Ethics and Holocaust Literature • Yang Hongying

2007 VOL 45, NO. 4 Ethics and Holocaust literature • Yang Hongying – popular Chinese author • Japanese art and picturebooks • South African children’s literature after apartheid • Institut Charles Perrault • German Youth Literature Prize at 50 The Journal of IBBY,the International Board on Books for Young People Editors: Valerie Coghlan and Siobhán Parkinson Address for submissions and other editorial correspondence: [email protected] and [email protected] Bookbird’s editorial office is supported by the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin, Ireland. Editorial Review Board: Sandra Beckett (Canada), Nina Christensen (Denmark), Penni Cotton (UK), Hans-Heino Ewers (Germany), Jeffrey Garrett (USA), Elwyn Jenkins (South Africa),Ariko Kawabata (Japan), Kerry Mallan (Australia), Maria Nikolajeva (Sweden), Jean Perrot (France), Kimberley Reynolds (UK), Mary Shine Thompson (Ireland), Victor Watson (UK), Jochen Weber (Germany) Guest reviewer for this issue: Marion Allsobrook Board of Bookbird, Inc.: Joan Glazer (USA), President; Ellis Vance (USA),Treasurer;Alida Cutts (USA), Secretary;Ann Lazim (UK); Elda Nogueira (Brazil) Cover image: AKABA Suekichi Suho no shiroi uma (Suho and the white horse) 1967 Production: Design and layout by Oldtown Design, Dublin ([email protected]) Proofread by Antoinette Walker Printed in Canada by Transcontinental Bookbird:A Journal of International Children’s Literature (ISSN 0006-7377) is a refereed journal published quarterly by IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, Nonnenweg 12 Postfach, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland, tel. +4161 272 29 17 fax: +4161 272 27 57 email: [email protected] <www.ibby.org>. Copyright © 2007 by Bookbird, Inc., an Indiana not-for-profit corporation. Reproduction of articles in Bookbird requires permission in writing from the editor. Items from Focus IBBY may be reprinted freely to disseminate the work of IBBY. IBBY Executive Committee 2006-2008: Patricia Aldana (Canada) President; Elda Nogueira (Brazil) and Ellis Vance (USA) Vice-Presidents;Anastasia Arkhipova (Russia), Niklas Bengtsson (Finland), Hannelore Daubert (Germany), Reina Duarte (Spain), Elena Iribarren (Venezuela/France),Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin (Malaysia),Ann Lazim (UK), Ira Saxena (India) Voting Members; Zohreh Ghaeni (Iran) Andersen Jury President; Elizabeth Page (Switzerland), Director of Member Services, Communications and New Projects; Urs Breitenstein (Switzerland),Treasurer; Valerie Coghlan (Ireland), Siobhán Parkinson (Ireland), Bookbird Editors Subscriptions to Bookbird: See inside back cover Bookbird is indexed in Library Literature, Library and Information Abstracts (LISA), Children’s Book Review Index, and the MLA International Bibliography. CANADA POSTMASTER: Bookbird. Publications Mail Registration Number 40600510. Send address changes to University of Toronto Press Inc., 5201 Dufferin Street,Toronto, ON M3H 5T8. ISSN 0006-7377 I said it in Hebrew – I said it in Dutch – I said it in German and Greek: But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) That English is what you speak! FIRST: JAM A FIT THE ND JUDICIOUS ADVICE Editorial | page 4 GHTFUL AND FIT THE SECOND: THOU GRAVE Holocaust Narratives and the Ethics of Truthfulness Lydia Kokkola | page 5 The Ideal World of Yang Hongying LI Lifang | page 13 South African Children’s Literature Lifting the Stones of Apartheid Beverley Naidoo | page 18 Picturebooks: Art that Traverses Time and Culture SHIMA Tayo | page 27 THIRD: SUCH QU SAND T THE ANTITIES OF FI Children’s Literature Studies/Projects around the World 11: Institut International Charles Perrault, France Virginie Douglas | page 36 THE FOURTH: W FIT RAPPED UP IN A FIVE-POUND NOTE Children’s Literature Awards around the World 9:The Changing Face of Children’s Literature: 50 Years of the DJLP – German Youth Literature Prize Hannelore Daubert | page 41 FIT THE F SHIP IFTH: OF SHOES AND S AND SEALING WAX Postcards from around the World | interleaved Books on Books | page 50 Focus IBBY | page 57 The quoted stanza is from ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ by Lewis Carroll.The titles of the various Bookbird sections are taken from that same poem, from ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, also by Lewis Carroll, and from ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ by Edward Lear. BOOKBIRD books like Doing It (Melvin Burgess, UK) and Sugar (Julie Burchill, UK), which are explicit about Editorial under-age sex and drugs. There is parhaps a fear that relinquishing the idea of innocence leads inevitably to wickedness, but the opposite of innocence does not have to be guilt – it can be experience, knowledge, awareness. If innocence hat and how much do we tell children, and is a simple – or simplistic – idea, letting go of Whow do we tell it? These questions go to innocence as a founding principle of our thinking the heart of much critical discussion of children’s about childhood leads to complexity rather than to literature today.Western readers and critics have long degeneracy. since abandoned the idea