Tanzania: Goats (and Books) for Kids

Emily Moore directs your attention to this worthy project....

GOATS FOR KIDS

Goats For Kids is a literacy project led by students at San Diego State University. Its aim is to establish a school lunch program for children at Mnyakongo Primary School in Kongwa, Tanzania.

At present the youngest children at the school often have to walk long distances to school and back. Without a school lunch program their school day is necessarily very short. By establishing a school lunch program pupils will be able to receive a full day of schooling. This initiative directly addresses the Millennium Goals of the United Nations – in particular the goal that aims to “ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.”

After consultation with the Headteacher at Mnyakongo Primary School, Ms. Angelina Munduli, a sustainable solution to the lunch program took shape; a nutritious maize meal porridge served with fresh milk would suffice. In order to obtain fresh milk on a daily basis a small herd of milk goats would be kept on the school grounds. The cost of a single milk goat in Tanzania is approximately $50. We intend, with vigorous fundraising, to not only achieve our goal for Mnyakongo Primary School but to expand the project to assist other schools in the region.

SDSU students will travel to the school in Kongwa, Tanzania for two weeks in June 2011 to purchase goats and set up the project. Goats For Kids is an innovative self-sustaining literacy project initiated by San Diego State University students and supported and sponsored by the students of Phi Kappa Phi, the University Honors Program, Mortar Board, and Scholars Without Borders.

Funds are currently being raised for this project. A book drive, in association with Better World Books, is a means for the campus to recycle unwanted books of all kinds at the same time contributing to a project that will directly assist the education of children in Africa. If you have any books you can donate including unwanted newer (1998 onwards) textbooks, hardcover fiction and non-fiction, dictionaries and thesauruses, mass market paperbacks in good condition etc. please contact plarlham@mail.sdsu.edu.

It is time to get rid of those unwanted books anyway, so why not use them productively … to educate children in Africa?

Dr. Peter Larlham

Professor, School of Theatre, Television, and Film,

PSFA, SDSU

Edward Gorey & Peter Neumeyer

Tim Burton owes him. So does Neil Gaiman. And a recent article in the New York Times tracks new and resurgent interest in the macabre stories and drawings of Edward Gorey:

Told in verse and illustrated in a style that crosses Surrealism with the Victorian true-crime gazette, Gorey stories are set in some unmistakably British place, in a time that is vaguely Victorian, Edwardian and Jazz Age all at once. Though Gorey was a 20th-century American, he conjured a world of gramophones and cars that start with cranks, of boater-hatted men in Eton collars knocking croquet balls across the lawn while sloe-eyed vamps in cloches look on, and sinister things sink, bubbling, into the reflecting pond. His titles are instructive: “The Fatal Lozenge,” “The Deadly Blotter,” “The Hapless Child,” “The Haunted Tea-Cosy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/arts/design/06gorey.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Gorey&st=cse

After dislocating Gorey's shoulder, Peter Neumeyer (emeritus professor and founder of SDSU's children's literature program) became friends with the reclusive writer and the two of them did books together. In the summer of 2011, Pomegranate Press will publish their correspondence in a work by Neumeyer titled Floating Worlds. These letters provide an intimate portrait of Gorey and of an extraordinary friendship. Keep an eye or two out for it.

$2K Prize for SoCal Student Essay on Lewis Carroll

I am writing to invite submissions from your students {see website for list of Southern California universities} for the University of Southern California Libraries Wonderland Award. The purpose of this award is to encourage engagement with the works of Lewis Carroll and the reinterpretation of these works in today's social, political and technological environment.

Cash prizes are offered for winning submissions with a first prize award of $2,000. The deadline for submissions in April 1; further details regarding submissions can be found at www.usc.edu/libraries/wonderland.

Sincerely,

Catherine Quinlan, Dean of the USC Libraries

May Cutler Dies: Canadian Children's Publisher

May Cutler, noted publisher of Canadian children's books, died on March 3. She founded the terrific press Tundra Books: http://www.tundrabooks.com/

More in the Globe & Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec-publisher-may-cutler-had-a-fierce-determination-to-succeed/article1933288/page2/

Professor Raises Poultry

Jerry Griswold explores versions of "The Little Red Hen": http://blog.parents-choice.org/?p=1354

"Hansel & Gretel": a film sequel

Scheduled for release in 2012 is a film sequel of "Hansel and Gretel" which is summarized thus: "Catching up with Hansel and Gretel 15 years after their incident involving a gingerbread house, the siblings have evolved into bounty hunters who hunt witches" more at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1428538/

Tablet Acknowledges June Cummins' Scholarship

The magazine Tablet gives credit to June Cummins for her work on Sydney Taylor:

“While the books are about being Jewish, they are also about becoming American,” writes Taylor’s biographer June Cummins, associate professor of English at San Diego State University, in a 2003 article, “Becoming All-of-a-Kind American: Sydney Taylor and Strategies of Assimilation,” published in The Lion and the Unicorn, an academic journal dedicated to children’s literature. “As with any other immigrant group, the relationship between two identities, one associated with another country or culture and the other with America, produces a tension not easily, if ever, resolved.”

