Batchelder Book Talks

Here are the books the Bush Library has that have either won or been recognized by the Mildred L. Batchelder Award which honors children’s books that were first published in a foreign country in a foreign language and then translated into English and published in the United States.

The Pull of the Ocean

2007 Winner. Originally published in France. Written by Jean-Claude Mourlevat and translated from the French by Y. Maudet.

This story is based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Tom Thumb”. It’s about an extraordinary (and extraordinarily small) boy who has three sets of twin brothers and one set of cruel parents. Just because this book is about a tiny boy, don’t expect it to be cute or sweet. When Perrault was writing fairy tales in the 17th Century they usually included some serious tragedy. Mourlevat picks up on this tradition and modernizes it.

When I Was a Soldier

2006 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Valérie Zenatti and translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.

This is the autobiography of an Israeli girl (originally from France, hence the book is in French, not Hebrew) who joins the Israeli army at the age of 18. If you want to know what it’s like to be a soldier in the Middle East, you should check this out.

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins

2004 Honoree. Originally published in Sweden. Written by Bea Uusma Schyffert and translated from Swedish by Emi Guner.

A pretty cool book of artifacts, trivia, and stories from the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The focus is on Michael Collins, who went up into space with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong but had to stay in orbit while they went down to the moon’s surface. I really enjoyed some of the wackier anecdotes from the book. For example, when the astronauts discharged their urine into space it froze and crystalized which, according to Michael, made it look like Angels. Gross!

The Thief Lord

2003 Winner. Originally published in Germany. Written by Cornelia Funke and translated from German by Oliver Latsch.

Have you ever wanted to go to Italy? This book transports you there as it tells the story of two runaway brothers who join a gang of young thieves in Venice, the city of canals and gondolas.  Kind of like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, only modern and Italian.

A Book of Coupons

2002 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Susie Morgenstern with illustrations by Serge Bloch. Translated from the French by Gill Rosner.

Delightfully silly book about a new teacher in a French school. To be honest, I haven’t read it, but it looks like fun.

Anne Frank Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance

1994 Honoree. Originally published in the Netherlands. By Ruud van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven, in association with the Anne Frank House, translated from Dutch by Tony Langham and Plym Peters.

If you want to know more about Anne Frank this is a great book to pick up, especially if you’re a more visual person because it has a lot of photographs.

Rose Blanche

1986 Winner. Originally published in Switzerland. By Christophe Gallaz and Robert Innocenti and translated from the French by Martha Coventry & Richard Craglia. (The ALA website lists Rose Blanche as being translated from the Italian, probably because the illustrator who originally conceived of the book, Innocenti, is Italian; however Gallaz, the man who wrote the text, was Swiss and wrote in French.)

Beautifully illustrated, this is the story of a gentile girl who discovers a concentration camp near her home in Germany during World War II. It looks like a picture book for young kids, but the content is very serious and sad, so it’s best for mature readers who can handle stories about the Holocaust.

Hiroshima No Pika

1983 Winner. Originally published in Japan. By Toshi Maruki and translated from Japanese through Kurita-Bando Literary Agency.

This picturebook tells the horrifying story of the day the United States attacked the city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Like Rose Blanche above, this may appear to be for little kids, but the subject matter can be upsetting.

First Friday

Today was my first Friday at the Bush library. On Fridays, Jody (the Lower School librarian) isn’t in the library, so I can use her desk and computer to work on projects, which I very much appreciate.

I arrived at 9 and got started on putting together a display of Tall Tales. To do this, I searched the Bush library catalog for “tall tales,” “johnny appleseed,” “paul bunyon,” etc. until I had found a good number to use. I made sure to include one of my favorite tall tales, Carolinda Clatter. I arranged the book for maximum visibility on the table, and then made a sign for the display. I’ll insert a full list of the books I used later and maybe add a picture of the display.

Then I took some time to prepare for book talks I’m going to give to Fifth Graders next week. They’re focusing on award winners, so I decided to book talk Batchelder Award winners and honor books. It took me quite a long time to look up all the possible books in the Bush catalog, but I finally discovered that we had eight of them, only one of which was checked out. So I gathered the seven books available and looked through them. I’d only read one previously, The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. I was impressed by the variety of books I had (fiction, non-fiction, biography, historical, jokey) so I think this group of books will make for an interesting set of book talks. Hopefully they’ll be something for almost everybody.

Then Jenine Lillian, the Middle School librarian and a former professor of mine at the iSchool, asked me to help her with a collection development project. She’d just returned from the ALA Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia where she served on the Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers committee. She had a bookcart full of free books she’d gotten at the conference and I helped her go through them to determine what she’d donate to the Bush library and what she’d raffle off to students. This mostly involved checking the catalog to see what Bush already had and separating the winning books from the nominees.

I left a little bit after 1:00 feeling like I’d accomplished quite a bit. It was a good day.