of childhood as a time of Part of that complexity is our constant search for innocence – an idea that the Chinese author Yang the right way to interact with childhood and with Hongying (whose apparently delightful work is children.We have never had so many protocols and discussed in this issue by LI Lifang) not only takes laws and aspirational statements about the protection for granted but is explicitly committed to in her life of children and about children’s rights. It is as if, in as well as her work.This interpretation of childhood abandoning the simple and rather endearing – but as an innocent time seems to be a cultural assumption also potentially dangerous and thoughtless – idea of in China, and at least some other Asian countries. innocence as the natural mode of childhood, we If Western thinking about children’s literature, and have opened ourselves up to an endless complexity about childhood, has moved away from the idea of of experience. childhood innocence,Western societies are constantly Children’s literature is, of necessity, at the heart of debating childhood and our responsibilities to children. these debates: do we protect children, in our stories, We have never been so aware of the physical, from the truth, or do we expose them to it? How emotional and sexual abuse of children, their economic much truth can children bear? How much do they and even military exploitation and the educational, want or need to hear? And what kinds of protection nutritional and health deprivations to which children do we enforce, and what kinds do we strip away? are so often subject, and in face of this awareness, it Lydia Kokkola, in her article focusing on Holocaust seems contradictory to think of childhood as an fiction in this issue, picks a careful and subtle path innocent dream that adults can create and sustain in through an ethical puzzle, debating authors’ (and children’s books. publishers’) responsibilities, on the one hand, to Adults often express the anxiety that anything goes history and the truth and, on the other hand, to in children’s literature now, or at least in literature their young and vulnerable readers.These issues also for young people, and they are deeply shocked by underlie Beverley Naidoo’s discussion of the need for a literature that addresses children’s own history Bookbird editors and culture. It is refreshing, then, and hopeful, to read SHIMA VALERIE COGHLAN is the librarian at Tayo’s extraordinary statement – in her rich and the Church of Ireland College of Education in Dublin, Ireland. She lectures on and fascinating account of how Japanese art has influenced writes about children’s books and has a picturebooks for children both in Japan and in other particular interest in picturebooks. countries – that ‘true art flows in the direction in SIOBHÁN PARKINSON is a writer of which it is most needed’.What an intriguing idea fiction for children and adults (young and otherwise) and a professional editor. and how thrilling to see children’s literature and illustration through a lens so clear and so humane! 4 / BOOKBIRD Holocaust Narratives and ydia Kokkola is docent (associate professor) at and acting professor at L Åbo Akademi University the Ethics of Truthfulness Finland University, Turku by LYDIA KOKKOLA ical iticism can investigate. ets and lies e of historical fiction for s ability to think about both the histor oposes an interesting en’ esponses that ethical cr ydia Kokkola raises questions y natur e also r en, and pr eaders? L edom ar n the late 1980s, critics’ Booth (1988) drew Wayne attention has the potential to affect the back to the idea that literature in which readers think,ways world. and act in the real believe When fiction deals with real historical When fiction deals with real to the events, what is its responsibility truth? to And what about its responsibilty its r about the ver childr distinction between secr An ethical critic the text and the functions as a mediator between Issues that, thankfully, of texts for young deserted evaluations never readers, literary despite attempts to do so in mainstream criticism. Ethical criticism, as Booth defined it, does not simply ascribe a ‘good’ judgement – ‘bad’value or – to a particular text; it considers inspire. a text may range of responses the entire So although moral certainlyjudgements are one kind of response, laughter, tears, rage and bor reader in order to assess the impact a particular text is likely to have on to have to assess the impact a particular in order text is likely reader a particular (Sell 2001). reader Holocaust Thus I assume that reading fiction will affect childr That is, ethical criticism seeks to describe encounters with a how ethos affects readers’storyteller’s of being. ways lives. and their own events assumption is the idea that Implicit in my I HOLOCAUST NARRATIVES some books are likely to have a more educationally Ethical criticism considers sound or beneficial impact than others; that some may the entire range of responses be better equipped to put ‘a “face” on the horrendous a text may inspire facts and events’ than others (Totten 2001).

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