More at: http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/56121/we-are-family/

Dr. Joe Sanders in Residence (Mar 20-Apr 2)

Dr. Joseph Sanders (Kansas State University) has won a National Endowment for the Humanities' Teaching Development Fellowship and will be spending the spring expanding his understanding of . . .

a field that everyone knows is important but few literature scholars have anything to say about: children's nonfiction. On the one hand, I'm simply interested in reading as much as possible so I can understand the history and dimensions of the field better. On the other, I'm interested specifically in how children's nonfiction can do more than hand readers information that it expects them to memorize. I hope to discover how the best children's nonfiction can invite readers to engage critically with authoritative sources, how it can invite them to argue with and extend existing knowledge.
San Diego State's extraordinary collection in children's literature will be indispensable as I pursue this project. As the home of the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature, SDSU is the home of top-shelf scholars and the library necessary to support their productivity. The library collects the best new children's literature each year--including award-winning nonfiction, a genre often ignored--and boasts a staff with specific expertise in children's literature. As a repository for the American Antiquarian Society, the library is a treasure trove of materials from across decades of American literary history.

Dr. Sanders will be in residence March 20 to April 2, 2010.

Nordic Scholarship

I would like to inform you about a new publication Aktuell nordisk barnlitteraturforskning/Current Nordic Children's Literature Research.

The Publication is a special issue containing papers presented at the Nordic Research Conference held in Stockholm at the Swedish Institute for Children’s Books in 2010. It has been prepared in cooperation with the Institutes for Children’s Books in all the Nordic countries and are being published simultaneously in the Nordic Journals Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research (2011:1, volume 34), Nedslag i børnelitteraturforskningen and as open access at www.sbi.kb.se/barnboken and BLFT. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift/Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics (Vol 2, 2011) www.childlitaesthetics.net.

The publication contains 17 papers. The articles are written in Danish (1), English (1), Norwegian (5) and Swedish (10). Abstracts in English.

The printed edition can be ordered from the Institutes in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Contact information below. Subscribers to Barnboken will receive a printed copy within the subscription price.

This special issue has received financial support from Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Research Council) and Nordisk kulturfond (The Nordic Culture Fund).

Yours Sincerely

Lillemor Torstensson

Editor, Barnboken, The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books

+46(0)8 54 54 20 51, lillemor.torstensson@sbi.kb.se

Contact:

Nina Christensen, director, The Center for Children’s Literature

tel. + 45 8888 9375, e-post: nc@dpu.dk (Denmark)

Maria Ihonen, director, The Finnish Institute for Children's Literature

tel. +358 3 3141 8411, e-post: maria.ihonen@lastenkirjainstituutti.fi

Kristin Ørjasæter, director, The Norwegian Institute of Children’s Books

tel. +47 23 27 63 62, e-post: kristin.orjasater@barnebokinstituttet.no

Jan Hansson, director, The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books

tel +46(0)8 54 54 20 55, jan.hansson@sbi.kb.se

"Skellig" On Stage (NYC)

Another reason to travel to New York... One of our favorite contemporary books, David Almond's Skellig, is now appearing on-stage as an off-Broadway production:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/mystery_man_in_fantasy_land_Ehwf5xlF7yRt6Tg06Ab6pN

http://offbroadway.broadwayworld.com/article/SKELLING_Comes_To_The_Stage_At_New_Victory_Theater_3413_20110304

If Manhattan is not in your future, read the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Skellig-David-Almond/dp/0340997044/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299326947&sr=1-2

March Deadlines: Call for Papers: MLA Convention (Seattle Jan 2012)

The Modern Languages Association will have its annual convention in Seattle in January 2012. Various CFP's (calls for papers) in children's and adolescent literature have appeared: see below. Information on the convention can be found at:
http://www.mla.org/news_from_mla/news_summary#t135

E-Arming The Future?: The Expanding Influence Of Technology On Literature In Form And/Or Readership
Papers will address how authors, in works' content and form, employ modern technology to engage young readers. Abstracts by 15 March 2011; Thomas Crisp (tcrisp@sar.usf.edu) and Tammy Mielke (tmielke@uncc.edu).

