I wonder if Malaysia will ever have its own awards for children's literature. Will the standards of writing and the number of children's books published ever call for the sort of recognition given by prizes like the Newberry and Caldecott, and the Carnegie and Greenaway, or should the awards come first, acting as encouragement to writers and illustrators of children's books?
In Singapore the National Book Council held a picture book writing/illustrating contest a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly, out of the submissions, six picture books were published. I didn't consider them particularly interesting or inspiring, well-written or -drawn. And, speaking to several writers and artists who had submitted work, I think the NBC still has very old-fashioned ideas of what makes a good children's book.
A friend and I are toying with the idea of applying for a grant with which to start a similar contest. Stay tuned to see if anything comes of it. As I keep saying, so much to do, so little time ...
ON Jan 14, the Newberry and Caldecott Medals were awarded to Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, respectively.
The awards, which are administered annually by the Association of
Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library
Association, are two of the most prestigious in children’s literature.
Tots to teens
The John Newberry Medal is awarded to the past year’s most outstanding contribution to children’s literature while the Randolph Caldecott Medal honours the illustrator of the past year’s most distinguished American picture book for children.
Several other awards were also bestowed by the ALSC at the same event, including the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, awarded to The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean, and the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished book for beginning readers, won by Mo Willems’ There Is a Bird on Your Head!
The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic, 534 pages, ISBN: 978-1407103488) must have stumped the judges of the Newberry and the Caldecott. It’s a novel but one in which the illustrations play as big a part in telling the story as they do in picture books.
In fact, while you wouldn’t be lost if you were
to read the text in a picture book and ignore the graphics, Selznick
uses images to tell large chunks of his story. This is probably why it
was judged as a picture book and not an illustrated novel, unlike Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Candlewick Press, 96 pages, ISBN: 978-0763615789).
In that book, Schlitz uses 17 monologues and two dialogues, spoken by girls and boys from different social levels, to bring mid-13th century England to vivid life, while Robert Byrd’s richly coloured drawings simply serve to enhance our understanding of the period.
It was quite a (pleasant) surprise to see The White Darkness (Oxford University Press, 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0192726186) on the ALSC’s list. It was published in Britain in 2005 but only reached the United States last year, which makes it a “new-old” book.
It’s one of my
favourite young adult novels of all time, a romantic, devastating tale
of a young girl whose best, most trusted friend is a man long-dead but
more real, loving, reliable and heroic than the alive-and-kicking ones
she has around her.
As this book has been around for a while (the British edition anyway), you can get it in paperback – the much cheaper option, although it really does deserve to be cherished in hardback.
Some of the honour (special mention) titles for the awards I’ve mentioned here are Jacqueline Woodson’s Feathers (Putnam, 208 pages, ISBN: 978-0399239892); The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux, 56 pages, ISBN: 978-0374347017), written and illustrated by Peter Sis; and Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath (Alfred A. Knopf Books, 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0375837999) by Stephanie Hemphill.
It would be some time, I suppose. I remember telling two young ladies last year how one of the earlier Harry Potter books had won the Smarties Book Prize in the UK. The girls were studying medicine and law overseas but they burst out laughing, and commented on how ridiculous it seemed to have a prize for something like children's books!
Shows how unaware Msian youth - no matter how well they score academically or whether they've been accepted into overseas universities - are about the importance of children's literature and encouragement for this genre.
And it shows how much awareness building someone like you needs to do before children's literature doesn't get bodoh-sombong reactions from Msians.
Posted by: Veronica Shunmugam | Saturday, May 03, 2008 at 17:03
Hi Daphne, I really enjoy your blog and articles. A Malaysian award for children's literature would be awesome. Best of luck with that. I hope that I may be able to make a contribution to that category someday :)
Posted by: Adline | Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 01:32