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2006 VOL 44, NO. 2 Jerry Spinelli calling names English and Czech timeslips how Switzerland supports children’s literature Gaarder through the looking glass Berlin celebrates children’s literature YA novels come of age in SA international book reviews 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. Advertising Manager: Ellis Vance [email protected] 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) Board of Bookbird, Inc.: Joan Glazer (USA), President; Ellis Vance (USA),Treasurer;Alida Cutts (USA), Secretary;Ann Lazim (UK); Elda Nogueira (Brazil) Cover image: Cover of I en speil, i en gåte by Jostein Gaarder, published by Aschehoug Forlag, Oslo (see article on page 30) 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 © 2006 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 2004-2006: Peter Schneck (Austria), President; Patricia Aldana (Canada), Shahaneem Hanoum (Malaysia),Vice Presidents; Huang Jianbin (China),Ann Lazim (UK), Elda Nogueira (Brazil), Mari Jose Olaziregi (Spain),Anne Pellowski (USA),Vagn Plenge (Denmark), Chieko Suemori (Japan), Jant van der Weg-Laverman (Netherlands),Voting Members; Jeffrey Garrett (USA),Andersen Jury President; Urs Breitenstein (Switzerland),Treasurer; Elizabeth Page (Switzerland), Administrative Director;Valerie Coghlan (Ireland), Siobhán Parkinson (Ireland), Bookbird Editors Subscription rates CANADA USA MEXICO OVERSEAS Institutional subscription Can $120.00 US $75.00 US $80.00 US $85.00 Individual subscription Can $64.00 US $40.00 US $45.00 US $48.00 IBBY member subscription Can $56.00 US $35.00 US $40.00 US $43.00 Single issue price Can $11.50 Subscriptions and address changes to Bookbird, c/o University of Toronto Press, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York,ON, Canada M3H 5T8; tel.: (+1416) 667-7810; fax: (+1416) 667-7881; fax toll free in North America: 800-221-9985; email: [email protected]. Cheques or drafts in US$ should be made payable to UTP/Bookbird. Payment can also be made by VISA or Mastercard. 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 Connecting the World Editorial | page 4 GHTFUL AND FIT THE SECOND: THOU GRAVE Paths of Memory:The Past and the Present in Tom’s Midnight Garden (Pearce) and Stoletá holka (Knitlová) Kamila Vránková | page 5 Name and Identity in Spinelli’s Stargirl and Loser Emma Gormley | page 14 New Frontiers in English Language Young Adult Fiction in South Africa Judith Inggs | page 22 Angel, Star, Butterfly and Mirror Philosophy for Children in Gaarder’s Through a Glass, Darkly Anne-Kari Skardhamar| page 30 RD: SUCH HE THI QUANT S OF SAND FIT T ITIE Children’s Literature Studies around the World 6: A Campfire Called Literature Children’s Literature at the Berlin International Literature Festival Miriam Gabriela Möllers | page 37 Children’s Literature Studies around the World 7:The Swiss Institute for Children’s and Youth Media Christine Holliger | page 46 FIT THE FO D SH X URTH: OF SHOES AN IPS AND SEALING WA Postcards from around the World | interleaved Books on Books | page 52 Focus IBBY | page 59 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 And in all the flurry of activity, discussion, excitement, the strangest things happen. We Editorial suddenly find an issue has developed a theme all by itself. This issue, to our mild surprise, turns out to be about fiction for older children and Connecting the World young adults. And even when we think we’ve got no theme at all, connections between papers ometimes we feel there is something almost that we never dreamed of unexpectedly emerge. Smystical about the way issues of Bookbird We are delighted to have Kamila Vránková come together. We receive papers from all sorts making deliberate connections in this issue of sources: some of them are expected (some between a Czech and an English novelist; to indeed are promised and don’t turn up – you have an Irish contributor commenting on the know who you are!); some come out of (appar- work of a US novelist; and to have a Norwegian ently) nowhere; some come through personal or contributor connecting a world readership to an IBBY contacts or recommendations or through international and yet essentially Norwegian meetings at conferences; some just find their writer. But then there are the connections we way and, like migrating birds, nobody is quite never expected.We have no problem connecting sure how it happens. to the excellent reading promotion ideas in the They all get processed and worked on and article on the Swiss Institut für Kinder- und pored over, flying back and forth through the Jugendmedien; but we’d never heard tell of the ether at an alarming speed, with questions raised, South African writer Jenny Robson, for exam- references checked, queries answered, compro- ple, whose work Judith Inggs makes sound most mises reached, and then come the accompanying appealing in this issue – and then she pops up all illustrations, scanned in countries all over the unannounced in Miriam G Möllers’s article on world and also flown mysteriously through the the Berlin International Festival of Literature. air to land in our amazed and delighted editorial Extraordinary! computers. The copy of Bookbird you have in This sort of serendipitous connection happens your hand right now represents a tremendous all the time in Bookbird, and we take it as an team effort on the part of official Bookbird people indication that there really are undiscovered and and a host of what AA Milne’s Rabbit would call unnamed networks out there in the world of ‘friends-and-relations’, with a very large dollop books for children and young people, linking of technological magic thrown in. people, hemispheres apart, who read, write and illustrate, mediate and comment on books for young readers. It is our privilege and pleasure to Bookbird editors make these connections manifest. No doubt VALERIE COGHLAN is the librarian at you, our readers, will unearth lots more connec- the Church of Ireland College of Education in Dublin, Ireland. She lectures on and tions that we haven’t even noticed. writes about children’s books and has a Watch out also for our next issue, which will be particular interest in picturebooks. a bumper extra very super special double issue on SIOBHÁN PARKINSON is a writer of children’s literature in China, published in the run- fiction for children and adults (young and otherwise) and a professional editor. up to the IBBY congress in Beijing in September. Now there’s a connection worth making! 4 / BOOKBIRD Garden The Past and the Present in Paths of Memory (Pearce) and (Pearce) Stoletá holka Tom’s Midnight Tom’s (Knitlová) Kamila Vránková compares a story by the Czech writer Jana Knitlová, Stoletá holka [A hundred-year-old girl], with the famous novel Tom’s Midnight Garden by the English writer Philippa Pearce, both stories in the tradition of the children’s time-slip story, which share an almost identical plot and which both exemplify the psychological concern of a certain type of time-slip story The author expresses her appreciation of the Grant Agency of the Czeck Republic, by KAMILA VRÁNKOVÁ and the suggestions and encouragement of participants at the IRSCL 17th congress in Dublin, where a version of this paper was delivered in 2005. wo different tendencies can be traced in the development of the time-slip fantasy, which correspond to different atti- Ttudes to the traditional concepts of the ‘quest’and the ‘trial’ (see Weston 1920).On the one hand, emphasis is laid on what can be described as an ‘outer initiation’ (Hodrová 1993) – on adventure as Kamila Vránková lectures in English in the Pedagogical an opportunity for the hero to confirm his innate virtues in unam- Faculty

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