummy with the text of "The Story of a Pumpkin" (told by Hari Tiwari, left in this photo) She has also scanned fabric Ambika (right) brought from Bhutan and Nepal. From the scan she created a border around illustrator Dal Rai's first watercolor illustration. She scanned Ambika's gorgeous red wedding sari for other borders. You can see more photos and read Susan's account of the Nepali Book Project on her blog.

Hari holds Ambika's nephew while they watch Susan scan the fabric.

Susan Gaylord scans Ambika's fabric brought from Bhutan.

In the midst of all this work and modeling, Ambika also made the best chai I've ever had.

A Long Walk to Water, and more books about Sudan

2011-06-26T22:46:00.002-05:00

South Sudan is about to be born as a new nation. Many Sudanese-Americans have returned to Sudan for the celebration on July 9. Here are some books for young adults about Sudan's long journey through decades of war to the creation of an independent nation.

Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water is a fictionalized biography of Salva Dut, a Dinka boy separated from his family during the war. He is among the “lost boys” who trek across three countries seeking safety, finally coming to the U.S. Park also tells the story of Salva’s return to Sudan after the war in 2008 to begin to dig wells for people who spend hours a day carrying water.

My forthcoming book, The Good Braider, Marshall Cavendish, spring 2012, is a novel in verse based on oral histories I gathered from Sudanese families in Portland, Maine. It's a teenaged girl's experience of war and dreams and survival and the African art of braiding hair.

Mary Williams with illustrator R. Gregory Christie tells the journey of the “lost boys” in pictures and words in Brothers in Hope.

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is a novel in free verse. The main character, Kek, is a young boy, a keeper of cows when he lived with his family in rural Sudan. When he begins to care for a cow in Minnesota, it is a step to making American his home.

What is the What by Dave Eggers and They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky by Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, and Benjamin Ajak are adult books young adult will be reading. Both tell the story of “lost boys” from the Dinka tribe, the largest and dominant tribe of South Sudan. Another adult history is God Grew Tired of Us by John Bul Dau. Later Dau wrote a YA nonfiction book, Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan. He us also featured in the documentary film, "God Grew Tired of Us."

There are memoirs of the horrific experiences and victories of boy soldiers, adult books often read by teens. One is War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story by Emmanuel Jal, a “lost boy” from Sudan, now also a rap musician. War Child is often compared with A Long Way Gone by Ismael Beah, a story of the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

I know of two books that focus on contemporary slavery in Sudan. One is a middle grade novel based on a true story, Dream Freedom by Sonia Levitin about slaves in Sudan and American students who raise money to buy their freedom. Another is a memoir by Francis Bok, Escape From Slavery.

Another category of related books are nonfiction refugee narratives, many in the voices of young people. One book is Making it Home: Real-life Stories from Children Forced to Flee with an introduction by Beverley Naidoo. It includes a short piece in a South Sudanese girl’s voice. Another is one of Brent Ashabranner’s beautiful photo journalistic books, The New African Americans.

Two books stand out as ones that tell girls’ stories of Africa, though neither is set in Sudan. One is a YA/adult biography about a girl who survived the genocide in Rwanda called Over A Thousand Hills I Walk With You written by her adopted mother, Hanna Jansen.

The other is totally different, the graphic novel Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie about 19-year old Aya in Ivory Coast in the 1970s and not about war at all. It's set in a time of freedom and hope. It even includes a recipe for a love potion beginning with "Peel 4 pounds of fresh ginger." You have to read the book.

Ambika Sharma, a storyteller's daughter

2011-06-09T22:00:00.000-05:00

Ambika Sharma has joined our Nepali-English picture book project of the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Here she is interpreting
The Story of a Pumpkin, a tale told to us by
Hari Tiwari in Laconia. We selected this story to develop into a bilingual picture book. Soon I will show you illustrations that Dal Rai is creating. Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord, a fine artist and bookmaker, has joined us as the designer of the book. Folklorist Jo Rader, who presented workshops in ESOL classes in Laconia to generate the telling of traditional tales, will write the preface to the book. Ambika is the daughter of Bishnu who told a number of stories in Jo's workshops. But Ambika said he has never told those stories to her. We hope this process of listening to tales helps people to remember them. The second time Hari told The Story of a Pumpkin to us she told a lot more details and made the story funnier and funnier. We can't wait to get this all together to show you. Jo and I will soon create a handbook to offer teachers who'd like ideas for folklore projects.

Trouble

2011-04-02T19:38:00.005-05:00

Trouble by Jane Kurtz, illustrated by Durga Bernhard, is a great discovery. This version of an Eritrian tale, available from the literacy organization, Ethiopia Reads, is bilingual: Amharic and English. Katz's telling is a cumulative tale that follows a boy, Tekleh, who the reader sees is setting himself up for plenty of trouble, something his father has warned him against. But in a surprise cycle of events, the boy lucks out in an unexpected turn. Kurtz starts right off with trouble. "He didn't mean to get stung by poking a stick into a line of marching ants. He didn't mean to make dust fly onto the roasting coffee beans." Another thing I love - the book incorporates in the English telling Amharic words for animals and foods and musical instruments. It's a story about all children on adventures, discovering their world, a goal we have for the Bhutanese tale we select in our Nepali picture book project. (See links on the right to follow the project.)

The Bhutanese Folktale Project on New Hampshire Public Radio

2011-03-03T17:08:00.001-05:00

jmhullot/via Flickr/Creative Commons

Sam Evans Brown produced "An Oral History Project for New Hampshire's Bhutanese Community" for NHPR.

Through my work with the NH Humanities Council, I'm continuing to record folktales told by new Americans from Bhutan. Recently, we recorded in a Laconia neighborhood with the Jogi family and Jenna Carroll-Plante of the Laconia Historical Society. The neighborhood is on a hill, and the Bhutanese families call this neighborhood Dadagang, meaning Village of Hills in Nepali. The stories people tell are funny and earthy and sometimes very sad. We even heard a Bhutanese Cinderella tale, with a goat who turns to gold! You can listen to some stories at Story Connections.

Savannah and the Gullah Stories

2011-02-14T09:48:00.001-05:00

Lillian Grant-Baptiste, Savannah Storyteller
photo by Elizabeth Farish

Savannah! I got an invitation and I went! And I discovered a culture and its stories. My daughter and I listened to Lillian Grant-Baptiste tell Gullah stories. The Gullahs were a rice-growing community of former slaves who maintained many traditions of Sierra Leone on the rice coast of West Africa where their families were captured. They worked as slaves and later as freed people on the remote chain of sea islands along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.