Ghost Children in Juvenile Literature
Papers might consider what ghost children suggest about permanent childhood/adolescence, alternative ways of growing up, identity and body, children and death, and outsiders. Submit 500-word abstracts. by 15 March 2011; Elizabeth Talafuse (talafuse@tamu.edu).

Why Comics Are and Are Not Picture Books (Joint Session with Children's Literature Division)
Relationships between comics and picture books from perspectives including (not limited to) genre, education, formalism, semiotics, ideology. 500-word abstracts by 5 March 2011; Charles Hatfield (charles.hatfield@gmail.com).

Eco-criticism and Young Readers
This session invites critical papers that attend to the connection between how children's literature imagines environment and the real-world consequences of such imaginings. 250-350 word abstracts by 15 March 2011; Kassie Clark (kclark@mail.utexas.edu) and Caroline Jones (cj24@txstate.edu).

Self-Destruction in Children's and Young Adult Literature
We invite critical, theoretical examinations of self-destruction in children's and young adult literature, especially those that offer nuanced considerations of problem novels. 250-350 word abstracts by 1 March 2011; Melanie Goss (mkgoss@ilstu.edu).

Children of War
Papers on representations of children as agents and/or victims of violence in texts and film about civil conflict in Africa. 250 word abstract and short bio. by 5 March 2011; Janice Spleth (jspleth@wvu.edu).

Making It Up: Inventors and Inventing in Young Adult/Children's Literature
Representations of inventors, inventing and inventions both scientific and magical in YAL/children's fiction, non-fiction, picture books. 250-300 word abstracts and 100 word bios. by 15 March 2011; Keith Dorwick (kdorwick@louisiana.edu).

San Diego Latino Film Festival: March 10-20

Some seventeen years old, the San Diego Latino Film Festival must be the largest of its kind in the U.S. Featuring creations from all over the world, in English and in Spanish, the 2011 Festival will host more than 170 films. Of special interest are four films in the "Para La Familia" category:
http://www.mediaartscenter.org/site/c.dfLIJPOvHoE/b.6549821/k.8725/Para_la_Familia.htm

Children's Book Review Service Evaluates Fall 2010 Publications

One of the oldest site of its kind on the internet, SDSU's Children's Book Review Service provides twice-a-year evaluations of children's and adolescent books at the end of the Fall and Spring publishing seasons. Thirty-nine reviews from the Fall 2010 season are now available.

Dr. Alida Allison and her crew of independent reviewers (Jill Coste, Margaret Hess, Jennifer Lussier, Cynthia McDaniel, Linda Salem, and Marie Soriano) look at fiction and nonfiction, picture books, y.a. fiction, graphic novels, and bilingual offerings. In addition, you can consult informed assessments of the international picture book Goal as well as the hot y.a. seller The Virgin Suicides, peruse offerings from India and publications devoted to cats.

While not quite the Academy Awards, these mini-essays present an original sorting of the tens of thousands of books marketed to young readers in Fall 2010.

http://childlit.sdsu.edu/reviews/2010FallReviews.htm

CFP: Olso, Norway (April 2011)

THE CHILD AND THE BOOK 2011
OSLO, NORWAY
April 8 – 10, 2011

www.hf.uio.no/child


CALL FOR PAPERS
We are pleased to announce the eighth annual The Child and the Book Conference for graduate and postgraduate scholars, in Oslo, Norway, April 8-10, 2011.

The conference is hosted by The Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies (ILN) at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Keynote speakers
•Nina Christensen, Director at Centre for Children’s Literature, Denmark •Svein Nyhus, author and illustrator, Norway

CALL FOR PAPERS
We particularly invite proposals for papers exploring the conference theme, although all scholarly papers on topics related to children’s literature will be given careful consideration.

The main theme of this year’s conference is PICTURE BOOKS IN THE NEW MILLENIUM, and we welcome proposals on the following topics:

•Picture books in the new millenium
•Young adult fiction
•Picture books for young adults
•Digital texts and computer games
•Religion in children’s literature
•National identity in children's literature •Children’s literature in the post-secular society •Historical events transformed into children’s literature •Nation building in children’s literature of the new millenium

Proposals for 20-minute presentations should be 250 words and should indicate texts to be discussed and the theoretical/critical framework underpinning your argument. Also include a separate brief biography for use by panel chairs when introducing presenters.

