Outstanding International Books 2013 on Google Maps

Here is the cover of ISLAND by Marije and Ronald Tolman
from Germany, one book you'll find on the Outstanding International
Books Google Map

Here is a very fun display of IBBY's list of Outstanding International  Books  for 2013 on Google Maps where you can travel from country to country as you place the book in the world.  These are books published outside the U.S. by international publishers and available in the U.S.

Seedfolks, one and all

An NPR story includes one of my favorite lines from Paul Fleishman: "I grew up in a house that might have had the only front-yard cornfield in Los Angelos."  The line makes me imagine the wildness and freedom and fun or his family. Fleischman's novel, SEEDFOLKS, is featured in  NPR's Back Seat Book Club for the month of April. 
I'm  working with the wonderful writer, Annie Sibley O'brien and extraordinary writer and marketer Kirsten Cappy, to create a web site featuring books and events-around-books to build bridges among people of many cultures. SEEDFOLKS has to be number one on the list.  The novel is made up of small short stories, many in the voice of immigrants from different parts of the world. Oh, and they each do carry a yearning or a sorrow of some kind but there's magic in a community garden where they find themselves working and growing things. They feel a power from working in the dirt  - or sometimes from working side by side - and they know the feeling of how a shift in awareness makes your life different. Listen to Marciela. She's from Mexico. She's 16 and pregnant and "fat as a wrestler" and angry. The  black woman working the nearby plot knows she does not want that baby. She tells her "how nature ran on sunlight and rain and the seasons, and how I was part of that system. The words sort of put me in a daze. My body was part of nature. I was related to bears, to dinosaurs, to plants, to things that were a million years old. It hit me that this system was much older and stronger than the other. She said how it wasn't some disgrace to be part of it. She said it was an honor. I stared at the squash plants. It was a world in there. It seemed like I could actually see the leaves and flowers growing and changing."  Marciela was a seedfolk on their common land.  Happy spring!

A Long Walk to Water, and more books about Sudan

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. 

Crisscrossing the Globe

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? 

"Tell Me a Cuento" Workshop for Teachers

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.