67. Chinese dinosaurs in an English village

The Linton Children’s Book Festival takes place this weekend, in the beautiful English village of Linton, not far from Cambridge.  I was invited to introduce DONG Yanan’s book Express Delivery from Dinosaur World yesterday, and the event was fully booked! 32 young readers (some as young as two years old) came along with their parents.

Refreshing new take on dinosaur stories for kids: this beautifully illustrated book by Chinese author/illustrator Yanan Dong translated by @HelenWangLondon …and a great family workshop @LintonBookfest with puzzles & language games pic.twitter.com/CLeW7HsxCO

— Liz Hide (@TheMuseumOfLiz) May 19, 2018

The event took place at the Linton Village College. There were eight tables in our room, and pencils and paper available on each. There was a lot of spontaneous drawing of dinosaurs!

After a very brief introduction, we moved on to three key activities. The first two were from Dong Yanan’s book.

Activity 1: Cross the Dinosaur Mountain – looking for creatures in the mountains

Activity 2: Spot the Difference

The third activity was a puzzle about the names of dinosaurs. Each group had a packet with pieces of paper relating to eight dinosaurs: a picture of the dinosaur, its scientific name, the meaning of its scientific name, its Chinese name, and the individual characters in the Chinese name. Could the groups arrange the pieces of paper into eight groups? No problem! I’ve created language/translation based activities like this one before, and it’s amazing to see how people approach the task in very different ways.

Most groups started with Triceratops, because they know (or can guess) that it means “three horned head”.

When they see how the Chinese names for dinosaurs are constructed, they can then invent their own. And here is the first picture ever of the Tesanyilong  特三翼龙  the “special three-winged dinosaur” created at the Linton Children’s Book Festival on 19 February 2018.

 

 

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66. Children’s Books in China 2018 (and 2017)

These two supplements from Publishers Weekly were prepared by Teri Tan, who has been covering children’s publishing in Asia since at least 2009. You can download them or read the individual articles and publisher profiles via the links below. A full list of Teri Tan’s articles for Publishers Weekly is available here.

Children’s Books in China: Special Report 2018

Download the entire 2018 supplement here – or read the individual feature articles:

• The Continuing Story of the Children’s Book Market in China
• Events Highlighting Chinese Publishers and Content Creators at Bologna
• Untangling the Import Issues (and Rumors)
• Social Media Marketing: Working the Platform
• Survival in China: The Bear Grylls (Middle-Grade) Story
• Promoting Wordless Picture Books in China
• Joint Ventures in China: The Dos and Don’ts
• The Rise of the Pop-Science Segment in China
• A Wide-ranging Selection of Original Works from China
• Key Colours Competition China: A Unique Model
• IlluSalon Nurtures and Promotes Illustrators

Profile of 15 Children’s Publishers in Alphabetical Order:

• Beijing Baby Cube Children’s Brand Management Company
• Beijing Bright Culture Development Company
• Beijing Dandelion Children’s Book House
• Beijing Yutian Hanfeng Books Company
• China Children’s Press & Publication Group
• Everafter Books Publishing House
• Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press
• Guangdong New Century Publishing House
• Hunan Juvenile & Children’s Publishing House
• Jieli Publishing House
• Kids Media
• New Buds Publishing House
• Thinkingdom Children’s Books
• Tomorrow Publishing House
• Xinjiang Juvenile Publishing House

Additional Online Articles

• Flying High with Winnie the Witch Series
• Top 10 Children’s Books in China

Related Reads from PW

• The Growth of Chinese Children’s Books – by Karen Springer
• Bologna 2018: A Talk with Cao Wenxuan – by Teri Tan
• Bologna 2018: Figures and Forecasts on China’s Children’s Book Market  – by Teri Tan

Children’s Books in China: Special Report 2017

 

Download the entire 2017 supplement here – or read the individual feature articles:

• An Overview of the Children’s Book Market in China
• Juvenile & Children Reading Experience Wonderland: A New Business Model
• A Brief Look at Some of China’s Biggest Children’s Publishers
• A Quick Survey of Bestselling Titles in China
• Trends in the Rights Market
• Social Media Marketing Takes Center Stage
• A Gallery of Hot Titles from China

Profile of 10 Children’s Publishers in Alphabetical Order:

• 21st Century Publishing Group
• Anhui Children’s Publishing House
• Beijing Dandelion Children’s Book House
• Children’s Fun Publishing Company
• China Children’s Press & Publication Group
• Hunan Juvenile & Children’s Publishing House
• Jieli Publishing House
• Juvenile & Children’s Publishing House
• Xinjiang Juvenile Publishing House
• Zhejiang Juvenile & Children’s Publishing House

 

64. Books from Taiwan

Recently we’ve been asked about children’s books from Taiwan. So, we asked the experts at Books from Taiwan – which has a fabulous website – to tell us about what they do! Many thanks to Ms Ping CHANG 張平 for agreeing to this interview and for sharing these photographs!

62. The NCTA Freeman Book Awards

The 2017 NCTA Freeman Book Awards have just been announced. I’m delighted that Bronze and Sunflower has won the young adult/middle school literature award, and that An’s Seed received an honourable mention. I didn’t really know what the Freeman awards were about. Who better to ask than David Jacobson, whose book Are You an Echo? received an honourable mention last year to tell us about the prize, and what winning meant to him. 

61. Our first 60 posts!

Here’s a list of our first 60 posts! Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way, to our guest-writers and interviewees, and, of course, to our readers!

59. Interview with Chloe Garcia Roberts, translator of the picture book “Feather” by Cao Wenxuan and Roger Mello

2017 saw the publication of Feather, the stunning picture book collaboration between author Cao Wenxuan and illustrator Roger Mello [you can read Minjie Chen and David Jacobson’s post about Cao and Mello at the USBBY conference in Seattle here].  I was delighted to discover that the translator was Chloe Garcia Roberts, poet (The Reveal, 2015), translator and managing editor of the Harvard Review. I know her better for her translations of poetry by the Tang dynasty poet LI Shangyin 李商隱 (813-858), and was keen to learn more about Chloe’s work, and how she came to translate Feather. She very kindly agreed to an interview. 

58. China Welfare Institute Publishing House: Picture Books from China, with Love & Beauty

This guest blog by Helen Limon was first published on Children’s Literature in Newcastle, the blog of the Children’s Literature Unit Graduate Group (CLUGG) at Newcastle University, UK earlier this month. Many thanks to Helen Limon and CLUGG for allowing us to repost it here. We’ve added in some Chinese and a few weblinks.

57. Dong Yanan’s picture books

DONG Yanan 董亚楠 is the author and illustrator of the gorgeous book Express Delivery from Dinosaur World, which she created while she was a student at the Picture Books Studio at the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) (中央美术学院绘本创作工作室) in Beijing. So far, the book has earned her first prize in the CAFA 2014 Student Design Award, and a special award in the 8B Design Awards; and its English translation, by Helen Wang, received a Kirkus starred review.

56. What’s the difference between children’s books in China and the US?

This is the title of an article by Nurith Aizenman, published in NPR on 6 January 2018. It refers to an academic study “Learning-Related Values in Young Children’s Storybooks: An Investigation in the United States, China, and Mexico” carried out by Cecilia S. Cheung, Jorge A. Monroy and Danielle E. Delaney (Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology vol. 48, issue 4, May 2017, pp. 532-541 – see the abstract at the bottom of this post). 

55. The 2017 Bai Meigui Translation Competition is now open!

News from the Writing Chinese Project at the University of Leeds:

The 2017 Bai Meigui Translation Competition is now open!