Please submit your proposal by November 1, 2010, to:
cb2011-contact@iln.uio.no

Please see the conference website for further information:

www.hf.uio.no/child

Please reply to cb2011-contact@iln.uio.no for any further inquiries about the conference.

Best regards,

Åse Marie Ommundsen
Leader of the Local Organizing Committee University of Oslo

"Top Scholars": June Cummins & Phillip Serrato

"The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature is an ambitious new resource that provides a thorough grounding in the field through a selection of original interdisciplinary essays on canonical and popular works in the Anglo American tradition. Twenty-six essays by top scholars from varied disciplines..."

Who are those "top scholars"? Among them:

June Cummins: "Where in America Are You, God? Judy Blume, Margaret Simon and American National Identity (Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret [1970]). "

Phillip Serrato: "'What are Young People to Think'?: The Subject of Immigration and the Immigrant Subject in Francisco Jimenez's The Circuit (1997)."

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/AmericanLiterature/?view=usa&sf=toc&ci=9780195379785

Shaun Tan Wins Academy Award

Shaun Tan won an Academy Award for best animated short. Tan took an Oscar for "The Lost Thing," based on his picture book with the same title. You can see that film here:
http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/news/the-lost-thing-022111

For a primer on Tan's picture books, look here:
http://www.parents-choice.org/article.cfm?art_id=416&the_page=editorials

Joseph Thomas on Shel Silverstein

The spring issue of The Children's Literature Association Quarterly features an essay by SDSU's resident poetry expert Joseph Thomas. His piece primarily concerns the various versions of Silverstein's Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book: A Primer for Tender Young Minds and Uncle Shelby’s Story of Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back, but it also attends to Silverstein's songs and decidedly adult Playboy cartoons.

Titled "A Speculative Account (with Notes) of the Development & Initial Deployments of Shel Silverstein's Persona, Uncle Shelby, with Special Care to Articulate the Relationship of Said Persona to the Question of Shel's Ambiguous Audience(s)," Thomas's piece speculates on the development and initial appearances of Shel Silverstein's persona, Uncle Shelby, while taking care to articulate the relationship of that persona to the question of Shel Silverstein's adult and child audiences. Thomas argues that the question of audience is crucial to a complex understanding of Silverstein's oeuvre, as it is often unclear just who Silverstein is writing for: children or adults. This ambiguity is something akin to Uli Knoepflmacher & Mitzi Myers's notion of "cross-writing," but with a difference. Thomas concludes,

with the suggestion that Shel Silverstein and his persona, Uncle Shelby, provide us with a more robust way to think about children’s literature, reminding us that the line between texts for adults and those for children is far more blurry than we generally like to believe, as is the line between child culture and adult culture, even though we like to police that line with ever-growing determination [...]. Uncle Shelby and Shel Silverstein help us to de-fetishize the ever fraught and socially constructed distinction between child and adult, but they do so without asking us to naively dismiss audience completely, showing us, instead, that our conception of audience informs our relationship with literature, diminishing certain understandings while emphasizing others. The author isn’t dead after all, despite claims to the contrary, and the author function operates hand-in-hand with his implied audience. The text, far from being static and unchanging, rather, works much like those optical illusions in art textbooks: at one moment we see an old lady, the next a lovely young girl; one moment a vase, the next two human profiles.

This flickering perception, this stuttering flux, is ultimately a part of the text, not epitextual not peritextual not intertextual: it is part and parcel of the work itself, as important as the words on the page. Our persistence of vision and the ideological preconceptions underpinning it render the strobe invisible. We ignore it at our peril, and we’ve ignored this element of Silverstein’s work for too long. (40)

Check it out in the new issue of the ChLA Quarterly, volume 6, issue 1, pages 25-46. And be sure to cite it in your work! Nothing jazzes up an essay quite like referencing a paragraph-long title, especially when the title is longer than the quotation that follows. Imagine:

As Joseph Thomas writes in his essay, "A Speculative Account (with Notes) of the Development & Initial Deployments of Shel Silverstein's Persona, Uncle Shelby, with Special Care to Articulate the Relationship of Said Persona to the Question of Shel's Ambiguous Audience(s)," "The author isn’t dead after all"(40).

Wow! Now that's good stuff!
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/toc/chq.36.1.html

New Oz Prequel

Tony Malanga points out that an Oz prequel is in the works:
http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/02/25/james-franco-oz-the-great-and-powerful/