Lillian began each story with "I have a story to tell," and the listeners responded "We want to hear your story." She described the stories as a "tool of resistance and reconciliation."

I want to take you into one of the Gullah stories so here's a youtube of storyteller Carolyn White telling a Didn't-I-tell-you-so? story, "Going Down to the Pond." If you have a New England ear for language like me, you'll want to listen real close.

I found out that the Gullah tales are full of trickster rabbits and foxes that take on very human vanities - a lot like like the Bhutanese tales we've been recording with refugees in New Hampshire.

New students at NHTI share folk stories in NH Humanities Council Nepali Book Project

2011-01-27T15:30:00.005-05:00

Bhim and Keshar Dhakal join in the
New Hampshire Humanities Council
Nepali Picture Book Project.
Bhim told us this proverb,
"All have eyes but few have vision."

Bhim Dhakal and his wife Keshar came to the U.S. only five months ago. They are now students at NHTI/Concord Community College and joined in with the NH Humanities Council project to collect folktales. Bhim told a story his mother told to him as a child around a fire on a snowy night like the nights in January in N.H. when he told it to us. The story is about a holy man and a vulture who offers the holy man a feather from his wing and when he looks through the feather he can see truth.

Keshar tells a story about a boy named Ram. One of her first lines is, “Actually, Ram is not a good boy.” He gets himself in deep trouble and is barely spared from a hungry tiger. However, he gains some good sense.

We are now posting the stories on a pod cast site where you call listen. Our pod cast is called Story Connections.

Listen to More Storytellers from Bhutan

2010-12-31T08:12:00.005-05:00

Mon and her daughter dressed formally for the occasion of remembering stories.

Bishnu's clever fox appears in his story "The Poor Man and the Fox."

In Jo Radner's folktale workshops with Bhutanese refugees, storytellers explained that many of the stories were told during long hours of work. The longer the work, the longer the story. Bishnu said he first heard "The Poor Man and the Fox" while he and his family worked in the cardamom fields.
Saraswati explains that she heard the tale "Cow and Lion" while she chased monkeys from the fields.
She didn't get to go to school but she always heard stories.
Madad, Mon, Batuli, Chandra, and Hari sang a work song they remembered singing when they collected firewood. One of the lines is "If you fall in love, love from head to toe."

Chandra, Hari, Batuli, Mon's daughter, and Mon illustrate their stories.

Hari tells the story, "The Pumpkin Husband." She explained that her mother died when she was young and her father cared for her. He used to tell her stories while he combed her hair and "The Pumpkin Husband" is one of the stories he told. After she finishes the story in the recording you can also hear discussion about what the pumpkin represents.

Bishnu told a version of Ed Young's tale in I, Doko about respect for grandparents.

We haven't selected the story yet that we will develop into a picture book. We are still collecting possible stories. But we know our next step! It is is to meet Bhutanese artists who might illustrate the book.

Nepali Tale: The Three Shells

2010-12-14T10:32:00.002-05:00

STORY Connections is our first experimental folklore podcast from the New Hampshire Humanities Council literacy program, Connections. Here's our first bilingual folktale - "The Three Balls" - a tale from Bhutan told in Nepali by Ghana and in English by Nilhari Bhandari.

Listen to The Three Shells!

The drawing, by Laconia artist Dal Rai, is of a traditional Bhutanese grandmother telling stories to help her grandchildren go to sleep.

Bhutanese Storytellers Stun us With Stories

2010-11-10T20:01:00.002-05:00

Laurie Lalish, teacher, and Jo Radner storyteller and folklorist

ESOL teacher Laurie Lalish, storyteller Jo Radner, and I welcomed students
in Laurie's class in Laconia, NH. This gathering is momentous for our
Nepali-English picture book project of the New Hampshire Humanities Council. The students are from Bhutan and Jo
asked them, through our interpreter Nilhari Bhandari, to teach her and Laurie and me what kinds of stories they tell in Bhutan and when they listened to stories. They told about games they played as children, and songs women sang as they gathered firewood. Then Jo asked them to think about a story they heard as a child. We thought we would hear small fragments of stories as people began to go back in time and remember people who told them stories. We were astounded. Hari Tiwari and Bishnu Mishra, two members of Laurie's class, told long, complex, fully developed stories. We have them on tape and will soon post audio. Here is a small photo gallery of players in our first story gathering workshop.

Chandra, Hari, Batuli , and Mon prepare to sing a work sang they sang as children.

Batuli and Mon

Hari tells a story

Bishnu tells a story

Nilhari Bhandari interprets for Jo into Nepali and the Nepali stories people tell into English

Stay tuned. Audio will come in both Nepali and English.

Diwali, Festival of Lights

2010-10-14T20:26:00.000-05:00

In our Nepali book project we are about to start our folktale gathering in Laconia, NH. But the five-day celebration of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, is about to begin in Laconia's Bhutanese community. Diwali to Hindus is a little like Christmas to Christians and means feasting and giving gifts and lighting lanterns in the windows.

The Saffron Tree children's book review blog recommends the children's book A Festival of Lights and Fun by Manisha Kumar and Monica Kumar.

Here's a coloring sheet for children which includes images of Diwali symbols and art, like the one above.

People are way too busy cooking and preparing gifts to record stories. Our book committee had a meeting last night in the library in Laconia which truly mixes up the cultures because it looks like a medieval castle. Hari Sharma and Dal Rai told us that Facebook is a good way to share the folktales we collect. They said all their family in Nepal is on Facebook. When we begin recording, watch for links on our future Facebook page.

At the meeting I got to meet Jenna Carroll-Plante who is director of the Laconia Historical and Museum Society which is also housed in the castle. She is collecting photos and stories to document the growing Bhutanese community in Laconia and is also working on the New Hampshire Bhutanese Media Project with the Red River Theatre in Concord. We are so so lucky to be working with Jenna.

Doko Radio

2010-08-31T15:31:00.000-05:00

Transom.org is a showcase and workhosp for new public radio run by Jay Allison who produces the radio series, This I Believe. In Transom.org's August newsletter, I read about Doko Radio in Nepal. At the NH Humanities Council we've read Ed Young's retelling of the Nepali tale, I, Doko with many Bhutanese immigrants. A doko is a basket to carry everything - from a baby to crops to stones for building a house. So here now is a new kind of doko - Doko Radio.

The station's founder Madhu Acharya explains he travelled into Nepali villages carrying transmitters in a backpack and invited people to sing and tell stories live on the radio. His goal was to broadcast local music and stories. He calls his independent station, Doko Radio. Villagers he met said they'd been carrying doko all of their life and asked why he would call the station Doko? But then they heard their songs and stories transmitted from the radio and they said, oh, "This is a doko that carries our pain. It does not add more burden to us." (quoted in the newsletter.) At the bottom of the newsletter note the story about Sita Shahi, "The Woman Who Walked." You can listen to her story which she tells in song.

