Being taken away (Day 5)

Today is Monday, and I have had a lovely gentle weekend of biking around Kent, enjoying the Farmers' Market, the river pathway, and I even found a yoga class to attend. Heaven really.  

I got through another heap of beautiful books on Friday, and wanted to share some of the books which stood out for me. Two were illustrated by an artist called Domi.  The one which stood out for me is based on her own life as part of a Mazateca village (South Mexico) forced to move to a new location with very poor soil because of the building of a dam. In the blurb of the book (Napi funda un pueblo/Napi makes a village, House of Anansi Press, 2010), Domi is described as “one of the most important indigenous book artists in the Americas. The stories from her childhood offer North American children a view into the lives of people whose spirit and courage in the face of loss of land, political repression and exploitation do not dim their  joy of living and their deep engagement in their physical and moral universe”. You can see the gorgeous cover of the book here, and those of you who know how much I love colour will smileJ

http://houseofanansi.com/products/napi-funda-un-pueblo-napi-makes-a-village

Another was the story of the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public library system. Her name was Pura Belpre, and she created a space within the New York Public library where Spanish speakers were welcome and could borrow resources. I knew her name previously only for the award named after her which is awarded by the Association for Library Services for Children annually to a Latino or Latina author and illustrator whose work best represents Latino cultural experience.

You can see this year’s winners here:

http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal

I’m aiming to get the Spanish-English books complete by the middle of Wednesday at the latest, so I will have time to look at the other dual language books featured in the collection, but we’ll see how we go. Sometimes I spend a lot longer on a book than is strictly necessary for data collection purposesJ but I am very happy to be taken away; that’s what good books do.

Linguistic Landscapes (Day 4)

It’s another beautiful warm morning here in Ohio.

On my way home yesterday, I explored the campus a little and found a beautiful memorial to the shooting of anti Vietnam protesters at Kent State University in 1970. It is a peaceful area now with information stations taking you through the events of May 4 1970, and a beautiful marble memorial too. I also biked around the neighbourhood near where I’m staying which is filled with 2 story wooden homes with porches and mainly no fences between or in front of them. To me this seems very American.

My work day yesterday saw me working through another 50 or so books, examining the different linguistic landscapes they present. Linguistic Landscape is a concept first explored by Landry and Bourhis (1997), Canadian researchers looking at how written or printed language in French Canadian surroundings tells us something about the status of these languages in a society. It’s a bottom up approach to language policy, revealing what is actually happening in a community compared with the top down official government policy on languages and their status.

So I am looking at how Spanish and English are presented in the linguistic landscape of the picturebook- which language comes first, which is bigger. How does this relate to the publisher, the author, and what effect might this have for the reader? I have a big spreadsheet and I am getting faster as I go. I had hoped to look at many different languages, but I think the Spanish English books will be a big enough project on this occasion!

As well as looking at the languages and how they are used, I am also keeping note of the topics they cover. The book I couldn’t stop thinking about when I got home yesterday was called ‘Benjamin and the Word’ published in 2005. It’s about a little boy whose mother is Russian and whose father is Mexican. A boy at his school calls him ‘a word’ which is never actually given, but is obviously some kind of racial slur, and the story is about he and his dad working through the hurt this causes and how he can work through his feeling with the boy who insulted him.

On a lighter note, I’ll end with another poem by Francisco X. Alacorn about a bilingual dog.

At home we have a bilingual dog

“guau guau” he first greets you in Spanish

And in case you don’t understand him then

“bow wow” he repeats barking in English

Looking through windows (Day 3)

We had some rain overnight, so it was a bit cooler this morning, and I had a pleasant bike ride into work. Yes, a bike ride!! My lovely colleague Marianne Martens has lent me a bike, and I am enjoying it very much, although staying to the footpaths as I don't trust myself to stay to the right.

I looked though about 50 more of the Spanish English dual language books from my subcollection from the Marantz collection yesterday, and am very much reminded of the metaphor used by Professor Rudine Sims Bishop that multicultural children's literature can be mirrors, windows and glass sliding doors. Certainly for me, yesterday, I felt like I was looking through many windows into worlds I am less familiar with. There are many stories relating to children's experiences of migration from Mexico and El Salvador to the United States. One that I found particularly  interesting is called 'My Diary from here to there' by Amada Irma Perez, following a girl's experience of her family's migration to the States, based on the experiences of the author herself.

There are also some lovely poetry collections by Francisco X. Alarcon (illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez, Children's Book Press, 1998). One includes a poem called 'From the Bellybutton of the Moon':

Whenever I say "Mexico"

I hear my grandmother telling me

about the Aztecs and the city they built

on an island in the middle of a lake

"Mexico" says my grandma

"means: from the bellybutton of the moon"

"don't forget your origin my son"

maybe that's why

whenever I now say "Mexico"

I feel like touching my bellybutton.

(p.11)

I am learning a lot by looking through the windows provided by these bilingual books.

Day 2

My first half day went very well. I looked through ten bilingual books and kind of found my feet in terms of how I am going to document my data.

Today is another warm day, and I have a lovely walk from where I'm staying to where I am working in the relatively cool morning.

I cam across two interesting publishing companies of Spanish-English bilingual picturebooks: Cinco Puntos Press and Pinata Press.

I documented two ways of presenting the two languages within the books. The first was English on the LHS and Spanish on the RHS; the second was English first on the page and Spanish below.

On the covers so far English is always first and Spanish second, sometimes in smaller font; the translator is sometimes acknowledged on the cover, and sometimes not. Generally speaking, so far, English is always dominant, and the content of the stories usually have some link to Latino culture, but it is early days...I have a trolley load of books still to go through.

The beginning

I have arrived in Kent after three flights over one very long and extended August 22nd! It is a lovely warm day, and students are starting to arrive on the Kent State University campus in readiness for the new university year which will start in September.

I was met at the Akron/Canton airport by Michelle Baldini, the librarian who looks after the collection, and I have just met with Marianne Martens, the director of the Reinberger Children' s Library Centre where the Marantz collection resides. They are lovely people and very welcoming.

I am starting today with all of the Spanish-English dual language picturebooks in the collection, as this is the largest proportion of dual language books. Brianna, a student assistant in the collection, has got them all out for me.

I have pictures to insert into this blog, but for some reason they're not uploading. I will try and fix this a little later tonight, but for now a beautiful set of picturebooks are spread across a table awaiting my attention!

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to this blog about my time in the Marantz Picturebook Collection

I was absolutely thrilled to be awarded the Sylvia and Kenneth Marantz Picturebook Collection Fellowship, and am soon winging my way across the Pacific to stay in Kent, Ohio for two weeks to look at dual language picturebooks.

To find out more about the Marantz Picturebook Collection, go to http://www.kent.edu/slis/marantz-picturebook-collection-study-picturebook-art

I will keep this blog daily while I'm there, recording interesting aspects of my work and finds as I go.

Enjoy.