In the Bhutanese Nepali-English pciture book project, many people have told us that singing is an important way to tell stories. Somehow, then, our book must also sing.

Bearing Fruit

2010-08-08T22:21:00.001-05:00

Jo Radner

We have the great good luck to welcome folklorist Jo Radner to our Bhutanese Nepali-English book project. On the right is Jo in Portsmouth where we met. She is holding plums (newly harvested from my tree), the fruit of hope, I read, and good luck. Yes! And on the left is Pujan whose mom is writing a tale in a Connections program led by the poet Rodger Martin in Concord. Pujan has a pear. (His mom says pears in Nepal are far bigger than this one.)

I am very excited to work with Jo. One of the workshops Jo will lead is with Bhutanese newcomers in an ESOL class. She'll work with an interpreter. First they will talk about occasions when people tell stories, then try to remember fragments of stories, then ask around about who remembers one story or other. These are stepping stones to a story-gathering project. Jo also recommends recording the whole session which is an added dimension to me. She recommends that if we are to modernize Bhutanese wisdom and make it meaningful to Bhutanese youth, we'd better make this a multimedia project. So---podcasts are coming to this blog. Next week I will record Pujan's mom's story-in-progress.

Folktales - Just When We are Writing One

2010-07-22T23:07:00.070-05:00

I've heard from two teachers just recently panning folktales. No one is interested, they said. Then I saw the Fuse # 8 Production blog post from reviewer and NYC librarian Elizabeth Bird, "Where have all the folktales gone?" She was reviewing Bobbi's Miller's tale, One Fine Trade and wrote that ever-so-few tales are being published. Oh, dear, and just when we are writing one.
Then comes Bobbi Miller's compilation of essays about folktales from practitioners and editors.
Listen to Emma Dryden.
She writes that folktales,
"...which require time to read, which require thought to process, and which require the reader to reflect and ponder in addition to laugh or cry—are considered too quiet, too slow, too ponderous for today's adults and children who are moving too quickly, whose attention spans are too short, and, really, who have not been educated or brought up to appreciate how what's come before them still matters and informs what comes next.... History and mythology are the stuff of which great folktales come—and so folktales do not quite fit in with the current societal trends. This is tragically short-sighted, and this way of operating is doing a tremendous disservice to our children and to our future as a culture."
Wow, Emma.

Bobbi writes,
"To my mind, a folktale does you little good if it doesn’t fall trippingly off the tongue." She calls it an appreciation of language itself.

Just heard On Point, the NPR show, recently on "India's Great Texts Revisited." Conversation was on epic myths, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and the link to contemporary Indian films and stories. Fascinating.
We've got work to do with this wonderful call to arms. Are there characters from folktales or myths that you still bump into today in the grocery store?

The Peepal and the Var

2010-07-14T13:32:00.003-05:00

From a Connections book discusison, here’s a story we heard after a group of Bhutanese people read Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova. Padma tried to explain to us why trees are so important. It was clear to her and she didn’t understand why further explanation was needed. Finally she said, “A tree is life.”

After reading the book, another woman, Mon, drew a tree called a peepal tree, and Kapil told a story about it. He said the peepal tree is planted when small beside a var tree and they grow together – Kapil said the trees marry. A bride and groom marry beside this tree and grow together like the Peepal and the Var. He told about leaves like basil, and other plants that are sacred in the Hindu culture. Then the meaning of the book Once There Was a Tree to the students was more clear. Kapil also said he would ask his mother and father about the peepal tree because they are old and would remember the story in more detail, as if he (maybe 35 yrs old and living in America) had already begun to forget it.

SUSAN's done it again

2010-07-03T17:13:00.000-05:00

Susan Kapuscinsky Gaylord, creator of the Elephant Rag's own elephant, has a new book, Handmade Books for a Healthy Planet. Susan writes, "I am inspired by book forms from different cultures. I use recycled materials and keep the process as simple as possible—no rulers allowed here. I believe we are all creative beings. I encourage you to celebrate that creativity with books of your own." I already gave my copy away to someone I adore. This book is a celebration of the art form of books but also of creativity itself.

"A story should be a fable"

2010-07-03T16:02:00.001-05:00

Beginnings! Here we are in a first meeting in Laconia, NH to create a Bhutanese Nepali-English
picture book for kids. That's Kapil and Johanna left to right, kneeling. Hari and Rai are standing to the right. We talked about the kinds of stories each of us heard growing up. Kapil says in Bhutan people believe a story should be a lesson - a fable - if it is a good story. Johanna told a story of the supernatural in Jamaica. Being Irish, I told a leprechaun tale. Many here were teachers in the refugee camps in Nepal where their families have lived for almost 20 years. Students study English in the camp.
We heard a story about a man who finds a radio and, never before having seen a radio, believes that tiny people must live inside it. This leads to some actions that get him in big trouble.
We told stories to sort out the kinds of stories children grow up with in Bhutan. And we've met people who might be able to serve on the editorial board. Also, the group explained that this book should be called a Bhutanese Nepali-English picture book. Not a Nepali-English picture book. We learned it is very important to hold on to the Bhutanese cultural identity.

Tell Me a Cuento, a Reading & Writing Project with English Language Learners

2010-06-06T17:53:00.031-05:00

Tell Me a Cuento, a book of poems, is also a list of multicultural picture books. What makes this list different is that students learning English wrote the poems in response to each of the illustrated books included. The little book is the last step in our Tell Me a Cuento book club in Lawrence, MA. Readers responded to the books they read with collaborative poems of there own.

You are most welcome to create a book with other English language learners of all ages, using "Tell Me A Cuento" as a guide. Adults love picture books, too! Many respond with passion to the folktales and illustrated stories of their own cultures.

Franchelly Greer painted the cover portrait based on a family photograph. His photo depicts a line in the poem "The Gift He Gave Me" by students

in the Day Care Providers program at Northern Essex Community College. One student wrote about her grandmother who sewed matching clothes for her and her doll. She was responding to Tomas and the Library Lady by Pat Mora.

"I Laugh" was written by teens at Lawrence High writing about their babies who stay in the school's day care while they are in class. They had read "The Things I Love," a poem in Lissette Norman's book, My Feet are Laughing.
Here's a link to an earlier post about Felicia and Kyle at Greater Lawrence Technical School who designed the book.

You can open the book at Tell Me a Cuento, a book of poems with a click, download it, and share it.

Crisscrossing the Globe

2010-06-03T13:17:00.004-05:00

Outstanding International Books List - created by USBBY – are books for kids and teens from authors and illustrators around the world. Elizabeth Poe, in School Library Journal, reviews some of the titles on the 2010 list in her article, "Crisscrossing the Globe." The USBBY page also has a link to an honor for one of my favorite authors of all times, David Almond. He won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the “Little Nobel Prize.” Wonderful.

I’ve been searching these pages in my ongoing quest for Nepali and Nepali/ English folktales. Do you know one?

A public library for the world in the world's mother tongues

2010-04-27T21:35:00.008-05:00

In searching for books written in Nepali, I found books from all over the world. In a project to research the use of digital material with kids and their teachers and librarians comes the creation of the International Children’s Digital Library. The project comes from University of Maryland and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The goal of the collection is to provide access for children and their families - wherever they live - to books about their culture in their mother tongue. You can read 4,418 books in 54 languages as of today. So far, Nepali isn't included, but you can find books in Kinyarwanda submitted by the Rwandan publisher, Bakame, and books in Maori from Huia Publishers in New Zealand. Some books are bilingual with an English translation and lots are in English awaiting translation to other languages. You can find books by country or by language, and it's free.

Ubucuti bw'imbeba n'inzouvu,

a Rwandan folktale about an elephant

and a mouse retold by John Kilaka.
You can read it on-line.

Seeing the world through music

2010-04-13T18:44:00.002-05:00

In an interview with NPR's Renee Montagne
Natalie Merchant talks about creating her new album, Leave Your Sleep, partly to introduce her seven-year old daughter to the wide spectrum of the world's music. Merchant says she adapted a wide range of poems from nursery rhymes to lines from Victorian poets, and that she was connecting musical styles to place, from jazz to Celtic to Chinese rhythms. This is not an album for children so much as about childhood. In the NPR interview, Montagne described the songs as like "hand-painted toys" especially in Merchant's recording with The Chinese Music Ensemble of the nursery rhyme "The King of China's Daughter" It includes these lines:
I skipped across the nutmeg grove,
I skipped across the sea.
But neither sun nor moon, my dear,
has yet caught me.
Leave Your Sleep could add rich dimensions to your exploration of multicultural literature with adult ESOL students, older children, or in any cross-cultural journey.

A Little Background on Nepal

2010-04-05T21:50:00.006-05:00

This is a photo by Jean-Marie Hullot, taken in Changu Narayan, Nepal, used here under the Creative Commons copyright.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmhullot/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Our Bhutanese collaborators in the Nepali picture book project are ethnic Nepali who speak Nepali as their first language. They were exiled by the Bhutanese government and have been living in refugee camps in Nepal for eighteen years. Neither Bhutan nor Nepal would let them be citizens of their country and work. In recent years, many of these 107,000 southern Bhutanese have resettled to other countries. According to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, the majority will make the U.S. their home. The boy in this photo lives in a city in the Kathmandu Valley, divided from Bhutan by only the small eastern region of Nepal where the Bhutanese refugees lived. Here is a video documentary from Seattle about a family from Bhutan who have become citizens of the United States. Khem Rizal is featured in the video. He is excited about opportunities in America after living most of his life in the camps. He says his parents are having a hard time in the U.S. but "the coming generation will have a better life than us." We hope the picture book project will help the older generation to share their culture with the "coming generation" born here.

Nepali picture book project

2010-03-06T10:43:00.023-05:00

Wednesday is momentous! We take our first step to create a bilingual Nepali/English picture book with the Bhutanese community in Laconia and Concord, New Hampshire. I meet with Christina Emberley and Johanna Young, Lutheran Social Services ESOL teachers. Most of their students are from Bhutan. We look at The Lion's Share by Qayb Libaax. We also look at other books created by the Minnesota Humanities Center that feature bilingual Somali/English and Hmong/English stories. Hmong and Somali people make up large numbers of Minnesota's immigrants. I ask if they'd be interested in working on a similar project with me at the New Hampshire Humanities Council with NH's largest immigrant group, Bhutanese. A small smile comes on Christina's lips. "Yes!" That's great because Christina speaks Hindi, one of the languages these refugees speak. Their mother tongue is Nepali. "I love children's books," she also says. I already suspect Johanna will be interested because she is a poet herself and inspires her students to write. Pictured above is Johanna with one her students, Bishnu, who is reading a poem he wrote in a Connections reading and discussion program.

Johanna and Christina mention a man who is a scholar working at the Laconia Walmart who they think would like to help. With the teachers' knowledge of the Bhutanese communities in their two cities, we make our first list of Bhutanese teachers and artists and writers to invite as members of the editorial board for this as yet unborn book.

I'll follow our steps - from this very first one - here on The Elephant Rag.

Task: write letters of invitation.

Kids Reading Everywhere

2010-01-30T23:24:00.013-05:00

The last post was about Muktar who cared for camels in a traveling library that arrived to his school in Kenya on a camel. (Muktar and the Camels by Janet Graber.)

But there's more! Kenya has some creative ways to get books to kids. The Mleta Hadithi project in the western village of Esabalu is another way. Mleta Hadithi means Stories are Coming in Swahili. Young women created a mobile library and bring book to children. They do story times under the trees.

When I was a child, my mother and I always watched for bakeries and libraries when we were in a new town. I still see bakeries and libraries as the gems of a town. I visited Esabalu where the Mleta Hadithi invite children out for story times. I also saw children at Ebukuya School. (left). They were getting uniforms so they could attend school. I saw curriculum books in the Ebusammba School library (right.) In Nairobi I met Anne Mooore of Kids Libs, a program that runs libraries in Nairobi slums. Here is a photo from the KidsLibs web site.

In Oaxaca, Mexico we found an amazing panaderia (bakery!) not far from the town square. We saw the library at the Centro de Esperanza Infantil, a support program for Oaxaca street children. They have a kindergarten and support children with medical care and meals until they graduate from high school. Here's their library:

We also saw a Oaxaca public library with a large collection of picture books.

I don't have a picture, but I loved the pastel de tres leches (three milk cake) at the bakery. Dear Reader, please send along a snapshot, in words or a picture, of libraries or bakeries from your corner of the world. Maybe somewhere there is a library with a bakery next door.

Interview with Janet Graber, author or Muktar and the Camels

2010-01-14T14:50:00.036-05:00

I asked author Janet Graber to tell the Elephant Rag about the history behind her story, Muktar and the Camels. Here are her words:

I am frequently asked where I find my story ideas.  Sometimes a specific place will spark my imagination, or an overheard phrase, even the face of a particular child in a crowd.   When I first read a newspaper article about the Kenya National Library Service using camels to deliver books to camps and orphanages in the wastelands of Northern Kenya I was intrigued.  I knew that Somalis had fled to camps in this area because of civil war, famine and drought.  I also knew that the Somali people were direct descendents of camel herders who entered the Horn of Africa two million years ago and slowly developed a rich Islamic culture and self-sustaining nomadic lifestyle.  As the story took root I chose not to differentiate between Somali or Somali Bantu or clan allegiences, but rather to concentrate on the loss of this significant nomadic life. It was not the library system itself that caught my attention, but curiosity about the children to whom these books were being delivered.  And the article reminded me of long-ago history/geography lessons as a schoolgirl in England, when Britain still maintained colonies all over the world, including Somaliland.

Cecil Rhodes, British diamond magnate in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) said, after discovering that his horses died of thirst and disease in the hot dry desert - 'I am willing to defray the cost of the purchase of twenty camels and six camel drivers.'
It was satisfying to know that a hundred years later camels were still a necessary part of life on the Kenya/Somalia border.  I began to imagine a young Somali boy struggling to find his place in the world.  Who was he?  Where had he come from?  What did he crave most in the world?
I pondered these questions for a long time before a specific child took shape in my mind.  Gradually Muktar began to share with me memories of his nomadic life in Somalia with his beloved family, and his great love of camels that had provided for their every need before events completely destroyed his centuries old way of life.
Muktar became a child I cared about deeply.  He was a dreamer.  He loved camels.  It was vital to make some connection with the life he had lost.  And I knew his need lay not with the delivery of the books but with the well being of camels.  I had my story at last.

Although I obviously was unable to visit Kenya or Somalia to do research, I think those lessons of my childhood served me well in terms of an understanding of the nomadic way of life.  I hope so anyway.  And I used films such as Lawrence of Arabia to observe the gait of camels and how they sound moving through sand.  The local zoo was also invaluable resource.

All my very best wishes to the brave Somali immigrants in the U.S. - and a fervent wish that peace will eventually come to their homeland.

   Janet Graber
Janet Graber is also the author of Resistance, a young adult novel set during World War II about a 15-year old French girl drawn into the Resistance movement by loss in her family.   Please scroll down to the next post for sidelines on camels and the Kenyan National Library Service which are featured in Mukhtar.

Muktar and the Camels

2010-01-04T15:06:00.018-05:00

My critique partner and friend Toni Buzzeo sent a note, "You must read this book." This book was Muktar and the Camels by Janet Graber with oil painting illustrations by Scott Mack.
Boy Reading, from the BBC Photo Journal

of the Kenyan Camel Library

I had just met a woman from Somalia who had lived in a refugee camp in the North Eastern Province of Kenya from the time she was eight years old until she was a teenager.
She knows about the setting of this book, an orphanage for children from nomadic Somali families. In the book, the boy Muktar is homesick for his

traveling life and the camels that are most valued by his people. And then, three camels arrive to his orphanage, but these camels are carrying library books. Janet Graber is telling a story of the Kenya National Library Service who do indeed transport books by camel in the North Eastern Province. The camels travel from the city of Garissa. Here is a Photo Journal of the Kenyan Camel Library from the BBC.

Muktar and the Camels is a Picture Book of the Day in Anastasia Suen's blog on using picture books to teach writing. It has also been named to the Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2009

"Home is wherever your friends and family are." "Home is where you can go no matter what happens, and occasionally to sleep."

2009-12-21T18:04:00.022-05:00

Felicia Marte and Kyle Taschereau, both senior graphic communications students at Greater Lawrence Technical School, work on deadline in the days before Christmas break. Felicia and Kyle designed a book of poems written by English language students in Lawrence, MA. Tell Me a Cuento, a Book of Poems was funded by the Lawrence Public Library and a grant from Mass Humanities. The poems were written in response to children's books set all over the world. Stay tuned. Felicia and Kyle's work - and the words of the poets - will be on line and in print in the new year. Many of the poems are about what home means, and Felicia and Kyle wrote their own takes on home - the title of this post. Soon these talented students can sleep.

The Spirit of Utuyu

2009-12-12T21:58:00.020-05:00

I met a boy in Oaxaca. He was in a novel I discovered there. And he was everywhere on the city square, called the zocalo, where people eat, sing, dance, peddle toys, balloons, cakes, and handmade crafts. Many of the peddlers are children, no older than the boy, Utuyu, in The Balloons of Oaxaca, who is six years old.

For a realistic contemporary story about indigenous children of Oaxaca, read Utuyu’s story, by Barry Head, illustrated by Noel Dora Chilton. Utuyu has been cared for by different people in the mountains where he was born, but by the time he’s six, he travels down the mountain paths to the capital city, Oaxaca, to learn to take care of himself.

At the city square where he is hungry and has none of the funny balloons or crafts that others are selling, he finds that people sitting at outdoor restaurants around the zocalo, love to hear the songs he leaned in the mountains.

“Utuyu didn’t move. He stood right there with his hands on the people’s table and began to sing.” He begins to collect coins from people who listen to his songs.

“What felt empty now, instead of his pockets, was his stomach. The next time he sang to a table of people, he pointed to the food they were eating, and one of the people gave him a big piece of flat bread. On the bread were pieces of cheese and avocado and tomato and chicken.” (I saw this many times, children gathered around people's tables, sharing their food.)

With many confusions and near tragedies along the way, Utuyu grows into a successful street kid. He is brave - with the spirit of the meaning of his native Indian name, sky. But the author, Barry Head, doesn’t leave him on the street. Utuyu has a guide and has the greater courage to leave the street and go to school.

Mr. Head lives in Oaxaca and New York and dedicates the book “in loving memory of Fred Rogers” with whom he worked for 30 years on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. He donates book royalties to Centro de Esperanza Infantil/ Oaxaca Street Children Grassroots

Mexico in December

2009-11-28T12:15:00.036-05:00

My first book was a story I wrote for my mother and gave to her as a Christmas present. I continued to write her stories, great leaps of fantasy from a nugget of real life. I loved J.R.R. Tolkein's Father Christmas Letters about the antics of elves at the North Pole. One year I wrote my mother a story about the elves of Cushing Academy in Massachusetts where she went to school. Here it is December again, and I want to make a handmade book to give as a gift.
This desire comes at the same time as a December trip my daughter and I are taking to Oaxaca in southwestern Mexico. This led me to Susan Gaylord's Multicultural Books to Make and Share where I found a small accordian book called a curandero book. It was made by healers of the Otomi Indians of Mexico. I loved the idea that I could fold an acccordian book in this ancient tradition of healers to hold my story. So that is my goal this December, to give a story in a curandero book.

I've also started to find children's books about the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca and other areas of Mexico. Pictured is La Boda: A Mexican Wedding Celebration by Nancy Van Laan, illus. by Andrea Arroyo about a Zapotec Indian wedding in Oaxaca. Here are two excellent reading lists that include books set in Mexico: University of Nor th Carolina and Duke University run a Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and offer a Children's Book List.
Colorin colorado, a Spanish/English bilingual site for families and educators, offers a list of recommended children's books. Please pass on your recommendations from your corner of the world.

Gi' me 'tory gal! Give me story girl!

2009-10-14T14:07:00.024-05:00

I fell in love with the language of What a Wedd'n
by Peggy Rankine. It's about the Jamaican courtship of a girl and a boy in the 1930s before the country's independence from England.

Ms. Rankine said she wrote to "preserve the Jamaican flavor." Listen to the girls and women talk by the river on washing day.
"Gi' me 'tory gal!"
(Give me a story girl.)
"Pop 'tory a me ears!"
(Tell me a story in my ears!)

They have plenty to talk about since a boy has just asked a girl's father if he can "fren" his daughter. (friend, or court) The father says okay but "Listen carefully, these are the rules:

"No hanging around my house after sunset,
No hugging and kissing in public,
No standing in the roadside with Ambro, Show her all the respect,
You can visit her on Sunday evenings before night service,
Don't give her any money or anything, we can maintain her."

Ms. Rankine recreates a culture of courtship and of the Jamaica of her youth with wonderful details (the wedding cake calls for "1 lb sugar, 1 lb butter, 1 lb. flour, 1 lb raisins, 1 lb. currants, 1 doz. eggs, 1 pint wine or rum") and love.

Illustration above by Mr. Paul Clayton is of younger sister Lucy who delivers a secret love letter from the boy to the girl.

You can order What a Weddin' from Johanna Young, jsoulnh@gmail.com
You can order many other books about Jamaica through Arawak Publications .

"Just a little bit magic"

2009-09-14T13:35:00.003-05:00

You must go to this site - KidsLibs - a project to bring libraries to children in poor neighborhoods in Nairobi and also rural Laikipia in Kenya.
This is a boy outside a library in Sipili. Bikes are among items on the wish list for each of the four libraries that librarian Anne Moore has created so far.
Kids at the Mathare North center gathered with Susan Phillips to read stories, talk about the kinds of stories they liked, then created characters for their own stories which they wrote and illustrated. You can read a series of stories about Thomas and Queenventure: "Once upon a time in the city of Mombasa lived a beautiful girl named Queenventure." Read more.

You will also see poems, pin hole photography (the first photo above was created in Mathare North), and sunprints created by kids in library programs. "Just a little bit magic" was the way Susan described the pinhole photographs.
The libraries themselves are a lot of magic for Kenyan kids. Do you live near one of Kenya's kidslibs libraries? Would you write us a comment about books you like or what you like to do there?

Connections: children's books and adult literacy

2009-09-13T20:33:00.037-05:00

Welcome to a Newsletter from Connections, a literacy program of the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Check out the stories in the newsletter - about a Night of Stories, a bilingual Somali-English folktale, Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, "Kindness", and haikus, too! Photos by Sue Butman of the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Thank you, Sue. Here are photos of people who gathered for Night of Stories to celebrate stories in books and music. On the left is Theo Nii Marty, a percussionist from Ghana. It was a wonderful night. Theo had all of us - people of all ages from all over the world - up there dancing.

"Tell Me a Cuento" Workshop for Teachers

2009-06-25T09:32:00.016-05:00

I had the best afternoon with adult education teachers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Sandra Chupkai and I presented a workshop on Tell Me a Cuento, a book club for ESOL students reading illustrated children's books.

Northeast SABES, System for Adult Education Support, hosted the workshop. The Lawrence (MA) Public Library and Mass Humanities made it possible for me to present and for each teacher to recieve a copy of Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa by Veronica Chambers. We did a model discussion. Many teachers had actually met Celia in NYC or she sang at their graduations. The discussion was an amazing testimonial to the power of Celia's music to translate a culture and the pride in salsa music as a symbol of Latino cultures in counties around the world. Thank you to all the teachers who shared your stories. Sandra and I presented the workshop to give teachers ideas for running their own Book Clubs for adult ESOL students or for parent groups. I hope the handouts on Tips for Teacher-Led Discussions will inspire teachers to offer their own programs. If teachers would like support in presenting a Tell Me a Cuento program or variation on it, please e-mail me. We also spent some time talking about selecting multicultural books with cultural authenticity. I showed some slides of my powerpoint on multicultual books.

Mleta Hadithi

2009-06-13T20:24:00.009-05:00

A group of twelve people from Amesbury are in Amesbury's sister city, Esabalu in western Kenya this week. Some of the visitors will work on the literacy project that several of us began the last time we were in Esabalu. The project is called Mleta Hadithi, Stories are Coming.
Wilson Reading funded the design and printing of this poster. Aron Fine, a new designer with Wilson, created the poster as his first project. The words in Swahili say, Reading Begins at Home. The book pictured is For You Are a Kenyan Child by Kelly Cunnane, illustrated by Ana Juan.
In Esabalu young women who have graduated from college but don't yet have jobs take books in Swahili, Luhya, the mother tongue, and English into village homes and read to children.
I will write updates here about how the Mleta Hadithi girls are doing in the village.

A Sewn Book Waiting for Her Own Words: Interview With Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord

2009-04-20T08:50:00.026-05:00

"Living in this world of media saturation, it is easy to think that all the important things are happening somewhere else. Making books about our own stories and our own lives reminds us that we are the center of our own lives."

After Susan created The Elephant Rag logo, she told me more about her art, her passion for books, her exploration of the bindings and paper used around the world, and her belief in inviting others to make art.

Terry: Based on the number of workshops you do, you must think it’s important for kids – and adults – to make their own books, and probably fill them with their own stories.
Susan: I absolutely think it's important. When I started to make books on a regular basis, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher as well as a doer. Because I work with a lot of simple forms, the construction is simple and the materials are easy to gather (especially now that I focus on recycled ones). To me making books is the perfect introduction to art and creative exercise. I think it is important that we take the time to tell our own stories. Living in this world of media saturation, it is easy to think that all the important things are happening somewhere else. Making books about our own stories and our own lives reminds us that we are the center of our own lives and helps us to value ourselves and our families and friends. However I also have another sense of the book which comes more from the art side of things: the book as an object. I have books in my collection that are in languages I can't read and yet I take great pleasure in looking at them and turning the pages. It is the book as book and the pattern of the marks on the page that I find so beautiful. I like to think of books as celebrations. They can celebrate a memory or a story but they can also celebrate your particular interaction with that particular collection of materials at that particular time.

Read the full text of the interview.

2009-04-19T21:12:00.015-05:00

Rubia is a nonprofit organization that supports women in Afghanistan to create and sell their traditional handwork and to develop literacy skills. The Director is artist and photographer Rachel Lehr. Rachel created a reading list of books to support a program she presents for students and teachers through the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, The Heart of the Silk Road.

Silk Road explores the "ancient caravan routes along which luxury goods as well as technology, religion and ideas were traded between East and West." See Rachel's bibliography of resources about Afghanistan and other countries along the Silk Road including Mongolia, Persia, and China. Rachel is in Afghanistan today as I write this.
Above is the cover of Rubia's 2009 Calendar.

Susan's Elephant

2009-02-23T14:10:00.010-05:00

“The outer brown is mashamba paper from Africa. The elephant is on a background created from a scanned page from a book from Bhutan, plus Spanish from a Mexican book and Japanese from a book from Japan. All are muted so they blend together. A light opacity of the amity paper from Mexico is laid over it all.”

World Cafe of Books for Kids

2008-06-08T06:48:00.024-05:00

Here is a beginning of a list of books about children and teens from many cultures. Some of these are brand new. Some are classics. Some are my long time favorites and some are new favorites contributed by my fellow writers and illustrators on the New England Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators list serve.See links to the right for other lists of good books on multicultural themes.

Write me with your favorites and we'll make this list grow.

Picture Books and Folktales

ALVAREZ, Julia. illus by Fabian Negrin, The Secret Footprints. Dell Dragonfly, c2000.

A folktale about Dominican ciguapas, mythical creatures who live on the land and in the sea.

BARTONE, Elisa, illus by Ted Lewin, Peppe the Lamplighter. Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1993. Set in New York City’s Little Italy at the turn of the century.

BROWN, Monica, illus by John Parra, My Name is Gabriella* Me llamo Gabriela, the Life of Gabriella Mistral, Luna Rising, 2006.

A picture book biography of the Chilean writer and Nobel Prize winner.

BULION, Leslie. Fatuma’s New Cloth, Moon Mountain, 2002. A little girl in East Africa shops with her mother for a cloth to make a kanga. Includes a recipe for East African tea.

BUNTING, Eve. How Many Days to America? A Thanksgiving Story, illus by Beth Peck.

CHAMBERS, Veronica. Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa, illus by Julie Maren, Dial, 2005.

Biography of Celia and her childhood world that influenced the making of salsa, illustrated in brilliant colors.

CONNOR, Leslie. Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, illus by Mary Azarian, HM, 2004.

Miss Bridie comes to America in 1856 and shows the fortitude and ingenuity of immigrants.

CUNNANE, Kelly. For You Are a Kenyan Child, illus by Ana Juan, Atheneum, 2006.

A little boy in search of cows calls out to people in his Kenyan village to the refrain of “Hodi? Anybody home?” and they answer “Karibu! Welcome!”

HEST, Amy. When Jessie Came Across the Sea, illus by P.J. Lynch, Candlewick, 1997.

Jessie immigrates from Eastern Europe to New York City at the turn of the century.

LORD, Michelle. A Song for Cambodia. Lee and Low, 2008

Biography of Arn Chorn-Pond who played the khim. (Film Connection: The Flute Player.)

KURTZ, Jane, illus by Lee Christiansen. Fire on the Mountain. Simon & Schuster, 1994.

A retelling of an Ethiopian folktale.

MICHELSON, Richard. Grandpa’s Gamble, illus by Barry Moser, Marshall Cavendish, 1999.

Story of a Polish grandpa and grandchild that captures “the tough, brazen immigrant culture...” Booklist.

NORMAN Lissette. My Feet Are Laughing, F, S, & G, 2006.

Narrative poems about a girl in NYC whose parents are from the Dominican Republic.

Film connection: Mad Hot Ballroom, a gorgeous story about competitive ballroom dancers in NYC elementary schools. Many of the kids are Hispanic.

NIVOLA, Claire. Planting the Trees of Kenya, Frances Foster Books, 2008. A biography of Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

PIERNAS-Davenport, Gail. Shanté Keys and the New Year’s Peas, illus by Marion Eldridge, Albert Whitman, 2007.

Shanté discovers New Year’s traditions of many cultures.

REICH, Susanna. Jose! Born to Dance, illus by Raul Colon, Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Biography of Mexican-American dancer, Jose Limon, a "soaring portrayal of achievement." Booklist.

RUMFORD, James. Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad, Roaring Brook, 2008.

A story of contemporary Baghdad and a boy’s skill in writing Arabic calligraphy.

SAY, Allen. Grandfather’s Journey, Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

The story of a man living in two cultures, and when he is in one, he yearns for the other.

YASHIMA, Taro. Crow Boy, Viking, 1995.

The classic tale of a Japanese boy who finds his voice in the world with the help of a good teacher.

Novels

APPLEGATE, Katherine. Home of the Brave, Feiwel & Friends, 2007.

A young boy from Sudan in America.

ALVAREZ, Julia, Before We Were Free, Knopf, 2002.

Growing up in the Dominican Republic during a dictator’s rule.

LIN, Grace. The Year of the Dog, Little, Brown, 2006.

Pacy, who is Tawainese-American, sorts out her identity in her American school.

PERKINS, Mitali. Rickshaw Girl, illus by Jamie Hogan, Charlesbridge, 2007. Chapter book

"Funny, smart, and chuck full of the sights, sounds, and smells of Bangladesh." Fuse #8 Production

Venkatraman, Padma. Climbing the Stairs, Putnam, 2008. YA

Set in India in the 1940s, this is the story of a young woman's struggle for freedom which plays out against the backdrop of World War II and India's coming independence.

SCHMIDT, Gary. Trouble. Clarion, 2008

YA novel, a Cambodian American and a native boy are in deep trouble in this adventure story of climbing Mt. Katahdin.

Tan, Shaun. The Arrival, Arthur Levine, 2006. A wordless, graphic story told in surreal drawings to capture the unknown and often frightening things of a new place to immigrants.

TESTA, Maria. Something About America, Candlewick, 2005.

A short verse novel about a girl from Serbia who comes to Maine. It climaxes when 6,000 people rally in support of immigrants in Lewiston.

Reading Stories in Kenya

2008-04-25T10:47:00.008-05:00

Mleta wa Hadithi is what we are calling the literacy project I am working on with Amesbury for Africa. That’s Swahili for Stories are Coming. Oldest daughters of a family are being trained as Hadithi (story) girls who will read aloud from storybooks to young children in their homes.

Our friends in Esabalu recommend that the books be in Swahili and dialects of Luhya, the mother tongue for village children.

Children in Amesbury schools have held a fund raiser. They have sold bracelets that say, One Book because the purchase of a bracelet will raise funds for a book for the literacy project. Amesbury for Africa will send the money to the village for the committee to purchase storybooks.

I am thinking about languages because I am reading the Kenyan writer, Ngugi. He wrote his first novels in English, but later wrote only in his own language, Kikuyu, saying that “Africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its languages…” I’ve read passionate pleas to protect and champion native languages and ensure that African children grow up learning them. The Mleta wa Hadithi are reading stories in the mother tongue because the young children don’t know English. Village children don’t study English until their third year of school. I’m glad the project will do two things then: give kids a chance to hold books in their hands and begin reading, and also to see their own language in print.

Have you grown up with two or more languages? Have you had experience with children writing their own books in a native dialect and creating their own written literature? Have you done this yourself? The elephantrag WANTS YOUR experiences and ideas. Writeon!

Aggie's Story

2008-02-01T12:17:00.006-05:00

View from a village school window in Kenya.

My friend Aggie lives in Massachusetts now, but her hometown is Esabalu, Kenya.

Jack and Annette Christian are her homestay mom and dad. Aggie is worried about her family in Kenya because violence has broken out there after an election for the country’s president. Two men claim to be the rightful winner of the election. The men are from two different tribes, Kikuyu and Luo, and people from each of these tribes have been fighting each other.

Aggie told a story about her sister. "My sister Dora was in school in Nairobi. But she was not allowed to stay because she is not Kikuyu. She could not let people hear her speak on the street because then they would know she was a Luhya. It doesn’t matter what tribe you are. They are just killing. She went to a friend in Thika because she was afraid they would hurt her. She did not call for a long time. I waited hours and hours. I was thinking, Is she dying? I was so worried. But then she called. She had gone to a cousin's house. She said the roads are blocked. People are burning cars. You can travel no where. There is no public transportation from Kisumu to Nairobi. Dora was supposed to be doing exams this month. Now people listen to voices to hear what tribe you are. I hope she will stay with my cousin and not try to get back to Esabalu. It has never been like this in Kenya before. This is a totally different Kenya."

Violence has not happened in the United States following a presidential election. Our own election is coming up in November and it will not cause violence. Kenya is a new democratic nation. Many leaders there are working to create laws that ensure fair elections that people can trust.

Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Annan of the United Nations are in Nairobi now urging the leaders of both tribes to call for an end to the violence so that children can return to school, and families can shop at the market and travel in safety.

Anne Moore who runs kidslibs, libraries for children in Nairobi slums, wrote, "We are all praying for Kenya that Kenyans will stop fighting and that Raila Odinga and Kibaki will come to their senses. The election was rigged good and proper. ...There seems no reason for the fighting, friend against friend."

Young Writers at Work

2008-01-16T20:51:00.004-05:00

Allenstown, New Hampshire. I presented three days of workshops with 2nd and 3rd graders in this small town through CLiF, Children's Literacy Foundation. Here students are focusing so hard on their stories. I had asked them to describe a favorite place in their neighborhood. The best thing about these workshops is that the teachers wrote, too. The children cheered to hear teachers read their original stories out loud.

Violence in Western Kenya following Elections

2008-01-03T08:51:00.002-05:00

Many young readers and others are now connected to the lives of the girls from Kenya who wrote stories about their lives for NEW MOON with links on this site. (See previous posts.) Now families in western Kenya are living in fear because of riots after the recent Kenyan election. Results of the election are disputed. The incumbant, Mwai Kibaki of the Kikuyu tribe claims victory over Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe. Odinga says the elections were fraudulent.
Though our friends in Esabalu are of the Luhya tribe, many Luos are neighbors in the village and surrounding cities and towns. Barack Obama's father is a Luo and I am watching to hear what words he offers Kenyans that address the need for justice.

Through friends of Amesbury for Africa, we hear this:
"People suffered the last couple of days due to fear of going out of the house and a general sense of lawlessness and insecurity (especially for women) and no food. It's much worse in areas affected by ethnic tensions. Plus lots of rumors were going around that were fueling fears and anger. Kisumu has been badly damaged and there are up to 100,000 people displaced from their homes and staying in churches, police stations, and prisons."

Where Fireflies Dance Podcast

2007-08-30T12:03:00.003-05:00

ESL Book Club

Welcome to a short podcast, Where Fireflies Dance Book Discussion (mp3) or Discussion Podcast. It is one discussion in a series called "Tell Me a Cuento," a book group for adults reading picture books with universal themes. This discussion happened at Child Care Circuit in Lawrence, MA. We read Where Fireflies Dance by Lucha Corpi, a book in English and Spanish, illustrated by Mira Reisberg. The book includes titles of songs people played in cantinas in Veracruz, Mexico which led to our singing in the book group. You'll hear about being a tomboy forced to learn embroidery, the lure of tropical flowers, memories of cantinas - and you'll never doubt how nearby the children are.

Kenyan Girls in NEW MOON Magazine

2007-07-08T09:50:00.005-05:00

Three of my friends from Kenya have written for NEW MOON, a magazine for girls published in the United States. They wrote on the theme of "City Girl, Country Girl". One girl lives in a rural village, two live in Mathare, a very large slum in Nairobi. Yvonne Wanjiru's wrote, "My Life in Mathare" about this slum.

The girls write about the fact that students must pay school fees to go to secondary school. They would have to drop out after 8th grade because their families did not have money to pay these fees. Some NEW MOON readers have written to ask how they can help the girls.

These were the most beautiful letters I have ever read. The young readers of NEW MOON will change the lives of the Kenyan girls.

If you would like to help with school fees for the girls in Mathare, please contact Anne Moore who runs Community Based Libraries in Mathare; kidslibs@hotmail.com. Please see the links under "How to Help" to know about Kidslibs, Amesbury for Africa, and me.

Photo: A student in Esabalu who just got a new uniform through the Uniform Project of Amesbury for Africa. In Kenya, children must have a uniform in order to attend school. See the link for Amesbury for Africa for more information.

Photo at top: NEW MOON writer Rita and her brothers, Harrison and John